In the early 2010s, Turkish firm Baykar set out to build a home-grown unmanned combat aircraft. Led by MIT alumnus Selçuk Bayraktar, engineers designed the Bayraktar TB2 as a medium-altitude, long-endurance UAV with a rear pusher propeller and twin-tailboom layout, controlled by crews in a ground station and capable of both remote piloting and autonomous missions.By 2014 the TB2 entered service with the Turkish Armed Forces, proving its worth in strikes against PKK and YPG positions across Iraq and Syria. Its simple maintenance, modular weapons-pylon system and robust flight controls let Turkish crews maintain persistent surveillance and precision fire, racking up hundreds of thousands of flight hours.Exports soon followed. In 2020 Azerbaijan famously used TB2s to decisive effect in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, and when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Ukrainian crews pressed captured and imported Bayraktars into front-line service. Even the Ethiopian National Defence Force deployed them during the Tigray conflict, demonstrating the TB2’s global reach.By November 2021 these drones had logged over 400 000 hours in dozens of air forces, sparking fresh debates on drone-centric tactics. Celebrated as the spearhead of a new style of warfare by strategists and commentators alike, the Bayraktar TB2 reshaped modern military doctrine and inspired countless imitators in the growing UCAV market.

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Bayraktar drone