Israel has been the world’s biggest supplier of loitering munitions (suicide drones) over the past 28 years according to research by the Center for New American Security (CNAS).
The report surveys trends between 1995 and 2023 and found that while demand for the various types of military drones grew, Israel took first place in the field of loitering munitions, while Turkey was the world’s leading supplier of armed drones. While armed drones operate weapons designed to attack a target, suicide drones explode on them.
Turkey only entered the market only in 2018, and according to the study made more deliveries of armed drones than any other country (47), followed by China (34), the US (12), Iran (8), and Israel (6). The major purchasers of armed drones over the period reviewed in the report were the UK (9), Nigeria and the UAE (7 each), Algeria (6), Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (5 each).
The war which boosted demand
Turkey has benefitted from the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war, which began in 2022 with Kiev procuring extensive numbers of Bayraktar TB2 armed drones, with 98 deliveries in armed drones, more than any other year in 2022. The number of deliveries in 2023 fell to 56, while a decade earlier in 2012 there were only 27 deliveries of armed drones. Since then wars like the Libyan civil war have broken out as well as Azerbaijan’s conflict with Armenia in Nagorno Karabakh.
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