Ministry of Defense of Ukraine has officially announced a contract has been signed with Turkish Baykar. According to the document, a repair and maintenance hub is to be opened in Ukraine. This Center is a joint project between the company and the Ukrainian government, it will open "in the near future."
These are the deadlines outlined by Kostiantyn Vashchenko, State Secretary of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, as he was signing the agreement. Thus the maintenance hub will be created despite the ongoing war, and it will become an important asset for providing quick repair for the Bayraktar TB2 attack drone in service with the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and other UAVs from Baykar later on.
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An important note here: this Center and the construction of a Baykar factory in Ukraine are two parallel processes. In the first case, it is a cooperation with the Ministry of Defense for the needs of the Ukrainian Army, and in the second it's about creating production facilities of the Baykar company.
The talks about the maintenance center for the Armed Forces of Ukraine specifically began back in October 2021. The beginning of construction was expected to kick off in November same year.
The official statements issued at that time said the land would be provided by the Ministry of Defense while Baykar would build the facility at own expense. As of October 2021, there were some bureaucratic procedures to be finished before proceeding to construction, and the deadline for finishing all those was set on November 2021.
However, the plans were put on hold due to the russian full-scale invasion of Ukrainian territories that began in a few months, in February 2022.
Anyway, now we can say for sure that the project has been restarted and apparently there is no more time for any protracted bureaucratic procedures anymore. Because so it happened that the Armed Forces of Ukraine are currently the world's second-biggest operator of Bayraktar TB2 combat drones.
In this situation, every drone in service one way or another has to be maintained and repaired regularly. The same goes for the ground control stations. Transporting them to Turkiye each time would be a significant waste of time, and a local maintenance hub would supposedly speed up these necessary duties.
Worth mentioning, Turkish drone maker Baykar also did not abandon its plans to open a plant for the production of Bayraktar TB2, Akıncı, and Kızılelma UAVs in Ukraine either. The first drones manufactured by this plant are expected to come off assembly lines in 2025 already.
Earlier Defense Express reported that according to the Minister of Strategic Industries of Ukraine Oleksandr Kamyshin, the construction of Baykar plant on the Ukrainian territory has already been commenced.
Read more: What Baykar Plant in Ukraine To Produce Bayraktar TB2, Akıncı and Kızılelma UAVs Will Look Like (Photo)
