Kizilelma

The drone that shot down another aircraft beyond visual range — Baykar's Kizilelma ("Red Apple") is a jet-powered, stealth-shaped combat drone marketed as an unmanned fighter: AESA radar in the nose, air-to-air missiles under the wings, carrier operations in the design brief. In November 2025 it tracked a jet target drone with its own radar and killed it with an indigenous BVR missile — a claimed world first for an uncrewed aircraft. It entered serial production before any American Collaborative Combat Aircraft, sold to Indonesia in May 2026, and still flies on Ukrainian engines.

Overview

The Bayraktar Kizilelma is the sharp end of Baykar's climb up the airpower value chain — from the propeller-driven Bayraktar TB2 that defined the drone decade, through the heavy Akinci, to a jet-powered, low-observable-shaped UCAV built to fight in the air, not just strike the ground. Developed under the MIUS program and self-funded by Baykar (a planned ~$1 billion), the Kizilelma-A is an 8.5-tonne, Mach 0.9-class aircraft with a ~930 km combat radius (manufacturer figures), Aselsan's MURAD AESA radar, KARAT IRST, two internal and six external weapons stations, and autonomous taxi, takeoff and landing. Its test record is a run of claimed firsts: live precision-strike shots (October 2025), a simulated electronic "kill" of an F-16 (November 2025), the first beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile kill by a UCAV — a Gökdoğan shot off Sinop on 30 November 2025 with an all-Turkish kill chain — and autonomous two-ship formation flight (December 2025). Serial production began in 2025, the first production aircraft flew in January 2026, and Indonesia signed for 12 (options to 60) in May 2026. It is designed for short-deck operations from TCG Anadolu, though it has never yet touched the ship — and both its engines come from wartime Ukraine.

🔒 The full Kizilelma file is for BattlePolicy Pro members. Below the line: development history, design and capabilities, variants, the combat record, advantages and limitations, comparable systems, outlook, the full specifications table, our sourcing, and the analyst assessment — procurement, suppliers and the BattlePolicy verdict. Unlock the full file with BattlePolicy Pro →