Turkish drone magnate Baykar signed a $370 million (TL 6.95 billion) contract to export its Bayraktar TB2 unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) to Kuwait, the company said Wednesday.
Baykar made the related statement via the company’s Twitter account. The contract marks the first export agreement signed for Bayraktar TB2 in 2023.
The number of export deals signed for this particular combat drone, meanwhile, has reached 28.
The negotiations between Baykar and the Kuwaiti Ministry of Defense started in 2019.
The country chose Türkiye’s domestically developed, battle-proven UCAV which made a name for itself after being used in several conflicts from Syria to Ukraine, over competitive products of several companies from the U.S., Europe and China.
Bayraktar TB2 UCAV previously had great success in its demo flight in Kuwait in July 2019. It broke new ground in the history of Turkish aviation at the time by flying continuously for 27 hours and three minutes in difficult geographical and climatic conditions such as high temperatures and sandstorms.
Since the beginning of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) related research and development (R&D) studies in 2003, Baykar has earned 75% of all its revenues from exports.
According to the data of the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TIM) in 2021, it became the export leader of the defense and aerospace industry.
Baykar, whose export rate was 99.3% in the contracts signed in 2022, made exports worth $1.18 billion last year. The company, which is the biggest exporter of the defense and aerospace industry, had a turnover of $1.4 billion in 2022.
