Turkish Armed Forces Receive Two More Aksungur UAVs From TAI
Turkish Aerospace Industries Inc. (TAI) continues to supply Aksungur drones to the Turkish Armed Forces. The company has delivered two additional Aksungur UAVs to the Turkish Armed Forces. The latest deliveries were announced on Twitter by the President of Defense Industries, İsmail Demir. Demir wrote in his post, “The new soldiers of our glorious army that will strengthen their power in the sky country! We delivered 2 more AKSUNGUR UAVs to our Turkish Armed Forces. Best wishes.”
With this delivery, the Turkish Armed Forces currently have ten known Aksungur UAVs in their inventory. Demir, nor TAI, did not specify which branch of the Turkish Armed Forces received the systems. However, it was known that the Turkish Air Force Command had been waiting for two Aksungur deliveries for quite some time, hence it is quite possible that the Turkish Air Force Command is the user of these systems. The first delivery of AKSUNGUR was made to the Turkish Naval Forces Command on October 20, 2021. TAI, which had a production capacity of one AKSUNGUR UAV every three months at the time, has since boosted its production capacity to one per month. The company plans to speed up the manufacture, with a goal of producing 2 AKSUNGUR per month.
According to TAI, AKSUNGUR is a Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) class UAV system capable of performing Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) and strike missions day and night with EO/IR, SAR, and SIGINT payloads. The system, which was unveiled for the first time at the 2019 International Defense Industry Fair (IDEF) in Istanbul, is based on the ANKA platform, which is currently in use by the Turkish Armed Forces and has been exported to six other countries.
Aksungur, which has been actively used by the Turkish Navy, Air Force, and Special Missions (National Intelligence Organization or MİT) since 2021 and has recently been exported to Angola and Kyrgyzstan, has a length of 11.6 meters, a wingspan of 24 meters, a maximum take-off weight of 3300 kilograms, and a cargo capacity of 750 kilograms. Due to two TEI PD-170 turbo diesel engines with three-bladed propellers, the drone has 340 horsepower and a top speed of 100 knots (180 km/h) at sea level. The drone can fly for 12 hours with 750 kg of external payload during an Assault/Naval Patrol Mission, and 24 hours with 150 kg of payload during a Signal Intelligence Mission. As a weapon system, Aksungur, which has 3 weapon stations with a capacity of 500 kg, 300 kg and 150 kg on each wing, can be equipped with the TEBER-81 (Laser Guided Mk-81), TEBER-82 (Laser Guided Mk-82), L-UMTAS, MAM-L (LUMTAS Guided Missile Variant), Cirit MAM-C (Cirit Guided Missile Variant), HKG-3 (Precision Guidance Kit), KGK (82) Wing Guidance Kit and Miniature Bomb ammunition. Kuzgun munitions developed by TÜBİTAK SAGE and Sungur air defense missiles developed by ROKETSAN are also expected to be integrated into Aksungur drones in the future.