Baykar Naval Systems Unmanned Systems

Bayraktar KALKAN Makes First Flight From TCG Anadolu as PİRANA Sinks Target

Turkey’s navy closed out its largest fleet exercise of the year with two firsts: an unmanned aircraft took off vertically from the deck of the amphibious assault ship TCG Anadolu for the first time, and a kamikaze drone boat sank a surface target in front of the country’s top military brass and defence-industry executives.

The milestones came on the Distinguished Observer Day of Denizkurdu-I/2026 (“Sea Wolf”), held on 24 September off Marmaris-Aksaz in the Eastern Mediterranean, the closing event of a five-day drill that ran across the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara, the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean. Roughly 14,000 personnel, 100 ships and 50 aircraft from the Naval Forces, Land Forces, Air Force and Coast Guard took part.

Chief of General Staff Gen. Selçuk Bayraktaroğlu and Naval Forces Commander Adm. Ercüment Tatlıoğlu observed the day’s activities from TCG Anadolu, Türkiye’s drone-carrying amphibious assault ship. Baykar chairman Selçuk Bayraktar and Roketsan general manager Murat İkinci were also aboard, underlining how closely the two companies’ products are now woven into fleet exercises rather than shown off separately at trade fairs.

KALKAN Leaves the Runway Behind

The day opened with a 19-gun salute fired by the frigate TCG Oruçreis, followed by mine-clearance work from the minehunter TCG Amasra and airborne EOD teams. The headline moment came when a Bayraktar KALKAN, Baykar’s vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) unmanned aircraft, lifted off TCG Anadolu’s deck without a runway or catapult — the first time a VTOL drone has flown from the ship.

KALKAN has been in flight testing since 2024 and formally entered Turkish Armed Forces service in August 2026; Baykar has previously said the type completed a 70-hour endurance flight to 14,500 feet during trials at the company’s Keşan test centre. What changed on 24 September was where it flew from: TCG Anadolu was purpose-built to operate Bayraktar TB3 fixed-wing UCAVs from a shortened runway, and a VTOL type that needs no runway at all widens what the 27,000-tonne ship can launch, including from confined spaces on smaller escorts in the future. Baykar lists KALKAN’s operational range at up to 500 km with a 3 kg payload and roughly six hours of endurance.

PİRANA’s First Combat-Style Strike in a Fleet Exercise

Minutes later, MKE’s PİRANA kamikaze unmanned surface vehicle (KİDA) ran in on a designated surface target and destroyed it — the drone boat’s first appearance in a named Turkish naval exercise, after a run of dedicated test firings earlier in 2026. PİRANA is a compact, expendable strike craft carrying a roughly 100 kg warhead at speeds above 40 knots, built to be cheap enough to expend in swarms against enemy vessels, port infrastructure or coastal targets. MKE has said the boat can be relayed beyond line of sight through a Bayraktar TB3 acting as a communications node, extending its effective reach well past what its own onboard systems can manage alone.

The rest of the observer day ran through a fuller order of battle: Bayraktar TB2s flying out of Dalaman dropped MAM-C smart munitions, an Aksungur UAV released MAM-T rounds, AH-1W Super Cobra gunships supported a Naval Special Warfare (SAT) landing on Yılancık Island, and a submarine surfaced to close out the exercise’s first phase. Two days earlier, a Bayraktar TB3 operating from the same ship had run a separate anti-submarine sonobuoy test, underscoring how much of the drill was built around what the Anadolu’s air wing can do.

Why It Matters Beyond the Drill

Neither KALKAN nor PİRANA is brand new — both have been in testing and limited service for over a year. What Denizkurdu-I/2026 demonstrated was integration: a runway-free drone launching from an amphibious ship, and a low-cost strike boat operating alongside crewed frigates, submarines and manned aircraft in a single, multi-domain scenario rather than a standalone demo. For a navy that has spent the past several years turning TCG Anadolu from a helicopter carrier into what officials call the world’s first drone-carrier ship, adding a VTOL type to the air wing closes a gap between the runway-dependent TB3 and rotary-wing aircraft — a fleet built largely in Turkish yards that is increasingly designed around unmanned systems rather than retrofitted for them.

It is also a data point for export customers watching how Türkiye employs its own unmanned systems operationally, not just at exhibitions. Both KALKAN and PİRANA are newer additions to a naval unmanned portfolio — alongside TB3, Kızılelma and a growing family of surface and underwater drones — that Ankara has increasingly marketed as a package rather than individual products.

Neither the Naval Forces Command nor MKE has published a formal after-action statement on the PİRANA engagement’s parameters, such as target size or exact range, and Baykar has not detailed how KALKAN’s shipboard control and recovery procedures aboard TCG Anadolu differ from land-based operations. Denizkurdu-I/2026 continues through 25 September with a public port-visit programme across 18 harbours before the fleet disperses.