Turkey’s deliveries of Bayraktar TB2 armed drones to the Ukrainian army, which uses them with formidable efficiency against Russian armored columns and boasts of their prowess on social networks, have been a bone of contention between Moscow and Ankara for several weeks.
Capable of flying for twenty-four hours at more than 18,000 feet within an estimated range of 150 kilometers, equipped with several missiles, these attack machines had already proven themselves in Syria, Libya and during the war. between Armenia and Azerbaijan for control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, in the fall of 2020.
Ukraine had acquired about twenty before the war and ten more were delivered to it after the Russian invasion, which ended up irritating President Putin. “The Russians used to complain and they are complaining now”a senior Ankara official told Reuters on April 8.
The recent sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, has probably further fueled Moscow’s grievances. TB2 drones are believed to have played a role in the disappearance of the cruiser, which sank off Odessa on April 14 after it was reportedly hit by two Ukrainian missiles.
According to Turkish and Ukrainian media, shortly before the strike, two TB2s flew over the ship, for intelligence purposes, jamming, or to serve as a decoy. It is partly thanks to the action of these devices that the Ukrainian military was able to successfully fire two missiles at the ship, which was nevertheless equipped with a powerful radar and an anti-missile system. Moscow claims that its cruiser sank following an accidental fire, but without convincing.
“Vulnerability of Russian systems”
“The war in Ukraine revealed the vulnerability of Russian air defenses to Turkish-made drones, especially TB2s”, underlines Can Kasapoglu, an informed military expert, on the site of the think tank Hudson Institute on April 15. Countless Russian SAM anti-aircraft systems have been destroyed in Ukraine by TB2s. Other systems, such as the Tor-M2 and the Pantsir, which Russia nevertheless claims to have modernized in order to intercept drones, did not resist either.
“The vulnerability of Russian systems has been documented repeatedly and in various situations – in Syria, Nagorno-Karabakh, Libya and now Ukraine. If the Russian military can’t deal with drones on its most geopolitically important battlefield, it means its air defense systems are not up to snuff.”believes Mr. Kasapoglu.
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