COMBAT AIRCRAFT AND TAXIS
He said he was proud that the drones had been used in Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave of Turkey's ally Azerbaijan where Baku's forces recaptured swathes of territory in 2020, and in Ukraine.
"It is an illegal invasion so TB2 is helping the honourable people of Ukraine defend their country," he said.
"The illegal occupation of Karabakh was like a heart wound since our youth. And as engineers developing the technology, it is an honour to have helped our brothers and sisters here to regain their land."
Russia two weeks ago touted a new generation of laser weapons including a mobile system that Moscow said could blind orbiting satellites and destroy drones.
But Bayraktar, who was born in Istanbul and studied at the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said such weapons were ineffective against the TB2.
"Their ranges are limited so if your sensory and munition range is longer, they are not going to be effective," he said.
Baykar is working on a TB3, which has foldable wings and can take off or land on short-runway aircraft carriers, and an unmanned combat aircraft called MUIS or Kizilelma.
"Inshallah, the first flight of Kızılelma will be next year, and TB3 either by the end of this year or the beginning of next year," Bayraktar said.
"If you look at the longer time horizon, we are working on taxi drones – for that we need to develop more higher-level autonomy technology – which is AI basically – but it will revolutionise how people will be transported in cities."
Russia's invasion has killed thousands of people, displaced millions, and raised fears of a direct confrontation between Russia and the United States.
Putin says Washington was using Ukraine to threaten Russia through NATO enlargement, and that Moscow had to defend Russian-speakers from persecution.
Ukraine and its Western allies reject these as baseless pretexts to invade a sovereign country.
