As reported by the RIA Novosti news agency, Ukraine is experiencing problems with the operation of Turkish Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicles due to the lack of suitable runways, Ukrainian military analyst, chairman of the Board of the Ukrainian Military Center Taras Chmut said, the corresponding video was posted on YouTube.
Unmanned aerial vehicle of Turkish production Bayraktar TB2 (tail number "72 blue") as part of the 10th separate Naval Aviation Brigade of the Ukrainian Navy. Kulbakino airfield (Mykolaiv region), July 2021 (c) Ministry of Defense of Ukraine
According to Chmut, runways are one of the problems in general for Ukrainian aviation. "This is a problem that we live with, and which we must solve in any case, except for one thing - if we abandon aviation," said Chmut.
As the expert noted, only large airfields used by civil aviation are suitable for heavy Turkish Akinci drones, while military airfields are suitable for them only "theoretically".
"This is a matter of resource and resource racks (chassis element. - ed.). For example, Bayraktar (delivered to Kiev TB2. - ed.), which are lighter, we had problems with racks. There is a concept of a take-off and landing resource, and if you need to change racks every three take-offs and landings, then this is such a story, not really," said Chmut.
He added that Ukraine needs to "do something" with the runways at the airfields of the Air Force, since the existing Soviet ones are not suitable in this case.
In 2018-2020, Ukraine imported Turkish Bayraktar TV2 unmanned aerial systems, the purchase of which took about $ 74 million. In early February, President Vladimir Zelensky announced that Ukraine and Turkey had signed an agreement expanding the production of Bayraktar unmanned aerial vehicles in the country.
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