Turkey's Baykar to build new 'highly autonomous' combat drone

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.