What Turkey Got Right About Drone Warfare
While the U.S. Air Force spent a decade debating stealth vs. cost in its MQ-9 successor studies, a private Turkish firm built a cheap, modular, battle-proven MALE drone, sold it to 30 nations, validated it in four wars, and iterated to a next-generation follow-on—all before the Pentagon approved a requirements document. The gap is not technological. It is doctrinal and institutional.
BLUF
Turkey's Baykar defense company arrived at the same conceptual destination as the USAF's post-Epic-Fury requirements document—cheap airframe, modular strippable sensors, mass production, attritable operating concept—a decade earlier, funded it lean, validated it in combat, and has already iterated to a second-generation platform. The Bayraktar TB2 and its successor the Akıncı are not technically superior to U.S. systems; they are philosophically superior products of a procurement culture that said "build something useful now and improve it" instead of "define the perfect requirement and buy it once." Kratos's XQ-58A Valkyrie, the closest U.S. analog, currently costs $5.5–6.5 million per unit—not materially cheaper than the TB2—and has never flown a combat mission. The Air Force's challenge is not finding the right design; Turkey already drew the blueprint. The challenge is breaking the institutional habits that guaranteed the Air Force was still writing requirements while the Turks were writing battle damage assessments.
In the spring of 2014, a Turkish engineer named Selçuk Bayraktar flew the first prototype of what would become the world's most consequential medium-altitude drone of the next decade. The aircraft was powered by a 100-horsepower Rotax engine of the type used in ultralight sport planes. Its sensor was a chin-mounted electro-optical turret that could be unbolted and swapped on a flight line. Its weapons were small laser-guided munitions carried on four underwing hardpoints. The entire system—airframe, ground station, and initial sensor suite—cost approximately $5 million per aircraft. Twelve years later, the U.S. Air Force formally approved a requirements document describing, in almost identical operational terms, what it wants as a replacement for a drone that costs up to $50 million a copy. The gap between those two dates is the subject of this analysis.
This is a companion to our primary reporting on the MQ-9A replacement program. That article documents what the Air Force is buying. This one addresses the more uncomfortable question: why it took so long to decide to buy it, why the leading U.S. attritable contender may still not be cheap enough, and what the Turks understood that the Pentagon's acquisition system structurally prevented it from understanding on its own.
I. How Baykar Built the Doctrine
The TB2's origin story is inseparable from a hard institutional reality: in the early 2010s, Turkey had been denied U.S. Predator and Reaper exports and Israeli Heron systems due to political friction and technology-transfer concerns. Denied access to Western exquisite systems, Baykar's founder and his son-in-law Selçuk Bayraktar made a deliberate philosophical choice: build something that could be produced domestically, fielded immediately, and improved incrementally through combat feedback rather than laboratory prediction.
The TB2 entered Turkish service in 2014 and was in combat over Kurdish PKK positions in southeastern Turkey by 2016. Not a test range. Not an exercise. Combat. That decision—to field early, accept imperfection, and fix problems discovered by operators in the field—is the single most important doctrinal choice Baykar made. By the time the TB2 went to Libya in 2019, it had already accumulated two years of real-world operational attrition data that no U.S. contractor could match from a test range.
The TB2's combat record across four theaters—Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Ukraine, and multiple African and Middle Eastern counterinsurgency operations—generated a body of live-fire operational data that is worth examining precisely because it includes both stunning successes and clear, humbling failures. A procurement culture that learns from both is more dangerous than one that only publicizes the wins.
II. The Four Combat Lessons — and What Each One Taught
Combat Lesson 1 — Libya, 2019–2020
Cheap Platforms Can Suppress Expensive Air Defenses
Turkey deployed TB2s on behalf of the UN-recognized Government of National Accord against Khalifa Haftar's forces, which were equipped with Russian-supplied Pantsir-S1 air defense systems. The TB2 earned the nickname "Pantsir-hunter" in Libya by systematically killing Pantsir batteries—systems that cost $14–20 million each—with $5 million platforms carrying $20,000–40,000 guided munitions. The arithmetic is strategically significant: a nation or non-state actor can exhaust an adversary's expensive air defense inventory by accepting the loss of cheap drones as a cost of doing business. This is exactly the economic logic Niemi described in his Senate testimony about taking sensor packages off before high-threat missions. The Turks didn't need a Pentagon requirements document to understand it—they figured it out from the first-quarter earnings call on the battlefield.
