Just as Turkey’s TB-2 drone was killing everyone on overseas battlefields, on March 12, Seljuk Bayraktar, founder and chief technology officer of Bayraktar, the manufacturer of the drone, announced on his social media: After three and a half years of research and development, a fish with a larger size and more agile performance has entered the production line. He used fish to describe the drone because the company's previous large drone was named "Akıncı" which means flying fish.
The new generation of drones is called the National Unmanned Aircraft System (MIUS) and has been named "Kızılelma", which means "red apple", but in Turkish , it can be extended to mean outlook and vision. MUIS may enter its first flight by the end of 2023. The first prototype was subsonic, and later prototypes were supersonic .
MIUS will be a single-engine drone. The fuselage adopts a tailless, mixed-wing fuselage design to reduce the radar cross section (RCS). The aircraft has two canards but no horizontal stabilizers and two tilted vertical stabilizers. The air intakes are located on both sides of the fuselage.
MUIS is also Turkey's first UAV to use a turbofan jet engine. It has a maximum take-off weight of 5,500 kilograms and is expected to carry 1.5 tons of payload, including a variety of weapons including air-to-air, air-to-ground and air-launched cruise missiles . Ammunition will be carried internally in the weapons bay to keep RCS low. The aircraft will have wing-mounted hardpoints for external weapons transport, missions where low RCS is not necessary.
MIUS will combine artificial intelligence (AI) and smart fleet autonomy technology to enable multiple aircraft to operate independently or fly alongside and support manned fighter aircraft , the company said. MIUS can also serve as a "loyal wingman" for manned fighter aircraft.
The UAV is expected to carry out various military operations such as strategic attacks, close air support (CAS), missile attacks, suppressing enemy air defense systems (SEAD), and destroying enemy air defense systems (DEAD). MUIS will be jet-powered and is expected to be able to take off and land on the Turkish flagship "Anadolu" amphibious assault ship.
In November 2021, Bayraktar signed a contract with the Ivchenko Progressive Design Bureau, one of the major Ukrainian defense industry companies, to purchase engines for MIUS. Under the agreement, Ivchenko Progressive Design Bureau is expected to provide AI-322F turbofan engines for the aircraft.
Bayraktar CEO Seljuk Bayraktar said that Ukraine and Turkey are two strategic partners, noting that his company's Akıncı drones are already powered by Ivchenko-Progress Design Bureau's AI-450 engines. “Under the new contract, we will install on the drone the AI-322F jointly produced by the Ivchenko-Progress Design Bureau and Motorsich Engine, I hope this deal will further promote the strategic cooperation between the two countries. "
AI-322 engine, 3138 mm long, 624 mm fan diameter; maximum afterburning thrust 4200 kg, fuel consumption rate 1.9 kg/kg thrust-hour; maximum thrust without afterburner 2500 kg, fuel consumption rate 0.66 kg/kg thrust-hour. ;The total boost ratio is 15.4, the bypass ratio is 1.18, and the thrust-to-weight ratio is 7.5. When afterburner is not turned on, the maximum cruise speed reaches about Mach 0.95. If afterburner is turned on, the maximum flight Mach number can reach 1.4.
In addition, the AI-322 engine also adopts a full authority digital electronic control system (FADEC). It is the first engine in this category to adopt a FADEC control system and has good maneuverability and stability. AI-322F is an afterburner version of AI-322. It can meet the usage requirements of many types of advanced trainer aircraft , and can also be equipped on the L-15 "Falcon" advanced trainer aircraft.
But the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine has cast a shadow on the future of this drone. Russia has announced that it will crack down on , the Ukrainian military-industrial enterprise. If Ivchenko-Progress Design Bureau and Motorsich were destroyed, the drone's engines would have to be sourced from another source. Although the Turks have already had plans to replace Ukrainian engines with domestic TEI/TF-6000 engines.However, Turkey's first domestically produced turbojet engine is still under development, and it is still unclear whether its performance can meet the technical requirements. (Power Talks the World/Zhang Mi)
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