Ankara is using drone diplomacy to improve its relations in the Middle East as interest grows in its unmanned aircraft systems.
Tony Osborne
Credit: Adem Altan AFP/Getty Images
For the past five years, China has met the Middle East’s insatiable demand for armed unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). Dozens, perhaps hundreds of Chinese-made medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) UAS have been exported into the Middle East and North Africa as a tool to counter insurgencies and provide an eye in the sky over the Iraqi, Libyan, Syrian and Yemeni war zones.
But now the Chinese systems seem to be falling out of favor and, since Washington is still imposing strict limitations on the export of U.S.-made platforms, Turkey appears to be the new supplier of choice.
Turkey’s systems have already made quite an impact: They have had success in destroying armored formations and provided advanced ground-based air defense in Libya and Syria and during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. And the price of a Turkish system is a fraction of armed U.S.-made platforms. As a result, Turkish systems have received a slew of export orders—among them the first from NATO member states, including Poland.
Countries in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa now appear to be following in their footsteps. In addition to existing sales to Qatar, a staunch ally of Turkey, Iraq is said to be the next country to take delivery of the Baykar Makina Bayraktar TB2 tactical UAS, following the signature of new defense agreements with Ankara in August. Turkmenistan has also adopted the TB2, featuring it in recent military parades, and Morocco and Kyrgyzstan have reportedly bought the same platform. Meanwhile, a Saudi Arabian defense company has purchased rights from Turkish manufacturer Vestel to produce that company’s Karayel tactical UAS in the kingdom, and the government in Tunisia has purchased the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) Anka MALE platform. Media reports have also hinted that Turkish drones will soon be exported to Ethiopia, Indonesia and Nigeria.
Baykar Makina’s Bayraktar TB2 armed tactical UAS, the best-selling Turkish unmanned aircraft system, has already secured sales in Qatar, and Iraq is expected to follow suit. Credit: Baykar Makina
“Turkey’s affordable and battlefield-proven drones have become an essential tool of diplomacy,” says Wim Zwijnenburg of the European Forum on Armed Drones. Ankara, he says, has used the UAS exports to “expand their geopolitical influence in countries such as Libya, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Qatar, with more buyers on the horizon.”
Turkish success in the Middle East is all the more surprising after Ankara’s recent diplomatic spats with countries in the region, particularly over Turkey’s military and political support of Libya’s Government of National Accord, while countries such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) supported Gen. Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army. Relations between Riyadh and Ankara had been strained since the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul three years ago.
TAI’s Anka MALE platform has found its first customer, Tunisia, and Pakistan might be next. Credit: Turkish Aerospace Industries
Defense analysts say that although Chinese platforms—such as the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (Casc) CH-4 Rainbow and the Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group (CAIG) Wing Loong MALE family—have given Middle East air forces a taste of MALE UAS capabilities, commanders have been dissatisfied by their reliability and maintainability and the apparent inability to link them into the Western-developed command-and-control systems they rely on for their air campaigns.
“Current Chinese drone users are struggling with their acquisitions,” Zwijnenburg says. “They have faced severe setbacks due to low quality and high maintenance costs, a gap that Turkey managed to bridge.”
“Turkey’s share will become larger at the expense of China,” says Stijn Mitzer, a defense analyst who runs the Oryx blog and is a close follower of Baykar’s UAS developments. “The reliability of Turkish systems, their survival in the face of surface-to-air missile systems, electronic warfare and spoofing attacks, the apparent after-sale support and their lower costs—in case of the TB2—are the most important advantages over Chinese systems.”
Justin Bronk, research fellow for airpower and technology at the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), suggests that the Turkish platforms, which are developed to NATO standards, may be easier to integrate into command-and-control systems and networks than their Chinese counterparts.
A previous RUSI study stated that operators of Chinese drones were frustrated by the technical limitations of the system and hinted that users were also dissatisfied with the quality of the Chinese-made electro-optical (EO) camera systems and stabilizing gimbals. Highlighting this dissatisfaction was Jordan’s decision to sell off its six CH-4 platforms in 2019 (AW&ST Jan. 14-27, 2019, p. 46).
The Turkish drones, however, are compatible with Western-developed EO cameras and have been fitted with cameras developed by Aselsan, Hensoldt and L3Harris.
Another potential benefit is that in addition to the platforms, Turkey seems to provide its customers with its own proven concept of use, which has seen the platforms combined with ground-based electronic warfare systems. Such systems are said to be part of the package that Iraq will purchase. This combination appears to have enabled the Bayraktar TB2 to destroy advanced air defense systems, such as UAE-operated Russian Pantsir-S1 (SA-22 Greyhound) self-propelled aircraft guns in Libya and Tor M2KM (SA-15 Gauntlet) ground-based short-range missile systems in Armenia (AW&ST June 14-17, p. 24).
Of the numerous unmanned systems that Turkey produces, the Bayraktar TB2 is the most exported, with confirmed sales to Azerbaijan, Qatar and Turkmenistan and reported sales to Iraq and Morocco. Turkish media reports have suggested that Oman has also expressed an interest in buying it. The TB2 started out as an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platform developed for the Turkish Army, but when the Obama administration turned down Turkey’s requests to purchase armed MQ-9 Reapers , Turkish industry began a crash program to integrate indigenous small munitions onto indigenous UAVs, leading to the development of Roketsan’s MAM-L and MAM-C laser-guided lightweight munitions.
Private Saudi company Intra Defense Technologies and Advanced Electronics, which displayed a Karayel at the 2019 Dubai Airshow, subsequently received an order from Riyadh’s General Authority for Military Industries in April 2020 to begin local production of the platform. The 560-kg (1,235-lb.) Karayel was originally developed to meet a Turkish armed forces requirement for a tactical UAS, but that role was taken on by the Bayraktar. Nonetheless, the Karayel remained in development and was modified to carry 60-kg munitions. It is unclear whether the Karayels will replace Chinese-built platforms, which dominate Saudi fleets, but the Vestel-developed platform underwent extensive testing through the armed forces’ missions over Yemen.
Tunisia ordered a trio of TAI Anka MALE platforms as part of a $150 million arms package announced at the end of 2020, becoming the UAS’ first export customer. Pakistan could follow closely behind, after the country’s National Engineering and Scientific Commission (Nescom) secured agreements with TAI to produce components for the platform as part of a plan to procure it for Pakistan’s armed forces, although a timeline and numbers to be ordered are unclear.
Zwijnenburg suggests that China could renew the competition, however, by offering lower-cost drones and meeting an expected increased demand for loitering munitions, an area in which Turkey remains behind Chinese and Israeli manufacturers.
The big question, Zwijnenburg says, is whether the U.S. will react to Turkey’s success by “lowering its own arms export restrictions and prices to face its competition or take a leading role in addressing global security challenges with the expanding use and pushback on lethal use of force in murky military or clandestine operations.”