Combat Lesson 2 — Nagorno-Karabakh, 2020
MALE Drones Are Decisive Against Unready Conventional Forces
Azerbaijan's TB2 operations against Armenian armor, artillery, and supply lines in the 44-day war produced some of the most analyzed drone footage in military history. Against a Soviet-equipped conventional force without modern integrated air defense, the TB2 was essentially uncounterable at its operating altitude. The lesson the Turkish military drew was not "we have a superweapon" but something more nuanced: persistent MALE ISR/strike is decisive against adversaries who lack the electronic warfare, MANPADS density, and low-altitude radar integration to contest 18,000-foot altitude. That is a bounded claim—and it set up the next lesson.
Combat Lesson 3 — Ukraine, 2022–2023
High-Threat Environments Have a Clear Ceiling — and That's Acceptable
The TB2's Ukrainian story is the most instructive precisely because it includes a dramatic reversal. In early 2022, the drone produced viral strike footage and genuine strategic effect—it was credited with roles in the destruction of Russian supply convoys near Kyiv and the sinking of the patrol boat Vasily Bykov. Then Russia adapted. By mid-2022, improved electronic warfare and denser air defense integration had largely driven TB2s off the high-threat front lines. By early 2023, Ukraine had withdrawn them from strike roles almost entirely, redeploying them for artillery spotting and reconnaissance in lower-threat corridors. The TB2's acknowledged losses by that point exceeded 26 confirmed airframes. The conclusion that too many Western analysts drew—"therefore the TB2 failed"—misses the point entirely. Ukraine spent 26 TB2s at roughly $130 million total to generate strategic effects during a critical window. The United States spent 24 MQ-9As at up to $1.2 billion to achieve comparable persistent ISR/strike effects over Iran—and is now writing a requirements document because it cannot afford to operate that way anymore. The TB2 taught Turkey's doctrine something the USAF learned only from Epic Fury: the drone you're willing to lose is more useful in a contested environment than the drone you can't afford to lose.
Combat Lesson 4 — Institutional Feedback Loop
Rapid Iteration Outperforms Perfect Specification
The most important lesson Turkey drew from all four theaters was not about any specific vulnerability or tactic—it was about how to run a defense acquisition program. Analysts at TRT World noted "rapid feedback loops between frontline units and industry, strong doctrine-industry synchronisation, and the ability to translate operational needs into deployable systems quickly." When the TB2's limits in Ukraine became apparent in 2022, Baykar's response was not a new requirements study or a Program Office restructure. The Akıncı—a twin-turboprop MALE with 1,350 kg payload, SATCOM, AESA radar, SAR/GMTI, and electronic warfare—had already entered Turkish service in August 2021, before the Ukraine war exposed the TB2's ceiling. Not because Baykar predicted the future, but because they were already iterating to the next platform while the current one was in combat. That is the acquisition posture the U.S. Air Force is implicitly trying to recreate with its "modern manufacturing technology" language—but within an institutional structure that makes it extremely difficult.
III. The Baykar Design Philosophy vs. U.S. Acquisition Culture
The contrast between how Baykar built the TB2 and how the U.S. Air Force has approached its MALE successor is not primarily a technology gap. It is a clash of institutional philosophies that produce fundamentally different outcomes from roughly equivalent engineering starting points.
Baykar's approach can be summarized in four principles that stand in direct contrast to standard U.S. major defense acquisition program (MDAP) practice:
Principle 1 — Minimum Viable Platform, Maximum Useful Payload Interface. The TB2 airframe is, by American standards, remarkably unambitious: a Rotax-powered composite structure with a simple tricycle undercarriage and a straightforward chin-mount interface for the sensor turret. The airframe's job is to stay airborne for 27 hours and carry 150 kg to the target area. Everything else is a bolt-on. In U.S. acquisition, the airframe and its sensor suite are typically specified simultaneously, designed together, and tested as an integrated system—which means sensor integration problems become airframe problems, airframe changes require sensor re-qualification, and the cost of the whole grows to reflect the worst-case specification of each component. Baykar decoupled them from day one.
Principle 2 — Field First, Qualify Later. The TB2 entered operational service before its ground control station software was mature, before all its sensor integration was complete, and certainly before any Western-equivalent certification process would have cleared it for operational use. Turkish operators discovered real problems, reported them to Baykar engineers, and fixes were incorporated in the next production batch. This is how consumer electronics companies operate. It is how Elon Musk's SpaceX operates. It is not how U.S. defense acquisition operates, and there are legitimate safety and reliability reasons why—but the cost of those reasons, in time and money, is enormous.
