Two years. This is the time it took for the Turkish specialist in the manufacture of military drones Baykur, to bring its new MALE Akinci Medium Altitude Long Endurance drone from the prototype stage to its operational entry into the Turkish armies. On August 29, during a ceremony with strong nationalist impulses, it was President RT Erdogan himself who celebrated the arrival of the new combat drone in his armies, with unfeigned pride on the part of the Turkish leader. It must be said that the Akinci PT-2 TIHA has enough to satisfy the president, and his efforts in favor of a powerful and autonomous Turkish defense industry, posing as a credible alternative to Western, Russian and Chinese drones, but also by confirming without any doubt the own industry capabilities, after the resounding operational and commercial success of the light MALE TB2 drone from the same Baykar.
To develop Akinci, Baykar did not content itself with surfing its success of its flagship model which demonstrated its efficiency in Libya and in Nagorno-Karabakh. The company has indeed taken many risks to design a much larger drone, 20 meters wingspan and 6 tonnes at takeoff for the Akinci against 12m and 650 kg for the TB2, so as to offer a real alternative to drones. American, Chinese or Russian, such as the future European Euromale drone. And in fact, the Akinci has performance beyond compare with its ancestor, capable of carrying up to 1,3 tonnes of payload at 12.000 meters above sea level and at 200 knots cruising speed, against 180 kg at 6500 m at 200 km / h for the TB2, and placing the Akinci in the same category as the General Atomics MQ9 Reaper. Same category, with a difference near, the price, since if the price of the Akinci is a jealously guarded secret, many people estimate that it will be offered at a price of 80 to 90 M $ the system of 3 drones, that is to say half the price of a Reaper system, and a competitive offer compared to Chinese Wing Loong II.
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[…] that the TB2 multiplied the operational and commercial successes, the company developed a new combat drone, heavier and twin-engine, the Akinci, a device 6 times heavier than the TB2 with an empty weight of 4500 kg, a capacity […]