Turkish Navy Gets First Aksungur Drone

The Turkish Navy took delivery of its first Aksungur medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on Wednesday.

“The first Aksungur UAV produced by TUSAS (Turkish Aerospace Industries) has been delivered to the Turkish Naval Forces after completion of tests,” the head of the Presidency of Defense Industries (SSB), Ismail Demir said in a Twitter statement.

The UAV made its first flight in 2019.

Aksungur can fly 50 hours, can carry up to 750 kg of payload and is capable of long-endurance operations at an altitude of up to 40,000 feet. It can perform uninterrupted multi-role intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and attack missions with its high payload capacity and provide operational flexibility beyond the line of sight with its SATCOM payload.

It has been integrated with three different EO/IR (Electro-Optical/Infra-Red) cameras, two different SATCOM Teber laser guidance products by Roketsan, locally developed Precision Guidance Kit-82s (HGK-82) and the domestic engine PD170. The drone previously carried and test-fired MK-82 ammunition with a Teber guidance kit weighing around 250 kilograms. It was the first drone to use Teber.