ANKA-3 vs X-47B: Two Flying Wings, Two Very Different Questions

One silhouette, two questions

The flying wing has an unhelpful side effect on defence literacy: anything shaped like one gets filed next to everything else shaped like one. In the unmanned combat air vehicle world, though, a shared planform says almost nothing about a shared job. Tailless geometry is simply the most direct route to a smaller radar cross-section, so unrelated programmes keep arriving at the same shape. The difference lies in the question each programme was built to answer.

The ANKA-3 and the Northrop Grumman X-47B are a clean illustration. One serves Türkiye’s requirement for a low-observable, internally armed strike UAV flying from a runway. The other answered a far narrower engineering question for the US Navy more than a decade ago, and retired once it had the answer. What follows sets the two against official sources — and says so plainly wherever the official source does not exist.

ANKA-3: a combat line that works from a runway

Turkish Aerospace’s official product page gives the ANKA-III a length of 7.9 m, a wingspan of 12.5 m and a height of 2.5 m, with a maximum take-off weight of 6,500 kg and a payload capacity of 1,200 kg. Turbofan propulsion takes it to 425 kt (Mach 0.7) at 30,000 ft; cruising at 250 kt (Mach 0.42) it stays airborne for 10 hours, with a service ceiling of 40,000 ft. The manufacturer lists two internal and five external payload stations, and names low radar observability, manned-unmanned teaming and AI-assisted swarm work among its capability headings.

The maiden flight came at 08:38 on 28 December 2023. Turkish Aerospace reported a flight of 1 hour 10 minutes reaching 8,000 ft and 150 kt, with a HÜRKUŞ trainer and an ANKA flying chase. Türkiye’s Presidency of Defence Industries announced the flight through its own channels.

What came next is where a demonstrator and a combat aircraft part company. The ANKA-3 started dropping things. Turkish Aerospace announced the release of an ASELSAN-built TOLUN munition from the internal weapons station — take-off from Mürted at 12:04, release at 20,000 ft and 180 kt over the Konya Karapınar range. The manufacturer frames it as the first internal-bay munition release by a nationally developed aircraft in Türkiye. A release test with ASELSAN’s LGK-82 guidance kit followed.

Then there is the part that makes this comparison genuinely interesting. The ANKA-3 does not only carry munitions; it can release another aircraft. Turkish Aerospace announced an air-launch test of the nationally developed Super Şimşek high-subsonic UAV from the ANKA III. After separation, Super Şimşek flew a 50-minute autonomous mission and recovered by parachute. The manufacturer credits the air-launched system with up to 800 km of range and a warhead of up to 50 kg, and describes a mission profile built around autonomous formation flight, triggering air defences early and engaging what is found.

X-47B: two aircraft built to settle one argument

The X-47B is best understood by what it was not: a combat aircraft. The US Navy’s own CHIPS publication traces it to DARPA’s J-UCAS programme, credits Northrop Grumman with its development, and states its purpose as demonstrating carrier suitability for an unmanned air vehicle. The same article says there were no plans to operationalise the X-47B. Northrop Grumman confirms that just two air vehicles were built.

First flight came in early February 2011 at Edwards Air Force Base in California. By December 2012 the aircraft was at sea aboard USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) off Virginia, being towed and taxied across the flight deck with an arm-mounted control display unit and run through electromagnetic testing. The Navy’s account puts the wingspan at 62 feet — roughly 17 feet wider than an F/A-18 Super Hornet, which matters a great deal when the question is whether it fits the deck and the hangar bay.

The decisive year was 2013. Northrop Grumman’s release of 10 July 2013 records that the X-47B became the first unmanned aircraft catapult-launched from a Nimitz-class carrier on 14 May, flew the first unmanned precision approaches and touch-and-go landings on a carrier on 17 May, and made the first arrested landing aboard USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) at 12:23 Eastern on 10 July. It completed the 35-minute transit from Pax River, caught the three-wire, and came from roughly 145 knots to a stop in less than 350 feet.

The final objective fell on 22 April 2015. According to the US Navy, the X-47B connected to an Omega K-707 tanker off Maryland and Virginia and took on more than 4,000 pounds of fuel by the probe-and-drogue method — the first autonomous aerial refuelling of an unmanned aircraft. It exchanged messages with a government-designed Refueling Interface System aboard the tanker and flew its fixed probe into the basket unaided. Capt. Beau Duarte, the Navy’s unmanned carrier aviation programme manager, called the ability to transfer and receive fuel autonomously a step that would extend the range and flexibility of future unmanned platforms.

The mission-concept divide

This is the fault line. The X-47B’s problem was never delivering ordnance to a target; it was landing precisely on a pitching steel deck, at night and in weather, with no pilot aboard. That demanded folding wings, a tailhook, a catapult interface, a ship-based control architecture and data links that survive one of the harshest electromagnetic environments in existence. Weapons integration was not in scope.

The ANKA-3’s problem runs the other way. The runway is a given; the mission is the hard part. Penetrating with a low signature, releasing from an internal bay, carrying electronic warfare and intelligence payloads, teaming with crewed aircraft. That is why its test calendar is measured in weapon releases and payload integration, while the X-47B’s was measured in deck operations and autonomy.

The figures, side by side

Sources: Turkish Aerospace product page and press releases; Northrop Grumman press release; US Navy CHIPS and NAVAIR announcements. No figure has been estimated where a manufacturer-signed source is absent.

Operators and programme status

Here the difference is at its most concrete. The X-47B’s operator was the US Navy and its use was testing: never exported, never serially produced, never issued to a squadron. Both airframes left the flight line once the programme closed. The Navy’s own publication said the knowledge would carry into later carrier-based unmanned work — and indeed the unmanned aircraft the US is now maturing for the carrier deck is a tanker, not a strike aircraft.

The ANKA-3 sits inside Türkiye’s own force planning and continues through development and capability expansion. Turkish Aerospace has publicised multiple ANKA IIIs flying together and a formation flight with the HÜRJET, which indicates a programme running on more than a single prototype. Production numbers, delivery schedules and unit cost, however, have no published official figure — in those rows, no verified data exists in open sources.

Where each one stands apart

Limits on both sides

The ANKA-3 remains in capability expansion. Weapon releases have happened; fleet numbers, delivery timelines and an operational record have not been published. The engine is identified only as a turbofan on the manufacturer’s page. The distance between a capability list and sustained performance in the field is closed by time, not by announcements.

The X-47B’s limit is sharper still: it was never tested as a combat system. Flight clearance for testing was capped at 15,000 ft and 220 knots, which means the 40,000 ft ceiling and the high-subsonic speed class were design targets rather than flown results. It carried no weapons, integrated no mission payloads and flew no operational sortie. Its achievements are engineering thresholds, not combat performance.

What this means from Türkiye’s perspective

The ANKA-3 marks a change of category rather than of scale in Türkiye’s unmanned aviation. The country’s best-known drones so far have been propeller-driven, long-endurance, comparatively slow platforms carrying their weapons under the wing. A turbofan aircraft with an internal bay, designed around a low signature, is built for a different air defence environment altogether.

The X-47B’s relevance to Türkiye is not rivalry but a map of problems. Türkiye’s national aircraft carrier work and its unmanned aviation experience aboard TCG Anadolu will eventually meet the same walls the X-47B met in 2013: autonomous recovery onto a moving deck, catapult or short-deck launch, ship-based control architecture, electromagnetic resilience. The X-47B proved those walls can be cleared — and, just as usefully, showed how narrow and how expensive clearing them is. The US Navy itself did not take the aircraft into service.

Assessment