Construction of the Baykar plant in Ukraine is almost complete: completion is expected in summer 2025
The Turkish company Baykar, a manufacturer of unmanned aerial vehicles, plans to complete the construction of a factory in Ukraine by the summer of next year, although the exact date of the start of production has not yet been determined. This was reported by the company’s general director Haluk Bayraktar comments for Reuters.
“We have completed construction by 80%, we are currently ordering equipment. The start of production depends on the course of the war, but the facility will be ready in August 2025“, Bayraktar noted.
The factory is expected to produce the TB2 drones or the more powerful TB3 model.
Baykar, which has become one of the world’s leading exporters of drones, is focusing on domestic production of key components to ensure supply stability. The main unsolved task remains the development of its own engine, and the company has already begun work on the creation of a turboprop engine for Akinci drones, which is planned to invest $ 300 million over the next five years.
At the moment, the Akinci and Kizilemma drones use Ukrainian engines, but Baykar recently entered into an agreement with the Ukrainian company “Ivchenko-Progres” to jointly develop a turbofan engine.
Baykar focuses on the development of autonomous combat drones for air-to-air missions capable of replacing manned fighter jets.
“There are 13,000 manned fighter jets in the world, and we are confident that within the next four decades, all of them will be autonomous. They will be smaller, used in riskier missions and easier to manufacture. Their number will be an order of magnitude greater than the number of fighters we have today“, Bayraktar added.
