Humanity has undergone and still is trying to overcome a horrible year, one that could easily be dubbed our annus horribilis. Besides health care, almost all sectors have taken their share of the hit from the COVID-19 pandemic that sent shock waves around the world. But one sector, the defense industry, was among those that kept growing.

The Turkish defense industry, in particular, not just completed several critical projects but with the use of its products in recent conflicts, made headlines in local and international media throughout the year. It is now looking ahead with even more ambition.

One of the primary motives behind the rapid progress of Turkey's defense industry, which maintained growth last year, is the sanctions on the country in the recent past. Instead of remaining idle amid the sanctions, Ankara fostered a defense industry from scratch now capable of exporting products worldwide while also driving the development of cutting-edge systems, like unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).

These UAVs have been used by the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) in recent conflicts in neighboring Syria against terrorist elements and the brutal Bashar Assad regime. They've also seen action in war-torn Libya and were used by the Azerbaijani army in Nagorno-Karabakh. This use has raised questions about whether the relatively cheaper aircraft may eventually replace expensive advanced fighter jets. The answer is no, not entirely.

In an exclusive interview with Daily Sabah, Turkish defense analyst Hakan Kılıç said he expects a clear-cut task sharing between UAVs and manned aircraft in the future.

"I think, in the near future, UAVs will even replace electronic jamming aircraft, while the tasks of manned systems will focus on carrying anti-radiation and cruise missiles, heavy bombardment and air to air missions," he said.

Further explaining the tasks of both vehicles and the missions that have been carried out by the UAVs in the field, including the ones dubbed global, Kılıç said drones can perform almost all of the tasks executed by larger aircraft "when air superiority is established" and that they "can operate under the air umbrella provided by combat aircraft."

For example, he continued, we saw the most recent example of this in Operation Spring Shield – a cross-border military operation kicked off on Feb. 27, 2020, by the TSK against Syrian regime elements – in retaliation for an attack that killed 33 Turkish soldiers.

"If Turkish F-16s did not intercept the warplanes of the Assad regime with their beyond-visual-range air-to-air missiles (BVRAAM) by conducting a combat air patrol (CAP) mission along the border, Turkish UAVs Bayraktar TB-2 and Anka-S would not have been able to operate in the region," he said.

Through cooperation, these two armed UAVs, manufactured by Baykar Makina and Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), performed a first in history, with the support of electronic jamming elements. They executed "suppress enemy air defense (SEAD)" missions and "destroy enemy air defense (DEAD)" tasks "normally requiring F-16s."

However, Kılıç continued, "Would this have been accomplished if the F-16s did not remotely protect the Turkish UAVs in the Syrian airspace without entering the country's airspace due to military and political obstacles?"

"If the two Syrian SU-24 and one L-39 warplane that came to hunt the Turkish drones were not downed by our F-16s, how would the UAVs protect themselves?" he rhetorically asked, pointing out the unavoidable cooperation between fighters and UAVs.

"Many Russian-made Syrian air defense missile systems were destroyed by the drones this way," Kılıç said. The destruction of the Russian systems, video footage of which was published later, continued in Nagorno Karabakh as well. There, the drones were used by Baku, who has previously purchased them from Turkey, and the air defense systems were deployed by Armenia, who were fighting an already losing battle on occupied Azerbaijani lands.

"Furthermore, in Azerbaijan, the TB-2 destroyed an Armenian Scud-B ballistic missile while on the launch vehicle (TEL), thus making history as the first ballistic missile launcher destroyed by a UAV in the history of war," Kılıç added.