Companies in Bosnia are developing drones that could potentially be used by the country’s military, BIRN can reveal, even as Sarajevo buys six discounted Bayraktar drones from Turkey.
In early July, Bosnian Defence Minister Zukan Helez posted on his official Facebook page a photo of himself and a fixed-wing, propeller-driven drone flying above him, with the caption: “The best penicillin for ‘disunity’. And it’s homemade. May our homeland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, shine forever.”
‘Disunity’ was a thinly-veiled dig at the separatist threats that have come for years from Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, president of Bosnia’s Republika Srpska entity.
But it was the drone that caused controversy. How had a country with such a small military budget – some 200 million euros per year, most of which goes on salaries – found the resources to develop its own drone?
BIRN has confirmed with two independent sources that at least three companies in Bosnia are developing at least 12 different types of drone, five of which have military capabilities.
But while domestic mass production is not yet on the horizon, Bosnia has turned in the meantime to Turkey, buying six Bayraktar drones of the kind that have been used to lethal effect in Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Ukraine and other warzones.
“We are currently negotiating everything with our Turkish counterpart and I do not want to go into details at the moment,” Helez told BIRN after news of the purchase broke in September.
One detail BIRN has been able to ascertain, however, is that Bosnia is paying roughly half the usual price of some $5 million.
Drones for Kosovo, Albania and now Bosnia
Unarmed Bayraktar TB2 drone taking off for a firefighting mission. Photo: Baykar Defence Company.
Under political Islamist Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has long sought to portray itself as a protector of Muslims in the Balkans. Its soft-power diplomacy involves financing mosques and restoring Ottoman cultural heritage. But increasingly the defence sector has come to the fore.
In early 2020, Turkey and Bosnia signed a contract by which Ankara agreed to provide 200 million lira – 21.4 million euros at the time – in military aid, to be spent on defence hardware and services produced in Turkey and the training of Bosnian military personnel.
Albania and Kosovo, both with large Muslim populations, signed similar deals and each received its own Bayraktar drones over the past year.
High rates of inflation, however, have eroded the value of the aid packages, a development that Turkish security analyst Burak Yildirim said reflected a lack of “economic vision and planning” on the part of the Turkish government.
With a wing-span of 12 metres, the Bayraktar TB2 is classified as an ‘unmanned combat aerial vehicle’ and was developed by the Baykar company of Erdogan’s son-in-law, Selcuk Bayraktar. They cost around $5 million apiece, including accompanying ground equipment.
Even the original amount of aid promised to Bosnia in 2020, before the inflation kicked in, would not have bought the country six Bayraktars.
Now, even after inflation, Bosnia is buying not just six of the drones but also four armoured military transporters, as well as training for 60 pilots in Turkey. Two teams are already in Turkey undergoing drone training, Helez told Dnevni Avaz earlier this month. Bosnia, he said, had converted the aid into US dollars “in order the stop inflation”.
Yildirim said Bosnia appeared to be getting the drones at the same price paid by Turkey’s own army. “In other words, if the agreement amount is used for this sale, Bosnia will purchase these drones at half the price of other countries,” he told BIRN.
No money was earmarked for drones in the defence ministry’s procurement plans for the past two years, meaning the funds are almost certainly coming from the 2020 military aid deal.
Turkey, said Yildirim, “sees the Balkans and Bosnia as its natural hinterland”.
“With these drone sales, Turkish foreign policy towards Bosnia will be militarised.”
Defence Minister Zukan Helez joins Bosnian Armed Forces pilots during a firefighting mission this summer. Photo: Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Bosnian military’s air capability consists of just 11 helicopters, with five more on the way from the United States. Drones are increasingly seen as a relatively cheap way to boost its command of the skies.
Bosnian military commentator Dean Dzebic said Turkish drones would “compensate for a whole series of shortcomings in Bosnian aerial defence”.
“These drones can be used in fighting missions but also in a range of peacetime missions, such as training of the armed forces or detailed recording of the territory,” Dzebic told BIRN.
Such versatility has led Bosnian firms to start developing their own.
Of three such firms, a source within R&D told BIRN that only one is working on prototypes intended for military purposes. Three of these prototypes are so-called ‘kamikaze’ drones, which attack a target by crashing into it but can also be used for reconnaissance. Another prototype is a fixed-wing bomber and reconnaissance drone, smaller and less technologically advanced than the Bayraktar.
“The private company managed to develop them without getting permission from the relevant institutions simply because of the fact that they are importing materials which are not classified as dual use,” the source told BIRN.
“All you need is a 3D printer and an idea.”
A second source in the defence sector said the Bosnian defence ministry is familiar with the company’s work.
CNT director Ensar Mulaosmanovic said the drones developed by CNT are not military drones per se since the centre does not have permission to produce weapons.
They can be “adjusted,” he said, “and put into mass production, but we would have to have a contract with some of the companies in the defence industry”. In the meantime, they are intended for use by fire-fighters, police or park rangers, Mulaosmanovic told BIRN.
Dzebic said he saw “no reason why those drones could not be used for military purposes”.
“The problem is that the current Bosnian defence industry does not have the capacity to produce such weapons on mass scale,” he told BIRN.
Helez told BIRN that Bosnia is currently negotiating with a Swedish company to open a drone factory. He said he would join Vedran Lakic, Mining, Energy and Industry Minister of Bosnia’s Federation entity, in Sweden on September 25 “to arrange the deal to open an assembly line in Bosnia for civilian drones”.
“And when it comes to drones of homemade production,” Helez said, “they are multi-purpose and can quickly be adjusted to fit military purposes by changing the payload platform.”
© 2024, GDC. © GDC and www.globaldefensecorp.com. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to www.globaldefensecorp.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
