12 Şubat tarihli, sayfa 29.
Dronlar ve savaş sanayi ile ilgili çarpıcı tespitler var. Helikopter satışında da ABD'nin satış izni vermediğini açıkça belirtmiş. Övgü dolu tespitler de var. Hayal kırıklıkları da.
Geliştik, gelişeceğiz ve daha da güçlü olacağız.
Son kısmında, Ukrayna savaşında Ruslara karşı TB2'lerin pek dayanamayacağını ve çok zorlu bir test olacağını belirtmiş. Akıncılarda kullanılan motor Ukrayna'ya aitmiş ve havadaki hedeflere de kullanılabileceği belirtilmiş.
Haftalık gelişmeleri anlatan bir dergide ülkemiz savunma sanayi ile ilgili oldukça kısa ama çarpıcı bir makale. Eskiden Ruslara ait gazeteler Türk savunma sanayi ile ilgili dalga geçer gibi haber yaparlardı. Şimdi batı medyası -ama oldukça ciddi- tespitlerle göze çarpıyor.
Turkey’s arms exports
Drones of
their own
I
t has left a trail of smouldering Russianmade tanks, trucks and artillery in
wars in NagornoKarabakh, Syria and Libya. Soon Turkey’s tb2 drone may have a
chance to do so again in Ukraine, which
has bought dozens of them over the past
couple of years and is now bracing for a
Russian invasion (see International section). On February 3rd Ukraine’s president,
Volodymyr Zelensky, and Turkey’s, Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, inked a deal to build more
of them together. Some of the drones have
already seen action. A tb2 destroyed a
howitzer used by proRussian separatists
in Ukraine’s Donbas region in October.
American officials say Russia may have
been planning to fake a tb2 strike against
civilians as a pretext for war.
Mr Erdogan sees Turkey’s drones as the
harbinger of a military revolution. He
wants to eliminate Turkey’s reliance on
foreign suppliers and turn the country into
a big arms exporter. Some of his plans are
fanciful, but he has already made considerable headway. Next year Turkey expects to
deliver two corvettes to Ukraine, of a model used by its own navy.
Turkey’s arms industry is bigger and
more selfsufficient than ever. Turnover
rose from $1bn in 2002 to $11bn in 2020. Its
army, the secondbiggest in nato, once relied on foreign suppliers for 70% of its
needs. That is now down to 30%. Last year
Turkish arms and aerospace exports
reached $3.2bn, a new record.
Plans to develop a homegrown defence
industry first picked up steam after 1974,
when America responded to Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus with an arms embargo. But
they have kicked into overdrive under Mr
Erdogan. Foreign pressure is again a big
motivator. After Mr Erdogan purchased a
missiledefence system from Russia in
2017, America banished Turkey from its
f-35 stealthfighter programme and imposed sanctions on the country’s procurement agency. Other nato allies banned
some weapons sales after Turkey attacked
Americanbacked Kurdish rebels in Syria
and supported Azerbaijan in its recent war
with Armenia. Mr Erdogan now seems determined to go it alone. “We will continue,”
he said last year, “until we completely free
our country from foreign dependence.”
Turkey’s drone programme has been
the industry’s calling card. (It has also become a family affair. The head of the programme, Selcuk Bayraktar, married one of
Mr Erdogan’s daughters in 2016.) At only a
few million dollars a pop, the tb2s have
been flying off the assembly line. Last year
Poland became the first nato member to
buy them. Turkey has sold them to at least
12 other countries, including Qatar, Morocco and Ethiopia, which has used them
against rebels from Tigray, its northernmost region. Evidence suggests the tb2
was responsible for an air strike that killed
at least 58 civilians in Tigray in January. In
Turkey’s own forever war against the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (pkk)
in northern Iraq and Syria, the tb2 has become a routine tool. Mr Erdogan believes
total victory is within reach, and rules out
new peace talks.
But Turkey’s ambitions go well beyond
drones. The country plans to roll out its
first light aircraft carrier, the 25,000tonne
tcg Anadolu, later this year. The warship
was designed with the f35 in mind but is
being refitted to carry the Akinci drone, the
tb2’s more advanced cousin. The new
drone, equipped with a Ukrainian engine,
can strike targets in the air and on the
ground. Deliveries of Turkey’s first indigenous battle tank, the Altay, are scheduled
to begin in 2023, though the project has
been plagued by delays. Qatar, which owns
49.9% of the company that produces the
tanks, has promised to purchase 100 of
them. Turkey also plans to build its own
submarines, unmanned attack helicopters
and fighter jets.
The industry has a bright future, but Mr
Erdogan’s dream of selfsufficiency is unrealistic. Designing and building components like aircraft and naval engines, advanced sensors and microchips is prohibitively expensive, says Arda Mevlutoglu, a
defence analyst. Foreign sanctions, which
have inspired the industry’s growth, are also holding it back, disrupting procurement
and exports. The most notable example is
Turkey’s planned sale of 30 attack helicopters to Pakistan. The deal, worth $1.5bn, is
nearing collapse because America has refused to grant Turkey an export licence for
the chopper’s Americanmade engine.
The biggest hole is the one left behind
by the 100 f35s Turkey ordered, but will
not receive. Aboard the tcg Anadolu or
elsewhere, Turkey’s drones are no substitute for the advanced American fighter
jets. Unfortunately forUkraine,they are also no match for Russia’s army. The tb2s
could land a few blows in the war’s early
stages, says Michael Kofman of cna, an
American thinktank, but would easily be
knocked out of the sky or destroyed on the
ground by Russian air defences and warplanes. Conflicts with Russian proxies allowed Turkey to show off its new weapons.
A Russian war with Ukraine would be a
vastly toughertest.