Turkey’s first locally developed Medium-Altitude, Long-Endurance (MALE) UAS, the TAI ‘Anka’, first unveiled in July 2010, made its first test flight at the end of the year.
The Anka can fly at an altitude of 30,000 feet for 24 hours, and has a cruising speed of 75 knots. It has a wingspan of 17.3 meters and is powered by a powered by a pusher type piston-prop diesel engine of 155 HP. The fully composite airframe is composed of an 8 meter long monocoque fuselage, detachable wing and V-Tail, retractable landing gear, equipment bays, service doors and other structural components.
With the Anka system, which is developed for day and night real time image intelligence for surveillance, reconnaissance, fixed/moving target detection, identification and tracking missions; the following payload can be carried on board:
- Electro-Optical Day Camera (EO Day TV)
- Day Camera (EO-Electro Optic) / Thermal Camera (IR-Infrared) / LRF-Laser Range Finder & LD-Laser Designator and Spotter
- SAR-Synthetic Aperture Radar / MTI- Moving Target Indicator & ISAR-Inverse SAR.