The Sudanese Air Force has released footage of the interception of an Akinci heavy strike drone manufactured by Turkish company Baykar, which is reported to belong to the Ethiopian Air Force. The incident would be unremarkable were it not for the fact that the Sudanese Air Force used another Akinci to carry out the intercept.
The Sudanese Akinci reportedly used the new Eren jet-powered loitering munition by Roketsan to make the kill, a weapon first unveiled only in 2025 and first tested against aerial targets in February of this year.
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This naturally raises the question of how two Akinci drones ended up fighting each other over Sudan. The situation is somewhat tangled. Since 2023, Sudan has been engulfed in a civil war between the country's military establishment the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Turkiye sells its weapons exclusively to the government-aligned SAF. However, other countries are also involved in the conflict: on the SAF side, these include Egypt, iran, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, russia from the summer of 2024 onward, and Ukraine's Defense Intelligence directorate prior to the summer of 2024.
Despite supplying its own weapons to the SAF, Turkiye also supplies them to Ethiopia — which operates Akinci drones of its own. Ethiopian territory has previously been used as a base for various operations in support of the RSF.
In summary, Turkiye while not entirely directly — is supplying its own weapons to both sides of the Sudanese conflict simultaneously. This is precisely what produced the spectacle of one Akinci intercepting another. Such is the nature of African conflicts, however, where a large number of outside actors are typically involved.
As a reminder, Akinci drones are seeing active use in Sudan. The Sudanese Air Force recently used one to destroy a stray Chinese FK-2000 air defense system belonging to the RSF that had mysteriously appeared in the country.
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