The factory under construction in Ukraine for the production of Turkish Bayraktar strike drones will enter service in 2025. This confirmed Khaluk Bayraktar, CEO of drone developer Baykar, told Defense News.
He also indicated that the main preparatory work is carried out on site, the deadlines are respected. According to the businessman, electricity will be supplied to the facility in July.
Bayraktar added that the company has already received the relevant license permits from Turkey for the full production of Baykar TB2 and Akinci unmanned aerial vehicles in Ukraine. The total investment for the construction of the facilities is approximately 95.5 million dollars.
In August 2022, Ukrainian Ambassador to Turkey Vasily Bodnar announced that Baykar had acquired land for a future factory and developed its concept. As the diplomat noted, a significant part of the drone models will have Ukrainian components, such as motors and wheels. In October, the CEO of Baykar said Reuters expects to complete construction of the facility within two years.
Russian President’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov, commenting on Ukraine’s plans to establish the production of Turkish drones on its territory, said that such an object “will immediately, of course, fall under the topic of demilitarization”.
At the beginning of February 2022, Kyiv and Ankara signed an agreement in which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine would “significantly increase” the production of drones in the country.
As found out by Defense News, which received exclusive access to this document, it is aimed at creating favorable conditions for the transfer of production technologies to Kiev and stimulating direct investment in this area. In particular, the agreement refers to special tax and customs benefits for Turkish investors in the Ukrainian aerospace industry until January 2035.
As Khailuk Bayraktar himself reminded the publication, the Ukrainian division of Baykar – LLC Avia Ventures – was registered in Kyiv in 2019 and has a license to import and export military products.
In mid-July, the CEO of Baykar assured that Turkey would never supply its drones to Russia. “We want to support Ukraine, support its sovereignty, support its resistance,” he said.
At the end of July, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared that Russian leader Vladimir Putin wants to “work with Baykar”. Peskov later said that during the August 5 talks in Sochi, the heads of the two states did not discuss deliveries to Russia or the possible production of Bayraktar drones in the country.
Since February 2022, Ukraine has received, according to various estimates, 30 to 50 Turkish Bayraktar drones and relied on them as a “weapon of victory”. But in a year of hostilities, most of those drones have been shot down by the Russian military, Business Insider reported in May.