Principle 3 — Accept Attrition as a Financial Model, Not a Failure Mode. Baykar designed the TB2 with the explicit understanding that some would be lost in combat. The question was not "how do we make this survivable?" but "how do we make the loss of one acceptable?" That framing produced an aircraft cheap enough that losing it to a Pantsir battery was economically rational. The U.S. defense acquisition culture historically treats combat loss of an uncrewed aircraft almost as a failure of the program—witness the institutional reluctance to divest MQ-9As even after their combat utility in contested environments was demonstrably degrading. Maj. Gen. Niemi's testimony—strip the sensors before high-threat missions to "drive that cost to a much lower price point"—is the first clear public statement from senior Air Force leadership that this cultural assumption is changing.
Principle 4 — Export Volume Funds Iteration. Baykar's export success to 30+ nations is not merely a commercial achievement; it is the financial engine of the R&D program. By 2024, Baykar's drone exports reached $1.8 billion—approximately 90 percent of its total revenues. That revenue funded the Akıncı, which in turn is funding the Kızılelma (a stealth combat drone that achieved first flight in 2022 and is entering service in 2026). Each generation of platform is funded by the commercial success of the previous one. The U.S. defense industrial model—sole-source or duopoly contracts, classified programs, ITAR restrictions on export—structurally prevents this flywheel from operating.
IV. Why Kratos May Not Be Cheap Enough
The XQ-58A Valkyrie is the closest the United States has to a TB2-philosophy aircraft: purpose-built for attritability, designed by a firm that explicitly rejected the cost trajectory of traditional defense programs. Kratos CEO Eric DeMarco has spoken for years about breaking "the escalating cost trajectory of tactically relevant aircraft." The Low-Cost Attritable Strike Demonstrator program's original target was under $2 million per unit—a price point comparable to an expensive guided missile rather than a conventional aircraft.
The reality in 2026 is more sobering. The XQ-58A's current production cost is approximately $5.5 million per unit, including required test, launch, and support equipment. The improved XQ-58B is estimated at $4 million. Kratos's aspirational target of $2 million at scale has not been achieved, and there is no production order large enough to drive the learning-curve economics that would get there. Compare: the Bayraktar TB2, a combat-proven platform with 400,000+ global flight hours, costs approximately $5 million per unit—essentially the same price as the Valkyrie, but with two decades of operational validation the XQ-58A lacks.
| Platform | Current Unit Cost | Combat Hours | Payload (Strippable?) | Production Rate | SATCOM / OTH |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MQ-9A Reaper | $30–50M (with sensors) | Millions | Integrated — Not strippable | Line closed 2025 | Yes (Ku-band) |
| Bayraktar TB2 | ~$5M | 400,000+ globally | Removable turret — Strippable | 200/yr; targeting 500/yr | Optional (export configs) |
| Bayraktar Akıncı | ~$6–10M est. | Hundreds (combat) | Modular bay + optional pods — Strippable | Growing; 10+ nations on contract | Yes (dual SATCOM standard) |
| Kratos XQ-58A | $5.5–6.5M current; $4M (B-variant) | Zero combat | Internal bay + wing stations — Strippable by design | ~24 units total; low-rate | No (tactical range only) |
| Anduril YFQ-44A (Fury) | Classified; CCA-tier, est. $10–25M | Zero combat | Open architecture — Strippable | Arsenal of Democracy scaling | TBD |
| GA-ASI MQ-9B | $15–30M+ est. | Limited (export) | Lynx integrated — Not strippable | Active production; 10 nations | Yes (6,000 NM range) |
| AF "American Akıncı" (TBD) | Target: $5–15M | Zero | MOSA/SOSA modular bays — By requirement | Not yet designed | Yes (1,500 km requirement) |
The Valkyrie's deeper problem as an MQ-9A replacement candidate is not its price — it is its mission profile. The XQ-58A was designed as a high-subsonic (Mach 0.72) loyal wingman escort for crewed fighters, operating at up to 45,000 feet at jet-speed cruise. That performance profile—optimized for penetrating denied airspace alongside an F-35—is architecturally different from the MALE ISR/strike mission that requires 20 hours of loiter at moderate altitude over a target area. A platform optimized for 600+ knot transit to a target ingress point burns fuel at rates fundamentally incompatible with 20-hour ISR orbits. The XQ-58 can do the strike; it cannot do the watch.
