loading…
The claim regarding the development of the Turkish drone fighter jet was conveyed by Baykar’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Selcuk Bayraktar.
Also read: The US officially expels Turkey from the F-35 program, but the money has not been returned
Baykar is a Turkish drone manufacturer. Apart from being a Baykar executive, Selcuk Bayraktar is also the son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In a video circulating on social media, Bayraktar said Baykar had been working on the state-of-the-art Akinci unmanned aerial combat vehicle (UCAV) for four to five years, leading the company to its next project, an unmanned fighter jet.
The Baykar CTO said that although Turkey being excluded from the F-35 stealth fighter program appears to be detrimental, in the long term, it will yield positive results for the domestic defense industry.
Turkey has been pushed to develop domestically unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other defense systems with sanctions and unofficial embargoes in the past.
The country now does not just use drone combat in the field, but is also on its way to becoming a major exporter of the system, with UCAV Bayraktar TB2 in the lead.
Explaining the weaknesses of systems obtained from abroad, referring to the F-35 program, Bayraktar said “such a system, which is managed by digital computers whose software we will get from abroad, which we do not fully know, and which are computers and devices. foreign mission softwares that decide what a pilot-driven trigger will do or not, could expose us to serious restrictions when it comes to independent use. “
“Given the possible restrictions on use and the potential for an embargo with the system to be procured from abroad and having dozens of avionics, flight and mission computers that we cannot access, the national combat platform will allow us to use it independently,” he was quoted as saying. Daily Sabah, Friday (23/4/2021).
As previously reported, the United States and eight other countries have abolished the 2006 agreement on the F-35 program and signed a new agreement that excludes Turkey. Washington has officially notified Ankara about Turkey’s exclusion from the F-35 program.
Washington began suspending Turkey’s participation in the F-35 Lightning II jet program in 2019, arguing that Ankara was desperate to buy Russia’s S-400 missile system.
Washington says the S-400 missile system could be used by Russia to secretly obtain classified details on its F-35 fighter jets and is incompatible with NATO’s weapons systems.
– .
