In February we covered Turkey pairing its KAAN fighter with two ANKA III stealth drones, in Die Türkei kombiniert den KAAN mit zwei Roboter-Flügelmännern. A crewed fighter commanding uncrewed ones is now a familiar idea.
On 14 August, Turkish Aerospace posted flight imagery of something a step further along: the ANKA III itself, airborne, carrying two smaller autonomous drones under its wings.
Not a fighter commanding drones. A drone carrying its own strike team.
Kurzinfo
| Platform | TAI / TUSAŞ ANKA III stealth flying-wing UCAV |
| Carried | 2 × SÜPER ŞIMŞEK jet-powered autonomous UAVs |
| Imagery released | 14 August 2026, Turkish Aerospace official channels |
| Concept name | OKU — Otonom Kol Uçucusu (Autonomous Wingman) |
| ANKA III | 7.9 m long, 12.5 m span, 6,500 kg MTOW, 1,200 kg payload |
| ANKA III performance | Mach 0.7, 40,000 ft ceiling, around 10 hours endurance |
| Motor | 1 × Ivchenko-Progress AI-322 turbofan (prototypes) |
| Süper Şimşek | ~4 m long, 200 kg MTOW, 35–50 kg payload, ~80 min endurance |
| Süper Şimşek range | 700 km, or ~900 km air-launched — sources differ |
| First release test | 8 April 2025, single drone at 10,130 ft and 150 kt |
What Is Actually New Here
The individual pieces are not new. ANKA III released a single Süper Şimşek in flight in April 2025, at 10,130 feet and 150 knots. A full-scale ANKA-3 with two of them on external wing hardpoints was shown statically at SAHA Expo in May 2026.
What August adds is the twin configuration airborne. One aircraft, two autonomous munitions, in the air together.
Note the restraint in that post. Turkish Aerospace published the imagery with a hashtag and nothing else. The widely quoted caption “Gizli Güç” — Secret Power — is reported by Interesting Engineering and appears tied to a separate posting; it is not on the X post itself. Worth knowing before it hardens into fact.
Why Send a Drone to Launch Drones
The logic is depth. Air defence networks are layered, and the innermost layers are the ones you least want to fly a valuable aircraft into.
The Süper Şimşek is built for exactly that. Its payload options include radar and infrared signature augmentation to make it look like a much larger aircraft, chaff and flares, jammers, electro-optical sensors, electronic support receivers, and a 20 to 50 kilogram warhead for one-way attack. An air-to-air variant uses an imaging infrared seeker.
Send a pair ahead of the ANKA III and an integrated air defence system has to choose: illuminate them and reveal every emitter position, or hold fire and let them through. Either answer is useful to the side that launched them, and neither costs a crewed aircraft.
The Three-Tier Architecture, Still Incomplete
Read alongside the February KAAN demonstration, the shape of what Turkey is building is clear enough: a crewed fighter commanding stealth drones, which in turn release expendable autonomous munitions. Three tiers, each cheaper and more expendable than the one above it.
The pieces exist individually. Several Süper Şimşek reportedly entered Turkish Air Force service in March 2026. KAAN and two ANKA-3s have flown in coordinated formation. ANKA III has now flown with two Süper Şimşek aboard.
The full chain, all three tiers operating together, has not been shown publicly. Until it is, this remains an impressive set of components rather than a demonstrated system — and the prototypes are still flying on a Ukrainian-designed engine while Turkey’s own TF6000 and TF10000 remain in development.
Turkey has a habit of closing gaps like that faster than expected.
Sources: Turkish Aerospace (TUSAŞ) official X post, 14 August 2026; TURDEF, 8 April 2025; Army Recognition, 6 May 2026; Interesting Engineering, 17 August 2026. Range and speed figures for the Süper Şimşek differ between sources and are given as ranges.
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