On the gleaming factory floor, Mr Bayraktar, wearing aviator shades and a dark-blue jacket, points to a screen broadcasting grainy footage of explosions: “Look, this is Azerbaijan.”
TB2 drones were key to Azerbaijan’s defeat of Armenian forces in 2020, putting an end to a flare-up of the long-running conflict over the breakaway enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Ukraine’s army has received about 50 TB2s since the war started, Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukraine’s defence minister, said last month, and “several dozen more” were expected to be delivered in the near future.
Around a quarter of the 200 TB2s that are made annually are expected to go to Ukraine next year.
Mr Bayraktar would not reveal the market price for TB2s, which media reports place between $1 million and $7 million.
He did admit, however, that because Ukraine needs to replace the drones but not the ground control systems they are typically sold with, it would be paying a “different price”.
Bayraktars were a stunning success early on in the war in Ukraine as Russia’s operation lacked coordinated aircover, Rob Lee from King’s College London’s War Studies department, told The Telegraph: “But once Russians got their act together, the role in the fighting on land has become much smaller but the role in the Black Sea has been greater”.
At this point in the war Ukraine needs longer-range artillery like the US-made Himars, Mr Lee said, but Ukranians are crowdfunding for Bayraktars because it is a rare piece of weaponry that can essentially be sold over the counter. In Lithuania, ordinary citizens have clubbed together to buy Kyiv another TB2.
