They cost about $1m to $2m a time – a tenth or less of the price of the higher specification US Protector drone, which Washington has only been willing to sell to a handful of countries.

Since then they have also been deployed on behalf of the internationally recognised Libyan government in Tripoli to stave off an offensive by the eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar. TB2 drones were initially used by Ankara against Kurdish separatists inside its own country and neighbouring Syria and Iraq. It cannot be conclusively determined from where it was fired, but western experts say the missile from which the fragment came can be used by TB2 drones. Neither government has publicly commented on the sale of drones but there is already evidence to suggest Turkish munitions are in use: a fragment of a Turkish-made laser-guided bomb found by Tigrayan forces was passed to a journalist and analyst, Martin Plaut, early last month. But neither are considered as effective as Turkey’s TB2s, made by Baykar Makina, a company whose chief technology officer, Selçuk Bayraktar, is married to Erdoğan’s younger daughter. TB2 drones have become sought-after across Africa, Asia and parts of Europe after the remotely piloted craft were deemed to have tipped the balance in favour of Azerbaijan in its war with Armenia last autumn over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.Įthiopia’s government is already believed to have deployed drones made in Iran and China.

Five million civilians are in need of food aid as a result of the conflict, and yet is still shopping for drones and other arms.” The details of the agreement have not been published, but officials told Reuters in October that Ethiopia had requested Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2 drones, considered to be the most effective munitions of their type in the world.Ībiy’s trip came two months after Ethiopian forces had been expelled from Tigray’s capital, Mekelle, and before an October air and ground counter-offensive, which appears to have been rapidly pushed back.Īlex de Waal, the director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, said: “The fighting is already at an intense scale and ferocity, with perhaps 100,000 soldiers already dead on the Ethiopian side. Ethiopia’s government has forged an alliance with Turkey amid reports that it wants to deploy armed Turkish drones in its bitter war against forces from the Tigray region.Ībiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, signed a military cooperation agreement on a visit to Ankara in August with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Supreme commander forged alliance mod