Индии следует перенять турецкий опыт поддержки беспилотников для создания собственного «Байкара»

It is very interesting that Turkey’s Baykar has become somewhat of an anomaly in the global defence-industry mythology; a company which has transformed over the last decade from a fairly humble family owned engineering firm to, argueably the worlds most successful drone manufacturer in 10 years due to the success of its Bayraktar TB2 in Libya, Nagorno Karabakh and Ukraine, and has become an aspriational comparison for almost everyserious discussion about India’s new private drone sector. What is far less obvious, is that there seem to be less that look at the structural conditions that underwrite Baykar’s success, and compare it to whether anything existing currently matches the conditions at which it operates. There were three conditions which created Baykar’s current prominence, which fed into one another to make this development happen: A state that supported Baykar for the long term considering it a strategic national asset even long before it seemed that its systems would ever be able to deliver on any sales commercially, which offered its R&D and procurement guarantee that the TB2 had years before it managed to become something that would sell; genuine, but accidental combat experience, it could never have manufactured that with all the advertising and Indian orders you can throw at it-combat against real air-defense and E-W environments are the best and the last source of credibility from which any client wishes to acquire something from; and finally leadership that possessed the technical backing with sufficient political influence to circumvent all the red tape. While India has moved forward in the post 2020 trend by liberalising the sectors that can develop this industry even now being able to bypass a lot of import restriction factors and even open it for non-DPSU bodies, has resulted in a much wider variety of private players that didn’t have so much attention before; such as ideaForge with their public record on the stock exchange since 2023, with a massive client base both in Indian security agencies and across international export customers. Nevertheless there are not enough customers outside India willing to pay for loitering munitions and large unmanned aircraft considering Operation Sindoor had to be bought in due to some urgent requirement, and they do not have the second component which allows these drone manufacturing companies to operate such that of what happened with Baykar where its marketing claims turned into established fact due to actual field combat verification, it really doesn’t matter how many years and what amount of resources a company has invested till it sees what is does to an actual E-W & air defense environment. The importance of comparing India’s efforts with Baykar stems at the policy level and thus suggests two areas they actually can affect, not the first two that don’t depend on state backing as much or don’t necessarily relate to them: First, patient support for its chosen privately developed drone manufacturers like a nation views a strategic national asset, not an individual vendor in a tender competition that is based on the cheapest unit price. Second, export clearance processes that will expedite to the approval rate seen with regards to bringing successful Indian designed hardware to international clients, rather than having it screened thoroughly over time to guarantee safety. What hasn’t occurred to us is that while we want to achieve what Baykar has done in Turkey, our nation should work to achieve those two aspects mentioned earlier rather than trying to manufacture the impossible as in giving rise to Operation Sindoor (not really an operation where drones proved their viability against superior tech), so India can create its very own Indian Baykar through these means.