What the Air Force actually needs from a Kratos-philosophy firm is not the XQ-58A itself but a new design applying the same cost discipline to a turboprop MALE airframe optimized for loiter rather than dash. That aircraft does not exist yet in the U.S. inventory. It exists in Çorlu, Turkey, and it is called the Akıncı.
V. The Architecture the Turks Got Right: Sensor Separation
The single most important design decision in the TB2 and Akıncı programs was one that receives almost no attention in Western analysis: the physical and electronic separation of the sensor package from the airframe.
In the TB2, the primary ISR sensor is a chin-mounted stabilized EO/IR turret—an Aselsan CATS or similar system—that attaches to a standardized mount with a handful of bolts and a connector for power and data. A ground crew can physically remove it before a high-threat mission in under an hour. The MAM-L and MAM-C munitions ride on wing pylons that are equally simple to load or remove. There is no Lynx SAR radar permanently faired into the airframe belly. If you need SAR for an all-weather mission, you configure for it; if you're going somewhere that will likely shoot the aircraft down, you take the expensive turret home and send in the cheap airframe with a basic navigation and EO-only package. The aircraft you lose costs $5 million. The sensor you saved costs $3 million. Net loss: $2 million. Tactically and financially acceptable.
The Akıncı takes this further with an internal payload bay that accepts interchangeable sensor, weapons, or EW modules—AESA radar, SAR/GMTI, electronic warfare packages, or expanded fuel—without airframe modification. The bay interface is standardized across payload types. This is what MOSA/SOSA compliance looks like when it is baked into the design from the start rather than retrofitted onto a proprietary architecture.
The Air Force's requirements document language—"open architecture," "modular," "take off those packages"—is describing the TB2/Akıncı philosophy in American acquisition vocabulary. The difference is that the Turks built it in 2014 and the Americans are still writing the requirement in 2026.
VI. What an "American Akıncı" Actually Requires
The good news in the Air Force's post-Epic-Fury pivot is that the requirement is finally correctly stated. The bad news is that the institutional obstacles between a correct requirement and a fielded capability are substantial, and none of them are technological.
An "American Akıncı"—a MALE drone competitive with the Akıncı in cost, modularity, and production rate—requires the following, none of which are guaranteed by a requirements document alone:
A production-first acquisition strategy. The Akıncı cost less, in part, because Baykar priced it for volume production from the first unit. U.S. defense programs typically fund low-rate initial production at high per-unit cost and defer volume savings to full-rate production that may never come. The MQ-9A replacement program must be structured from the start for the production quantities that make the cost target achievable.
Certification reform or a dedicated attritable airworthiness pathway. The DO-178C software and DO-254 hardware certification timelines that govern U.S. military aircraft airworthiness can add years to the fielding of a platform that Turkey would certify in months under its own national military airworthiness regime. The Air Force's open architecture mandate is meaningless if swapping a sensor pod triggers a two-year re-qualification. A purpose-built attritable airworthiness pathway—accepting higher risk tolerance in exchange for dramatically faster fielding cycles—is a prerequisite, not an afterthought.
A non-proprietary ground control architecture. The TB2's ground control station is Baykar's own design, but it was architected from the start to control multiple aircraft simultaneously from a single crew position—a capability that was a selling point from day one, not a capability backfit years into production. U.S. MALE UAS operations have historically been built around one crew per aircraft, with proprietary GCS architectures that lock operators to specific platforms. The successor program must break that model.
Willingness to accept the Ukraine lesson, not dismiss it. When the TB2 was driven off Ukrainian front lines in 2022, some Western analysts declared it obsolete. Ukrainian operators drew the opposite conclusion: they kept the aircraft, accepted its ceiling, and redeployed it to the threat environment it could survive. That is the correct lesson. The "American Akıncı" will also be shot down in high-threat environments—that is the point. The question is whether U.S. military culture and congressional oversight can accept that loss rate as a deliberate feature rather than a program failure that triggers an investigation.
Turkey has a doctrine for affordable mass. The United States Air Force now has a requirements document that describes it. The distance between those two things is the question that the next phase of this program must answer.
— END OF COMPANION ANALYSIS —
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