A Bayraktar AKINCI Offensive Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV) from the Sudanese Air Force inventory shot down a twin-turbofan aerial vehicle using an air-to-air munition. The footage that emerged on social media and quickly garnered significant attention showed that unmanned aerial vehicles have now reached the capability to hunt not only ground targets but also moving manned fighter jets.
While it is assessed that the munition used was the ROKETSAN-made EREN loitering munition, experts have also suggested that it could be the SUNGUR air defence missile. Both munitions are among the domestic systems that can be integrated into the AKINCI platform.
Unmanned Dogfight in the Air: AKINCI vs. AKINCI
Geçtiğimiz haftalarda yaşanan ve bizim de haberini yaptığımız tarihi olayda, Sudan ordusuna ait bir AKINCI TİHA, Etiyopya’ya ait başka bir AKINCI’yı yine EREN mühimmatı ile havada düşürmüştü. Havacılık tarihinde ilk kez bir Türk silahlı insansız hava aracı, yine bir Türk platformu tarafından it dalaşı senaryosunda avlanmıştı. Şimdi ise aynı platform, bu kez çok daha karmaşık ve zorlu bir hedef olan insanlı bir savaş uçağını düşürerek yetenek sınırlarını bir kez daha genişletti.
There has been a serious tension between Sudan and Ethiopia over border security and water resources in the African geography for a long time. Both countries actively prefer Turkish defence industry products to modernise their armies. However, these recent unmanned air combats over the skies reveal a much deeper reality regarding the strategic balances in the region: Turkish weapon systems have become the standard striking power across almost the entire African continent today. However, countries with stronger diplomatic and strategic ties to Türkiye have faster access to advanced air-to-air munitions like EREN. It is clearly evident that even between two armies using the same platforms, absolute superiority can be created in the field thanks to differences in munitions and equipment.
100 km Range Hunter: Roketsan EREN Munition
Developed by ROKETSAN engineers, EREN stands out as a high-speed, smart loitering munition. The platform can loiter in the air for extended periods before reaching its target and performs surprise attacks by achieving high speeds upon detection. In firing tests conducted from the AKINCI, the system had already proven its high-precision direct strike capability from distances exceeding 100 kilometres.
Thanks to its advanced seeker head, the EREN munition autonomously tracks hostile aerial elements using radar and electro-optical systems. With this technological infrastructure, the system hunts enemy UAVs, helicopters, and other low-speed aerial targets with a high hit rate. However, this time the target was a manned fighter jet with twin turbofan engines capable of reaching much higher speeds. A missile fired from an unmanned aerial vehicle hitting a moving manned fighter jet is seen as a tremendous engineering success, both aerodynamically and algorithmically. This event confirms how lethal and accurate EREN's guidance algorithms are under real combat conditions, this time against a much more challenging target.
Combat Doctrines Are Changing
These two consecutive events over African skies clearly show how rapidly warfare concepts are changing. The wars of the future will no longer be fought only between manned fighter jets but between hunting unmanned aerial vehicles and autonomous munitions. More importantly, unmanned systems now pose a lethal threat to manned fighter jets as well.
The successful destruction of first an AKINCI and then a manned fighter jet by the ROKETSAN EREN munition elevates the appeal and value of Turkish munitions in the global export market to its peak. In the future, countries purchasing the AKINCI or other Turkish UCAVs will inevitably also want to include smart munitions like EREN in their inventories to gain air-to-air capability. The Sudanese military emerging victorious from these aerial engagements back-to-back has proven to the entire world that munition diversity is as vital as the platform itself.
AKINCI's Record and Technical Infrastructure
Behind all these successes lies the impressive technical capacity of the AKINCI platform developed by Baykar. The AKINCI B version recently broke the altitude record for an aerial vehicle produced in Türkiye by reaching 40,000 feet. This altitude capability provides the platform with a unique operational advantage in both reconnaissance and strike missions. Capable of patrolling at high altitude, AKINCI, when combined with air-to-air munitions such as EREN or SUNGUR, transforms into an effective air-to-air hunter platform against both other UAVs and manned aerial assets. ROKETSAN General Manager Murat İkinci's naming of the EREN munition after martyr Eren Bülbül also reveals the emotional connection and national motivation behind this strategic system.
