Baykar General Manager Haluk Bayraktar made important statements at the Defense Industry Forum held as part of the NATO Summit of Heads of State and Government. Participating in the panel titled "From Innovation to Mass Production: Building NATO's UAV Superiority," Bayraktar emphasized the need to increase cooperation and production capacity in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Growing UAV demand and production challenges
Bayraktar noted that demand for UAVs in combat environments is rapidly increasing, and that meeting this need requires shorter development cycles, shorter production times, and high-scale capacities. "In our approach in Turkey, for large-scale companies like ours, we don't even wait for demand to emerge to build capacity. As we see from the field, there is a great need for these technologies," he said.
For new ventures and start-ups, he stressed that billions of dollars in demand is critical for them to build their own capacities.
Goal of cooperation with NATO countries
Noting that Baykar now works with 40 countries, some of which are NATO members, Bayraktar said, "Most of our customers are from outside NATO, but we want to build more relationships with NATO countries." He added that they have built significant production capabilities in Turkey, are the largest exporter of UAVs, and are investing across a wide spectrum from unmanned combat aircraft to strategic-class platforms.
Joint venture and cooperation model with Leonardo
Referring to the Leonardo Baykar Aerospace Systems (LBA Systems) joint venture established with Italian defense company Leonardo, Bayraktar said, "Trying to reinvent everything and compete is much slower than cooperating. We have our platforms and systems. Leonardo has very strong payloads, radars, and electronic systems. We need to bring the best together to create synergy."
Explaining that the partnership model aims to develop new technologies together rather than transferring existing intellectual property, Bayraktar said, "Technology sharing can certainly happen, but the issue is not sharing intellectual property. Under joint ventures, it's about creating new intellectual property on top of the parties' existing intellectual property and building on existing capabilities."
The rise of the Turkish defense industry
Bayraktar highlighted the growth of the Turkish defense industry ecosystem over the last 20 years. "Twenty years ago, there were only 17 companies in Turkey's defense industry. Today, there are more than 3,000. Back then, defense exports were $250 million; now we achieve that in a week. Our weekly defense exports have reached $450 million, and the total is over $10 billion," he said.
Different strategies by UAV type
Reminding that NATO includes both large and small countries, Bayraktar said it is more efficient to share capabilities rather than trying to build the same capacity from scratch everywhere. Classifying UAVs, he noted that small FPV-type drones are almost like munitions and every country needs to build capacity in this area. In contrast, for combat aircraft-class UAVs, alliances are needed, and he added, "I believe this is much more beneficial."
