ANKA and TAPAS: Same Class, Two Different Outcomes — The MALE Drone Programmes of Türkiye and India

Two countries set out, in the same class and in adjacent periods, to build their own medium-altitude long-endurance unmanned aircraft. They reached first flight at almost identical speed: ANKA six years after contract, TAPAS five years after approval. The paths separated afterwards. Within a decade one was exported to three countries and had passed 400,000 flight hours; the other lost its mission-mode status. The point of divergence was not the engine. It was the decisions taken after the first flight.

How this comparison was built

This is the third part of a series, following the general drone programme picture and the Türkiye–Europe MALE file. The first two looked at multi-country tables; this one takes a single pair, because ANKA and TAPAS are the most directly comparable programmes in the set: both were developed by a state research and production body, both were their country’s first indigenous MALE attempt, both chose the twin-boom pusher-propeller architecture, and both targeted a similar payload.

On both sides the programme start is the formal development decision or contract date; concept work, feasibility studies and announcements do not count. The comparison runs on programme age rather than calendar year: ANKA’s sixth year falls in 2010, TAPAS’s sixth year in 2017. That is a methodological choice in India’s favour, because the autopilot software, composite materials and satellite communications environment of 2011 were more mature than those of 2004.

Class boundaries are held. ANKA-3, turbofan-powered and low observable, is an unmanned combat air vehicle demonstrator and does not appear in the measurement tables; it appears in the timeline only as context.

Why the two programmes are comparable

The most common error in comparative analysis is measuring dissimilar programmes with the same ruler. ANKA and TAPAS do not carry that risk, because their similarities are structural rather than superficial. Both were developed by the state’s research and production organisation: TUSAŞ in Türkiye, the Aeronautical Development Establishment under DRDO in India. Both were their country’s first indigenous MALE attempt, with no design inheritance to build on. Both chose the classical twin-boom, pusher-propeller MALE architecture and targeted a payload in the 350-kilogram band. And the primary mission definition of both is intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

The differences are equally clear and are addressed separately below: TAPAS was designed with a larger airframe and a higher altitude target, and India’s operating environment is markedly harder than Türkiye’s. Both points are recorded at the outset so that the comparison is read fairly.

Up to first flight, the two programmes moved at the same speed

This is the most surprising finding in the file. Türkiye’s ANKA contract was signed in December 2004; the platform was rolled out on 16 July 2010 and flew on 30 December 2010. From contract to first flight: six years. India’s Rustom-II project was approved in 2011 with a budget of ₹1,540.74 crore; ADE announced in February 2012 that the design was complete, full-power taxi tests began at Kolar in September 2013, and the platform flew at Challakere on 16 November 2016. From approval to first flight: five years.

Measured by programme age, India therefore completed the prototype phase one year faster. That directly refutes the widespread assumption that TAPAS was weak as an engineering effort. The problem did not lie in design or production capability.

The starting conditions were not the same

A shared timeline

The chart below places the two programmes side by side on calendar years. The left column shows events on the Turkish side, the right column those on the Indian side.

The point of divergence: the eight years after first flight

Aligning the eight years following each first flight makes the divergence visible. For ANKA that window is 2010–2018; for TAPAS it is 2016–2024.

The table shows one thing very clearly: TAPAS was technically progressing. Altitude rose from 16,000 feet to 25,000 and then 28,000; endurance stretched from 8 hours to 18; autonomous take-off and landing was demonstrated in November 2021; the flight count passed 200. The programme did not stop — it simply could not catch the line drawn for it. What ANKA did in the same period was different: instead of waiting for maturity and then taking an order, it took the order and went on maturing.

Two procurement philosophies: threshold test and incremental maturing

This distinction is one of the most important structural findings in the series and reflects a choice in each country’s procurement culture. India’s joint service qualitative requirements system requires a platform to clear a predefined performance threshold before it can enter the inventory. The logic is sound: user services are not forced to accept a platform below the capability they need.

For indigenous development programmes, however, the model produces a heavy side effect. No order comes before the threshold is cleared; no serial line is built without an order; without a line, unit cost does not fall and user feedback does not flow. The Turkish model instead brings an immature platform inside an early order and runs development and production in parallel.

The table should not be read in one direction only. Incremental maturing carries its own risk: a platform that has not cleared the threshold can enter service, and the force may have to live with a capability below its requirement. Türkiye took that risk knowingly with ANKA. India’s model refused to pass the same risk to the user — a defensible choice, whose price was the programme itself.

The engine: a bottleneck shared by both programmes

In the MALE class, ceiling and endurance are set directly by the engine. Both programmes flew on imported engines and both tried to indigenise. The results diverged.

On the Turkish side the TEI-PD170 turbodiesel, developed by TEI, made its first flight fitted to an ANKA on 27 December 2018 and then entered serial production. Counted from the contract, engine independence took fourteen years — not a short time. But the critical point is this: the engine delay did not stop the platform being used operationally. ANKA kept flying in the inventory in its imported-engine configuration and the domestic engine entered the fleet progressively once ready.

For TAPAS the engine issue determined the programme’s fate. The prototypes flew on two 100-horsepower NPO Saturn 36T turboprops; 220-horsepower domestic engines were planned for the production configuration. The gap between prototype power and target altitude is the technical basis for stalling at 28,000 feet and 18 hours. The plan for a first flight on the domestic engine was reported to the Indian parliamentary defence committee in 2025 — meaning engine independence fell after the programme had lost its status.

Flight hours: the real fuel of maturity

A platform matures in the field, not in the laboratory. TUSAŞ states that the ANKA family has passed 400,000 flight hours, the bulk of them from operational use after 2018. Sensor performance, data-link dropouts, maintenance intervals, human-machine interface problems — all of these surface only on real missions, and each corrects the next configuration.

