Bayraktar TB2

Turkey's game-changing MALE armed UCAV — a low-cost, piston-engined platform that reshaped conflicts in Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine, proving that a cheap, recoverable drone can dominate the battlefield when air defences are absent.

Overview

The Bayraktar TB2 is a medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) armed unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) designed and built by the Turkish firm Baykar. A single-piston pusher-prop airframe carries a ~150 kg payload of precision-guided munitions and an electro-optical/infrared sensor turret, linked to the operator via line-of-sight radio. The type entered production in the mid-2010s and quickly became the signature weapon of Turkish-aligned forces in Libya, of Azerbaijan in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, and — perhaps most famously — of the Ukrainian armed forces in the opening phase of the 2022 Russian invasion. Its low unit cost of roughly $5 million per air vehicle, combined with the availability of effective micro-munition families like the Roketsan MAM series, has made the TB2 a highly asymmetric tool that forces adversaries to spend far more to counter it than it costs to field.

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