Turkey’s Baykar to Establish Joint Bayraktar UAV Training & Maintenance Centers in Ukraine

Turkey’s Baykar Savunma will set up joint training and maintenance centers for Turkish-made armed Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in Ukraine.

A memorandum was signed between the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and Baykar Savunma on Wednesday.

"We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. This is an important event for us," President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said after signing the Memorandum.

The memorandum was a step toward joint Ukrainian-Turkish production of the drones, a statement posted on Zelenskyy’s website said.

As per the release, the agreement calls for “the construction and technical provision of a joint training and testing center for maintenance, repair, modernization of UAVs and training of personnel related to the use of Bayraktar UAVs.”

The Ukrainian Army already has several Bayraktar UAVs in its inventory. The Army deployed these drones armed with MAM-C, a high explosive variant of Roketsan’s smart micro munitions (MAM) family, during the multinational Sea Breeze 2021 exercises held in the Black Sea in July 2021.

Ukraine reportedly wants to buy a lot more Bayraktar TB2 drones.

Following the increasing tensions between Russia and Ukraine, a Bayraktar TB2 conducted a reconnaissance flight on 9 April 2021, over the Donbas region. This was the first operationalization of the aircraft by the Ukrainian Forces within an active conflict zone.