Baykar’s AKINCI and TB2 Land, Take Off in Highway Emergency Drill

Selçuk Bayraktar, Baykar’s chairman, said the company intends to take the same highway landing and takeoff work beyond the two aircraft shown in the clip.

“Going forward, we will extend this capability to all our indigenous platforms,” he wrote on X shortly after the firm’s official account posted the video.

The company post described the activity as part of an emergency scenario and said the AKINCI and Bayraktar TB2 “successfully landed on and took off from the Manisa–Balıkesir Highway.”

Baykar credited the Ministry of National Defense and the General Directorate of Highways.

Footage From the Highway Stretch

The clip, lasting about 58 seconds, shows a stretch of divided highway under overcast skies, with olive groves along both sides.

A fire truck, a gendarmerie vehicle and a ground-control truck fitted with raised antennas stand on the shoulder as personnel watch from the roadside.

An AKINCI, marked PT7 on the fuselage, taxis on the asphalt with both propellers turning, then lifts off with its landing lights on, kicking up dust from the pavement.

A Bayraktar TB2, identifiable by its twin-boom tail, is later seen taxiing on the same stretch and becoming airborne over the road.

Chairman Sets a Wider Goal

In a bilingual post accompanying the same footage, Bayraktar repeated that the landings and takeoffs were carried out “as part of emergency scenarios.”

He thanked the teams involved and said the capability would be applied to all of Baykar’s indigenous platforms in the period ahead.

Platforms Built for Autonomous Landings

Baykar lists the AKINCI as a twin-engine unmanned combat aircraft with a 1,500-kilogram (3,307-pound) payload, a 20-meter (65.6-foot) wingspan and a service ceiling of 40,000 feet (12,192 meters). The company says the aircraft supports autonomous takeoff and landing and satellite communications beyond a ground station’s line of sight.

The smaller Bayraktar TB2 is listed with a 150-kilogram (331-pound) payload and a 12-meter (39.4-foot) wingspan. Baykar says it can take off and land automatically.

The highway trial comes a day after Baykar said an AKINCI scored direct hits with two ASELSAN TOLUN-P munitions under electronic jamming. Last week the firm separately released footage of a Bayraktar TB2 test in which the smaller aircraft dropped FPV kamikaze munitions. Bayraktar’s remark about expanding the capability also covers the jet-powered KIZILELMA, the company’s other main unmanned combat aircraft.