Baykar company

Baykar is a private Turkish defence company specialising in UAVs, C4I and artificial intelligence.

Baykar overview

The company was founded in 1984 as Baykar Makina, a CNC precision machining supplier subcontractor by Özdemir Bayraktar, with the primary goals being production of automotive parts such as engines, pumps and spare parts to ensure the localization of the automotive industry. Established in this direction, Baykar is an engineering company founded with 100% domestic capital.

It took steps towards producing unmanned aerial vehicles in the 2000s in line with the developments and progress in the aviation sector. Bayraktar Mini UAV was the first unmanned aerial system produced entirely with domestic capital, included in the Turkish Armed Forces inventory in 2007. Having launched R&D activities for this purpose, Baykar has realized pioneering productions in its field and by producing subsystems, it has achieved to provide technical support to Turkish national defence industry, as the latter has grown and started exporting weapons including Baykar drones.

Baykar’s portfolio of advanced UAVs includes Bayraktar Tactical UAS (Bayraktar TB1), Bayraktar TB2 UCAV, Bayraktar Akıncı UCAV. It is also developing a flying car (quadricopter) which it started testing in 2020. The car, called Cezeri and weighing 230 kilograms, rose 10 metres above the ground in the tests carried out in Istanbul in September 2020.

Baykar’s drones have been used in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War by the Azerbaijani army which resulted in a series of boycotts from international companies whom Baykar used to buy products from. Domestic drone manufacturing before that war relied on imported and regulated components and technologies such as the engines from Austria (manufactured by Rotax), fuel systems (manufactured by Andair) and missile rack (manufactured by EDO MBM) from the UK, optoelectronics (FLIR sensors imported from Wescam in Canada or Hensoldt in Germany).

Engines exports were halted when Canadian Bombardier, owner of Rotax, became aware of the military use of their recreational aircraft engines. In October 2020 Canadian Wescam (optics and sensors) exports were restricted by the Canadian Foreign Ministry. After learning that their products were used to create combat drones, Hampshire-based UK aircraft manufacturer Andair announced the discontinuation of all sales to Baykar Makina on 11 January 2021. The British manufacturer became the latest company to stop selling equipment to Turkey after its components were found in drones shot down during the war.

Turkish industry responded to foreign sales boycotts by announcing provision of domestically manufactured alternatives to Baykar – TEI-PD170 motor (Turkish Aerospace Industries),optical camera (Aselsan CATS system),[16] and fuel valve (Aselsan). Turkish defense industry researcher Kadir Doğan tweeted that cancellation of sales of components to Baykar by foreign companies did not pose a major problem, and that as of January 2021 all those components have been replaced by locally manufactured alternatives.

In 2021 the Ukrainian military for the first time in the war in Donbas used a Bayraktar strike drone, Bayraktar TB2.

In June 2022 the “People’s Bayraktar” fundraising project was launched in Ukraine, which managed to fundraise in three over ₴600 million to purchase three Bayraktar TB2.

In 2023 it was developing the Bayraktar TB3 due to a lack of fixed-wing aircraft to deploy on the drone-carrying amphibious assault ship TCG Anadolu