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More on Ukraine

  * Accountability for Russian War Crimes
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Annals of War
May 16, 2022 Issue

The Turkish Drone That Changed the Nature of Warfare

The Bayraktar TB2 has brought precision air-strike capabilities
to Ukraine and other countries. It's also a diplomatic tool,
enabling Turkey's rise.

By Stephen Witt

May 9, 2022

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Ukrainian plane flying over terrain
In Ukraine, Selcuk Bayraktar, the drone's inventor, has become a folk
hero.Illustration by Todd St. John

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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. "Behold the work of our life-giving Bayraktar!"
Zaluzhnyi's translated caption read. "Welcome to Hell!"

The Bayraktar TB2 is a flat, gray unmanned aerial vehicle (U.A.V.),
with angled wings and a rear propeller. It carries laser-guided bombs
and is small enough to be carried in a flatbed truck, and costs a
fraction of similar American and Israeli drones. Its designer, Selcuk
Bayraktar, the son of a Turkish auto-parts entrepreneur, is one of
the world's leading weapons manufacturers. In the defense of Ukraine,
Bayraktar has become a legend, the namesake of a baby lemur at the
Kyiv zoo, and the subject of a catchy folk song, which claims that
his drone "makes ghosts out of Russian bandits."

Published in the print edition of the May 16, 2022, issue, with the
headline "Weapon of Influence."

More on Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

  * How Ukrainians saved their capital.

  * An artist captures the fight for airspace over Kyiv.

  * The conflict is a colonial war.

  * Is the Russian military a paper tiger?

  * The case for placing an immediate energy embargo on Russia.

  * Why do so many Russians say they support the war?

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Stephen Witt published "How Music Got Free" in 2015.
More:TurkeyDronesUkraineWarWeaponsRecep Tayyip ErdoganTechnology

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