Haluk Bayraktar, CEO of the Turkish company Baykar, confirmed that a drone manufacturing plant is already under construction in the Kyiv region.

He shared this in an interview with Reuters at a defense exhibition in Riyadh.

According to Bayraktar, the plant is currently under construction, which will take about 12 months to finish. After that, the company will move on to internal machinery, equipment, and organizational structure.

“The factory in Ukraine is a big one; we are planning to employ around 500 people,” Bayraktar said.

Bayraktar noted that capacity would total around 120 units yearly but said it was still unclear whether production at the Ukrainian factory would focus on the TB2 or TB3 drone model.

Asked if security issues related to the ongoing conflict would pose a concern for the plant, he said that plans were fully moving ahead and that nothing could halt them.

In September, Militarnyi reported that Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2 unmanned combat aerial vehicle manufacturer Baykar is investing $100 million in three projects in Ukraine.

Cooperation with Baykar

In July of this year, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine signed an agreement with the Turkish company Baykar to build a service center to repair and maintain drones in Ukraine.

This was a development of the already signed agreement between the governments of Ukraine and Turkey, which was concluded at the beginning of February last year. The document deals with cooperation in the fields of high-tech, aviation, and space industries.

In 2021, Ukraine and Turkey signed a memorandum on the construction of a joint training and testing center for the operation of drones.

In February 2023, the Ministry of Defense announced the agreement on the site for the development of the center. The main tasks for the future center will be maintenance, repair, and modernization of equipment.

On the basis of the same center, personnel training related to drone operation by the Baykar company will be conducted.

The construction and arrangement of the center involve the transfer of the company’s technologies and the localization of part of the production.