Turkish defence firm Baykar aims to begin production of its new unmanned combat aerial vehicle next year which is already attracting international interest, its chairman Selcuk Bayraktar said. Named "Kizilelma", the drone expands the company's product range from slow, ground attack drones to fast and agile autonomous ones that work alongside fighter jets. "It is designed to be a highly autonomous, under human purview of course, air-to-air combat vehicle," said Bayraktar, who led the design of the 15-metre-long (49 feet) jet-powered weapon. "In a sense, the Kizilelma expresses a whole new future for combat aviation." Baykar has come to prominence internationally in recent years because of the company's light drone TB-2, which has been used in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and North Africa and has been a huge export success, catapulting the firm to becoming one of the largest Turkish defence exporters.

In Libya, Bayraktar TB2 drones helped the official government in Tripoli stamp down an uprising by warlord Khalifa Haftar. In Nagorno-Karabakh, they played a decisive role in Azerbaijan's victory over Armenia, after which autocrat Ilham Aliyev celebrated by presenting footage of drone strikes on video screens in the capital city of Baku. The Ukrainians mainly deployed them in the first months of the war, before Russian air defenses adapted their strategy. The fact that the drones are supplied primarily to countries that are close to the Erdoğan government is conspicuous. Baykar is the flagship of Turkey's defense industry, which has grown tenfold since Erdoğan came to power in 2003.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin has told his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Moscow would consider resuming a deal allowing grain exports from Ukrainian seaports but only after securing "real guarantees" from Kyiv. The phone call between the two leaders on Tuesday came following Russia's suspension of its participation in the deal due to what it said was a drone attack on Moscow's fleet in Crimea that it blamed on Ukraine. Kyiv has not claimed responsibility and has denied using the safe shipping corridor for military purposes. Putin told Erdogan that Russia sought "real guarantees from Kyiv about the strict observance of the Istanbul agreement, in particular about not using the humanitarian corridor for military purposes", according to a statement from the Kremlin. The grain export deal between Russia and Ukraine was brokered by Turkey and the United Nations in July to ease a world food crisis caused in part by Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, a major grain producer, and an earlier blockade of its ports.

Turkey says it is determined that Ukraine continues its food exports despite Russia announcing its withdrawal from a UN-brokered grain deal, a move that has heightened concerns for nations desperate for food assistance. Russia pulled out of the deal on Saturday after what it said was a major Ukrainian drone attack on its naval fleet in annexed Crimea. Despite Moscow's decision, cargo ships set sail carrying 354,500 tonnes of grain, the most dispatched in one day since the programme began in August. Turkey, which helped broker the agreement, remained committed to the deal. "Even if Russia behaves hesitantly because it didn't receive the same benefits, we will continue decisively our efforts to serve humanity," President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

The CEO of Turkey's Baykar, which makes the drones being widely used by Ukraine against Russian forces, has ruled out supplying the Bayraktar TB2 to Moscow. In an interview with CNN on Monday, Haluk Bayraktar said Ukraine is "under very heavy aggression and disproportionate attacks". When pressed by CNN presenter Julia Chatterley, who repeatedly asked, "Would you supply Russia?", Bayraktar responded: "We have not delivered or supplied them with anything, [and] we will as well never do such a thing because we support Ukraine, support its sovereignty, its resistance for its independence." Bayraktar said he is proud that Bayraktar TB2 has become one of the symbols of the Ukrainian resistance against Russia. "It's very touching," he said, hailing "years of cooperation" and "strong bonds" with Ukraine.

Despite a growing recognition of the importance of insurgent group structure on conflict outcomes, there is very little empirical research thereon. Though this problem is rooted in the inaccessibility of data on militant group structure, insurgents frequently publish large volumes of image data on the internet. In this paper, I develop a new methodology that leverages this abundant but underutilized source of data by automating the creation of a social network graph based on co-appearance in photographs using deep learning. Using a trove of 19,115 obituary images published online by the PKK, a Kurdish militant group in Turkey, I demonstrate that an individual's centrality in the resulting co-appearance network is closely correlated with their rank in the insurgent group.

Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation weighs in on the progression of the Russia-Ukraine conflict as Biden faces criticism at the G7 Summit on'Fox News Live.' JERUSALEM, Israel – President Biden's appearance at the NATO summit in Madrid on Tuesday presents the most serious test for his administration's effort to repair a fractured military alliance and roll back Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The United States government is widely viewed as the lead partner of the world's most powerful military body -- the 30-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Marshall Billingslea, a former NATO Assistant Secretary General, told Fox News Digital, "This NATO Summit is a crucial test for Biden's leadership. First, and most importantly, he must clear the way for Finnish and Swedish membership by brokering a deal with Turkey. Second, he has to get countries to deliver significant additional heavy weapons to Ukraine, particularly Germany, who has largely paid only lip-service to military aid."

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from. A video posted toward the end of February on the Facebook page of Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine's armed forces, showed grainy aerial footage of a Russian military convoy approaching the city of Kherson. Russia had invaded Ukraine several days earlier, and Kherson, a shipbuilding hub at the mouth of the Dnieper River, was an important strategic site. At the center of the screen, a targeting system locked onto a vehicle in the middle of the convoy; seconds later, the vehicle exploded, and a tower of burning fuel rose into the sky. The Bayraktar TB2 is a flat, gray unmanned aerial vehicle (U.A.V.), with angled wings and a rear propeller.

During Russia's war on Ukraine, video footage has circulated on the internet showing the Turkish combat drone Bayraktar TB2 successfully striking the Russian army. But as so often during heightened conflicts, it is hard to distinguish between factual events and misinformation – some videos of the drone attacks have already been exposed as the latter. Given the chaotic events on the ground, it is almost impossible to assess how often and how successfully Ukraine has utilised its Turkish drones so far, Mauro Gilli, senior researcher in military technology and international security at ETH Zurich, told Al Jazeera. "There have been some video footages allegedly showing the employment of the TB2. Of course, information at this point is fragmented, and it needs to be taken with caution. "We do know that Ukraine bought some TB2 over the past years and that Turkey and Ukraine signed an agreement for the production within Ukrainian borders of the TB2 – but, as far as I know, production had not started yet.

In a video that went viral on Twitter Sunday night, a massive explosion rips through what appears to be a Russian convoy, scoring a direct hit on a surface-to-air missile system. The black-and-white footage, posted to the account of the Ukrainian armed forces, is one of several that have emerged on social media in recent days showing the devastating impact of Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian hardware. As the drone's payload explodes in the video--which appears to be a cellphone recording of a screen in a Ukrainian drone facility--people at the facility can be heard gasping in awe before breaking out in cheers and applause. The video racked up more than 3 million views on Twitter in two days. There will be no peace for you on our earth!" the Ukrainian armed forces wrote in the video's caption. The star of this video and others circulating on Twitter is the Bayraktar TB2 – a type of Turkish drone that the Ukrainian military has increasingly deployed against Russian forces in recent ...