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Over the last few years, Turkish Bayraktar drones have proven to be a military revolution by proving effective in mixing an inexpensive product with advanced electronic warfare systems. Turkey has used them successfully in Syria, Libya, Azerbaijan and Iraq and now they are present against the Russian invasion in Ukraine.
The thermal image shows a field with some trees and a few trucks parked between them. From time to time, between the trucks, some black figures move: they come together, they separate, they enter a truck and then leave.
In front of the screen, watching this scene, are several men. They are members of the Ukrainian Army and are supervising the operation. And then… the screen goes all black. “Booah! Amazing! God”, release the Ukrainian soldiers. After a few seconds, the black smoke covering the screen begins to dissipate. There is no trace of the trucks or the figures that moved between them.
These images were published by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and correspond to one of the increasingly less secret weapons that Kiev has: the Bayraktar drones of the Turkish company Baykar, whose owner, Selçuk Bayraktar, is none other than the son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The history of these drones is short, but it threatens to change the way a conflict is carried out.
The first time Bayraktar drones were used was just two years ago, in February 2020. The Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and Russia, his ally, had just killed 36 Turkish soldiers in an airstrike in the Syrian region. from Idlib, from where Damascus and Moscow had been carrying out an offensive a few days ago.
So, in response, Turkey pulled its Bayraktar out of hangars. Dozens of Russian anti-aircraft systems and Syrian tanks and artillery pieces, according to experts, were destroyed in a few days. After a week, Turkey forced to sign a ceasefire that, despite sporadic fighting in the region, still stands.
“Is awesome. People here are very happy and now we are celebrating in the street. Never before in this war have we felt something like this, that the one who is being bombed is not us but others,” a Syrian civilian from Idlib explained to this reporter in February 2020.
The secret of the Bayraktar attracts potential buyers
After that coup, Turkey continued to test them. In that same spring of 2020, Ankara managed to force a ceasefire in Libya, when its ally was about to be defeated in Tripoli. In October, it was Azerbaijan’s turn to use them against Armenia — where dozens of civilians were killed and these devices were used indiscriminately — in the Nagorno-Karabakh war. Partly thanks to the use of these drones, Baku won that conflict.
The Bayraktar were beginning to earn their fame. “Their trust in them was so great that many Azerbaijani soldiers complained that they were sent to fight. They thought their job in the war would just be to wait for the drones to attack and then go and pick up the bodies,” an Azerbaijani whose brother was a battalion captain in the Azerbaijani Army told me.
After that conflict, the requests soared: apart from the countries mentioned, Poland, Ethiopia, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine have either bought the Bayraktar or have been willing to do so.
The secret of these drones is simple: apart from being powerful, they are very cheap and small, which makes it difficult for them to be detected by the rival’s anti-aircraft systems. In addition, according to Turkey, they are deployed with cyber warfare systems to mislead radars.
With Ukraine, the Bayraktar graduate to conventional wars
There was, however, one doubt. These aircraft had always been used in conflicts where Turkey had a clear military advantage. They had never been used in a war where the enemy had advanced defense systems.
Until this week. “When the Turkish drones destroyed the Al-Assad regime and the Libyan forces of Khalifa Haftar, the Bayraktar were said to work against militias but not in a conventional war. After their success against Armenia, they were only useful against poorly trained armies, but not against Russia. Now? Of course…”, says the Turkish security expert Ömer Özkicilcik, who is close to the Turkish government.
In recent days, Ukraine has been publicizing its use of the Bayraktar, which were purchased during 2021. According to Kiev, these planes have been destroying Russian anti-aircraft systems apart from columns of trucks and detachments even near the Ukrainian capital.
In fact, Ukraine claimed that it was a Turkish drone that destroyed a convoy of Russian transport trucks carrying hundreds of Chechen soldiers into battle.
“If even the Russian military cannot stop the Turkish drones, their effect is far greater than the hype surrounding them,” says Özkicilcik.