The Bayraktar Kızılelma, the first unmanned combat aircraft developed by Turkey, achieved a historic milestone by hitting a jet aircraft with a BVR (Beyond-Visual-Range) air-to-air missile, Turkish company Baykar said in a statement yesterday, noting on Turkish social network NSocial that, “for the first time in the world, an unmanned combat aircraft shot down its target with a BVR missile”.
According to Baykar, the Kızılelma drone launched the Gökdoğan air-to-air missile, entirely developed by Turkey, accurately hitting a moving target flying at high speed. The missile was fired from an under-wing pylon after detecting and tracking the target with the AESA Murad radar developed by Aselsan, also manufactured in Türkiye. This is the first time in the history of Turkish aviation that a Turkish-made aircraft has used a Turkish-made radar-guided missile – with a radar also domestically made – against an aerial target.
The successful test places the Kızılelma as the world’s first and only unmanned platform with validated real air-to-air combat capability. The test, which was conducted over the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey’s Sinop province and unveiled yesterday (Sunday), was described by Turkish defence company Baykar as “another first achievement” that reflects “Turkey’s long-term aerospace vision“.
The exercise also involved five F-16 fighter jets from Merzifon air base, which flew in formation alongside the drone in a joint operation between manned and unmanned aircraft, in a demonstration of a future aerial combat concept. In addition, a Turkish Bayraktar Akıncı combat drone accompanied the mission and recorded the test from the air.
Praise for the test outside Turkey
The success of the test conducted by the Turkish drone Bayraktar Kızılelma has been widely reported internationally, according to Turkish media such as Hürriyet. In Russia, the media noted that “Kızılelma has become the first and only unmanned platform to demonstrate its air-to-air combat capability”, while China‘s Xinhua news agency noted that Kızılelma’s “sensor fusion, radar capability, flight control algorithms and national missile technology work in harmony towards a single target”.
The historic milestone achieved yesterday was even praised in Israel, where the daily Maariv underlined the world breakthrough achieved by Turkey: “History was made in the skies over Turkey: a drone carried out an interception operation that the world’s armies could only dream of” wrote the daily, while Israeli journalist Amichai Stein of the Jerusalem Post did not hesitate to claim that the test marks a “precedent in the history of aviation”. “Erdoğan’s historic experiment: a new era in aviation” headlined Israel’s most widely distributed newspaper Hayom.
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Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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