The latest Kızılelma unmanned fighter aircraft, which took off for the first time at the end of 2022, has already been tested during a medium-altitude 6km flight. And now the Turkish company Baykar announced the date when this aircraft will be put into serial production, which is the beginning of 2024.
The company's technical director Selçuk Bayraktar announced this in a video showing flight tests of the Kızılelma fighter drone, which is being developed with the requirement to conduct a full-fledged aerial battle as well as strike ground targets with conventional aviation weapons.
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Thus, the company allocated a short period of time for the entire main test cycle: the first machines will begin to be assembled only one year later. Objectively, this is more than a short term that speaks of a high pace of testing, which should affect all aspects of flight characteristics, control systems, communication, on-board systems and weapons.
Moreover, this means that Ukraine must provide an adequate number of the AI-25TLT turbojet engines, which are used in this drone and provide high flight characteristics of the UAV: a maximum speed of 800 km/h, a flight height of up to 12 km and a payload of 1 ton.
If the company invests in the specified terms, then Turkey may overtake other countries. In particular, a similar program for the creation of jet fighter drones in the United States, the Low Cost Attritable Strike Demonstrator (LCASD), whose competitors are Kratos, Boeing and General Atomics, is still at the candidate selection stage.
But the fact is that Turkey has now really invested huge resources in the development of its aviation industry, and 2023 should be extremely rich in events, which other countries will have enough for a decade. In particular, the first flight of another ANKA-3 jet UAV, TF-X and Hürjet aircraft, as well as an ATAK 2 attack helicopter are expected this year.
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