Turkish defense company Baykar announced on Dec. 28 that two prototypes of its Bayraktar Kızılelma unmanned combat aircraft have successfully carried out the world’s first fully autonomous close-formation flight by jet-powered drones.
Turkish defense giant Baykar, manufacturer of Kızılelma, is integrating new capabilities into its development process.
The test marked a major milestone in global aviation, as no other country has publicly demonstrated autonomous close-formation flying by unmanned fighter-class aircraft.
The flight was conducted as part of ongoing tests of Kızılelma’s smart fleet autonomy capability at the Akıncı Flight Training and Test Center in the northwestern province of Tekirdağ’s Çorlu district.
During the test, the third prototype of Bayraktar Kızılelma, PT3, and the fifth prototype, PT5, took off consecutively.
Once airborne, the two unmanned combat aircraft executed synchronized maneuvers and maintained close formation entirely autonomously, without any human intervention.
The operation was made possible through smart fleet autonomy algorithms developed by Baykar’s engineering team.
With this achievement, Kızılelma became the first unmanned combat aircraft system in the world to demonstrate autonomous close-formation flight, a task traditionally performed only by manned fighter jets.
This capability enables multiple unmanned platforms, under the command of a leader, to autonomously adjust their relative positions and carry out joint missions.
During the flight test, the Combat Air Patrol (CAP) mission, one of the fundamental elements of modern air combat, was also tested.
Kızılelma prototypes conducted patrol flights along a designated route accompanied by fleet autonomy software. Therefore, the feasibility of conducting air defense missions by a national unmanned combat aircraft operating as a fleet was verified.
Patrol and interception missions carried out by fighter aircraft to protect specific regions may, in the future, be performed autonomously by KIZILELMA fleets.
Throughout the test process, the autonomous systems of the unmanned combat aircraft and their cooperative operational procedures were closely monitored.
Developed entirely with Baykar’s own resources, KIZILELMA will continue to advance its capability to conduct coordinated operations with multiple platforms in the future, thanks to its smart fleet autonomy infrastructure.
The fighter jet has already made history in world aviation during a test conducted on Nov. 29.
In that historic test, conducted off the coast of Sinop in Türkiye's northern province, it achieved a direct hit with the Gökdoğan missile developed by Tübitak SAGE, identifying the target aircraft with the ASELSAN-developed Murad-AESA radar.