The 200 flights TAPAS had reached by 27 June 2023 accumulated across four prototypes under test-range conditions. That figure is not a sign of failure — it is a respectable number of development flights. But it is not comparable to the volume of feedback generated by operational use. The programme never reached the stage where it would produce the data needed to correct itself. This is a different view of the pattern identified in the European MALE file: a programme that cannot enter the feedback loop keeps chasing its target without catching it.

Serial production, exports and an overseas production base

ANKA’s serial production began with the 2013 contract, and exports became a second source of demand supporting the continuity of the line. Tunisia signed in 2020 as ANKA’s first export user. According to an Anadolu Agency report of November 2021, the contract with Kazakhstan covered three ANKA aircraft and two ground systems, together with a logistics support package of technical documentation, training and spares, for delivery by 2023. Chad is also among ANKA’s users.

The real significance of exports for the programme is not the quantity but the continuity. The memorandum TUSAŞ signed with Kazakhstan Engineering covers joint production and maintenance, repair and overhaul, along with technology transfer — meaning ANKA’s first production base outside Türkiye. A platform becoming producible in another country is the most concrete evidence that its design has reached documentation and repeatability maturity. The breadth of the Turkish industry’s product line is visible in TUSAŞ’s current product range.

TAPAS never reached a serial production contract; the four platforms built were for development and test. Exports never arose for a platform that had not entered its own services.

Where the Turkish programme made the difference

The limits of this comparison

Where India is strong

It would be wrong to draw a general verdict about the Indian defence industry from the TAPAS outcome. Over the same period DRDO produced uninterrupted results in the missile field — a ballistic missile family, air defence systems and a jointly produced cruise missile. The problem was not institutional capability but the specific configuration of this programme.

Nor was the TAPAS work wasted. Its autonomous flight software, ground control station architecture and sensor integration were transferred to Archer-NG, a platform resized for high-altitude conditions and developed with weapon integration in view. A programme losing its status and a technology being lost are not the same thing.

India’s procurement scale is a source of strength in its own right. The 97-platform MALE acquisition the country has planned is among the largest unmanned aircraft procurements anywhere. Press reporting suggests TAPAS will fall outside that acquisition; that has not been officially confirmed and is not presented here as settled fact. Indian large-scale procurement generally runs over long timescales, as our coverage of the 60-aircraft transport tender illustrates.

Delays and their causes

The EM-PDI comparison

The Envanter Medya Programme Development Index is an editorial framework scoring, out of 100, how far a programme became a product in a user’s hands. It does not score technical superiority. Weights: operational service 20, serial production 15, exports 15, production scale 10, technological independence 10, subsystem integration 10, schedule performance 10, modernisation continuity 5, user diversity 5.

TAPAS’s 19 points are not the score of a technical failure but of a failure to become a product: operational service, serial production, exports, production scale and user diversity are all zero, and the entire score comes from technological accumulation and subsystem integration. Archer-NG’s 22 is similarly an early-stage score and would be expected to rise as the programme advances.

Category-by-category verdict

This series does not declare a single winner. Each category is judged on its own measure, and the result table shows separately who leads where.

Türkiye leads on the items that turn a design into a product; India on starting capability and the ambition of the requirement. That confirms the file’s central argument: what determines programme speed is not the resource but the decision architecture through which the resource is used.

Today, and the next five years

On the Turkish side the ANKA family continues to expand; platforms opening into different classes, such as AKSUNGUR and ANKA-3, have emerged from the same engineering pool. The question in front of the programme is no longer whether it will become a product but how far it can step out of the TB2’s shadow in the export market: as a larger and more expensive platform, ANKA addresses a different buyer profile. Recent activity gives a sense of the market — from AKINCI deliveries to Mali to the first recorded air-to-air engagement between armed unmanned aircraft over Sudan, and the industry’s global position is examined in our review of Turkish Aerospace’s world ranking.

On the Indian side two lines are advancing in parallel. TAPAS is continuing field validation with the domestic engine and retains its role as a technology demonstrator. Archer-NG stands out as the next-generation platform, sized for high-altitude conditions and aiming at weapon integration. How India’s large-scale MALE acquisition takes shape will determine what share indigenous programmes reach over the next five years — in a market where Chinese platforms are also competing hard.

The next file in the series applies the same framework to the military drone programmes of Türkiye and Russia, where the central question is why a country with a broad aviation industrial base came late to unmanned aircraft.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and method

The dates, quantities and performance data in this file are compiled solely from manufacturer, procurement authority, programme authority and official news agency statements. Unverifiable claims about orders, exports or costs have been excluded.

• TUSAŞ — ANKA product page: design values, ANKA-S serial production contract (October 2013), 400,000+ flight hours across the family.
• TUSAŞ — announcement of the Kazakhstan joint production memorandum.
• TEI — TEI-PD170 turbodiesel aviation engine; first flight on ANKA, 27 December 2018.
• Anadolu Agency, 27 November 2021 — export of three ANKA and two ground systems to Kazakhstan, logistics support package and delivery schedule.
• DRDO / Aeronautical Development Establishment programme notifications — TAPAS BH-201 approval budget, first flight, altitude and endurance milestones, 200th flight, and the status change of 14 January 2024.
• Presentations to the Indian parliamentary defence committee — domestic engine flight plan.

Editorial note: the distinction between an order, a delivery, a negotiation and an operational user is preserved throughout. A platform under evaluation is not the same as a platform in service. For TAPAS the phrase “did not reach its intended role; the technology base was handed on” is preferred over “failed”: although the programme did not enter serial production or operational service, development activity continues.