Baykar turns its Bayraktar TB2 into a carrier for FPV drones

Turkish drone maker Baykar has turned its Bayraktar TB2 combat drone into a flying carrier for small FPV attack drones, firing two of them at ground targets in a test released on Nov. 4. The TB2 carried 16 Skydagger first-person-view kamikaze drones, eight under each wing, and also served as a communications relay for the operators controlling them. The TB2 took off from Baykar's Keşan flight training and test center in northwestern Türkiye and flew to a test area, where it released two of the FPV drones. Operators on the ground steered them through the TB2's data link, and footage from the test shows both drones diving into their targets and detonating. Baykar did not say what happened to the other 14 drones on the flight or when the test took place. Baykar chief technology officer Selçuk Bayraktar shared the footage in a post captioned "16 x FPV Drone Drop Test." FPV drones are small, cheap quadcopters flown through a camera feed and loaded with explosives. They have become one of the most common weapons on the front lines in Ukraine, but their short radio range limits how far from the operator they can strike. Baykar CEO Haluk Bayraktar said FPV drones normally reach about 15 km (9 miles), and that carrying them on a TB2 and relaying their signals through it could extend their reach to thousands of kilometers, the Turkish daily Akşam reported. He described the setup as opening the way to a new warfare doctrine. That figure depends on the TB2's own range and satellite or line-of-sight links, and Baykar has not published detailed data on the drones' flight time after release or how many can be controlled at once. The idea of a larger drone carrying and launching smaller ones has spread quickly during the war in Ukraine, where both sides use so-called mothership drones to bring FPV drones closer to targets and to keep their control links alive over longer distances. Baykar began working on the concept in 2024, when it signed an agreement at the SAHA Expo in Istanbul with Croatian FPV drone maker ORQA to integrate FPV drones onto the TB2, Defense Mirror reported. The TB2 is a medium-altitude drone that normally carries small laser-guided bombs. It became widely known in the early weeks of Russia's full-scale invasion, when Ukrainian TB2s struck Russian convoys, before improved Russian air defenses made the slow-flying drone more vulnerable near the front. The aircraft is in service with dozens of countries.