Leonardo and Baykar sign MoU leading to a Joint Venture on unmanned air systems

In a press conference organised at the Foreign Press Association in Rome the CEO of Leonardo, Roberto Cingolani, the Chairman of the Board and Chief Technology Officer of Baykar, Selçuk Bayraktar, and the Turkish company CEO, Haluk Bayraktar, announced the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding that will lead in the coming months to the creation of a 50/50 joint venture

“Today is a very important day because we finalized a cornerstone agreement with the colleagues of Baykar in the unmanned technologies domain,” Roberto Cingolani stated in his opening remarks. Leonardo and Baykar worked alongside in the last four or five years at commercial level, Leonardo sensors being installed on Baykar unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). “We then decided to go deeper into our reciprocal knowledge, and what we discussed today is the result of the last five very intensive months of work,” he explained.

The Leonardo CEO highlighted that Europe has a gap in unmanned technologies that needs to be filled to guarantee global security at short, medium, and long term.

“We realized that if we combine Leonardo payloads, which include all kinds of sensors, electronics, radars, in short what makes the flying platform intelligent or multi-operational, with the wide portfolio of airframes designed and produced by Baykar, which range from very small, very low cost, to something the size of an unmanned aircraft fighter, so very highly sophisticated machines, we can cover essentially all kinds of needs and missions that might be useful for defence.”

The signature of the MoU closed the loop towards the creation of the JV, Leonardo CEO highlighting that the process is well ahead as through technical analysis have been made, as the procedure was led by operational people and not by lawyers, and now it is time for the technical table to refine details.

Mr. Cingolani highlighted the three main areas in which Leonardo will contribute to the JV, Baykar providing of course state-of-the-art platforms: payloads, in the form of sensors and detectors; software defined systems; and certification. Being an EU member nation, it will be easier for Italy to certify products within the Union. The market is there, Cingolani underlined: “We foresee a 100 billion Euro global market in the next decade,” he said, a good reason for a marriage that should bring results to both companies.

“In the last years we have been collaborating as partners, but the synergy and the chemistry between our visions, and the complementarity of our portfolios, in the last four months somehow magically aligned with the geostrategic shifts in the world, and we saw the opportunity for building the air supremacy of the world together with Leonardo, for a much secure world and for the defence of the world,” Selçuk Bayraktar said. He underlined that in the last four years Baykar has been the leader in the UAV market, and the predominant portion of its revenues come from exports, 90% of revenues coming from exports, his company having exported its UAVs to 36 different countries.

He underlined the skills of Leonardo in the artificial intelligence (AI) domain; “Leonardo created an immense AI backbone, a framework and an underlying structure for creating highly advanced and ethically AI-driven technologies for unmanned systems of all sizes,” the Baykar Chairman of the Board said.

Asked about potential competition between the Eurodrone, the European MALE programme, and UAVs of a similar in produced by the future JV, both Leonardo and Baykar representatives underlined that these are in two different segments, maximum take-off mass of the European multinational aircraft being the double compared to the bigger airframe currently produced by Baykar. The Eurodrone will not be able to cover all European requirements, therefore the future JV participants look with interest into the European market, Baykar having already exported its products in Poland, Romania, Croatia, and Albania. Italy will obviously be a priority target country, and in the morning before the press conference the three speakers met the top brass of Italian defence.

The Akinci will be the first product the JV will consider, Leonardo systems having already been integrated on some platforms. “We will dive deep into it,” Haluk Bayraktar said, “Because this is the urgent need that we see in the market, heavy MALE platforms, and we must missionize and certify it.”

The Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) was another obvious issue. While the Leonardo CEO underlined that it is too early to understand if there might be room for providing unmanned loyal wingman type solutions, as no requirements are available yet, prototypes of the manned platform being expected to fly in 2035.

Baykar however flew its Kizilelma UCAV in 2022 and since demonstrated its capability to fly alongside manned platforms. “Our cooperation with Leonardo has three sides. We talked about armed surveillance drones on one side, also with armed versions, and then we talked about loitering munitions. These two areas are playing pivotal roles in war zones right now,” Baykar CEO stated. Looking forward, unmanned combat aircraft might well take over the role of manned aircraft, to a large extent. “The age of unmanned fighters is coming, so our alliance, which is the biggest alliance in Europe right now, cannot avoid thinking to this.” According to Haluk Bayraktar today in the world there are around 13,000 manned fighters, but in the future the number of unmanned fighters might be around 50,000, so today it is time to start conceptual studies to be ready for that shift.

How much the JV will help in potentially increase production rate? While Baykar representatives ruled out a direct connection between the acquisition of Piaggio Aero and the decision to create a JV with Leonardo, it is clear that should the need arise Piaggio facilities might well help, the same being true for the considerable aeronautic capabilities of Leonardo, that range from Ronchi dei Legionari, the historical site of Italian UAVs, to Torino Caselle, not to mention facilities involved in commercial planes aerostructure, highly specialised in composites.

As underlined by Roberto Cingolani, the JV scheme follows the one that was recently signed with Rheinmetall for the land sector. In a few months we should know more about this trans-mediterranean business, together with its name.

Photos courtesy Leonardo and P. Valpolini