Russia has been preparing against drones since 2015 in Syria but also in Nagorno-Karabakh and Libya.
Bayraktar: Why the Russians are saying BYE-Raktar to the much-hyped Turkish drones and making fun of them, and why the communication damage to the Turks is great.
Turkish defense company Baykar has announced that it will donate three Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicles to Kyiv following a successful crowdfunding campaign. TB2 UAVs have been very popular in Ukraine, but as EurAsian Times reported, they are also very vulnerable to Russian defense systems.
One of the reasons behind the losses of Turkish TB-2 Bayraktar drones could be explained by the fact that Russia has been preparing against drones since 2015 in Syria as well as in Nagorno-Karabakh.
It should be noted that the Special Technology Center LLC in Moscow developed the Stiletto, a short-range portable backpack containing a hybrid anti-drone gun-EW system.
Zala Aero has also developed the “REX non-lethal weapon in late 2017 that could jam geolocation signals from the US Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia’s GLONASS, China’s BeiDou and Europe’s Galileo within a 5km radius “, notes eurasiantimes.com.
The efforts appeared to have paid off, as a 2018 NBC report claimed that “US military officials were surprised by Russia’s ability to ‘jam smaller US drones over Syria.’
At the same time, Russian air defense relies on the S-400 and S-200VE Vega for long-range defense, the S-300FM “Fort” and Buk-M2E for medium-range defense, and the Osa-AKM and S-125 for quick-reaction defense, short range.
Turkey advertises its Bayraktars through its operations in Ukraine, so if it turns out that the Russians are destroying them so easily (they call them flying targets) then this will seriously hurt Ankara’s communication.
Turkey is building on Bayraktar’s success story to increase Turkish drone exports.
