Turkish defense company Baykar, best known for its Bayraktar drone lineup, announced that their Kizilelma unmanned fighters achieved another historic flight rototypes PT3 and PT5 flew in formation with an autonomous combat pilot supported by intelligent algorithms, according to the company's press release.
This marked the first time in world aviation history that two unmanned fighters performed an autonomous flight in close formation, Baykar emphasizes. This is the second world first for these unmanned aircraft recently we previously reported that Kizilelma defeated an F-16 during testing, which occurred just over a month ago in November.
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Meanwhile, during the latest tests, the unmanned aircraft conducted coordinated formation flight after sequential takeoff, effectively confirming Kizilelma's ability to perform complex airborne missions previously entrusted to piloted fighters, Baykar emphasizes.
Bayraktar Kizilelma prototypes conducted patrol flight along a predetermined route using autonomous fleet management software. Testing confirmed that domestically-produced unmanned fighters can perform air defense missions and interception missions, the company's press release states.
These are quite important conclusions, as it turns out that although Kizilelma officially isn't supposedly what’s today called loyal wingman drones or CCA, Türkiye is demonstrating quite advanced results in unmanned fighter development.
And essentially a rather strong hint that Türkiye has come very close to having an unmanned alternative to fighters for performing air defense missions.
In September this year, it was already reported that the Kizilelma unmanned fighter with Ukrainian engine moved to weapons testing then it concerned Tolun mini-bombs on SADAK-4T external pylons.
Ultimately, Kizilelma will have an arsenal of Turkish-made air-to-air missiles such as Gökdoğan BVR AAM, Bozdoğan AAM, Akdoğan AAM, and Gökhan AAM. Also Cirit missiles, which are APKWS analogs and turn Kizilelma into a decent tool for combating strike drones like Shaheds
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