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Malaysian Turkish-made Anka Long Range Drones To Arrive Soon

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The delivery of Anka Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) unmanned aerial vehicles for Malaysia is expected to be completed soon, the airframe maker Turkish Aerospace has said.

This follows the subcontract signing between Turkish Aerospace and Malaysia defence company, G7 Aerospace Sdn Bhd on the industrial collaboration programme related to the procurement of Anka unmanned aerial system by the Ministry of Defence Malaysia at IDEF’23.

The order for three Anka unmanned aerial vehicles was signed between Turkish Aerospace and  Malaysian Mindef at the recent LIMA’23 show in May 2023. “We cannot give exact dates but preparations are being made at the moment,” Prof. Temel Kotil, President and CEO of Turkish Aerospace told told Asian Defence Journal on the side lines of IDEF’23.

Malaysia is among the most recent buyers of  the Anka type unmmanned aerial vehicles, with three on order and possibly more in the near future. Indonesia has 12 similar drones on order with a number of it to be assembled in country by Turkish Aerospace’s local partner, PT Dirgantara Indonesia (PT DI).

Turkish Aerospace opened its new office in Selangor state, Malaysia at the Cyberview Futurise campus on Nov 24, 2021. This is the company’s first engineering and design office in Southeast Asia.

In this collaboration, Turkish and Malaysian engineers will work in the new office to carry out joint studies in a variety of areas which includes unmanned aerial vehicles, jet trainers, helicopter projects, and modernisation programmes for the global aviation ecosystem.

The office currently has around 80 Malaysian engineers and is looking to expand this pool to 1,000 engineers.

The Anka MALE unmanned aerial vehicles is designed by the engineers at Turkish Aerospace in cooperation with several local subcontractors. It first flew on Dec 30, 2010. The Anka unmanned aerial vehicle can be armed. In 2018, during the course of Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch, the Anka for the first time used the Smart Micro Munition, MAM-L. –adj/mhi/mgm (Pix: ADJ/Turkish Aerospace)