
A Bazna loitering munition displayed at the Saha Expo held in Türkiye in October 2024. (Dönmezoğlu Bilişim)
A type of loitering munition that has not previously been seen in Turkish service was displayed when an Azerbaijani delegation visited a base on the Syrian border on 25 January.
The Turkish Ministry of National Defense (MSB) released a video showing General Selçuk Bayraktaroğlu, the Turkish Land Forces commander, accompanying Lieutenant General Hikmet Mirzeyev, Azerbaijan's deputy defence minister, to the 6th Corps and Joint Special Task Force Command base at Çıldıroba on the border with Syria's Aleppo Governorate.
The video showed the officers being briefed in an operations room and inspecting equipment that included an STM Kargu quadcopter loitering munition and two smaller ones that could be identified as the Bazna made by the Turkish company Dönmezoğlu Bilişim. Like the Kargu, one of the Baznas was fitted with an anti-personnel warhead that was painted blue, which normally indicates it is an inert version for training.
The Bazna is operated using first-person view (FPV) goggles and is stated to have a take-off weight of 1.78 kg with a 600 g payload, a maximum range of 9 km, a flight duration of 15 minutes, and immunity to electronic jamming. Dönmezoğlu Bilişim demonstrated the Bazna's robustness during the Saha Expo held in Istanbul in October 2024 by submerging one in a transparent tank of water and flying it out. A company representative said during the show that it had been acquired by Turkish forces, but the Çıldıroba video appears to be the first time it has been seen in service.
For more information, please seeKargu loitering munition used in Azerbaijan exercise .
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