Illustrative title card. ISC open-source assessment, 17 June 2026. A sourced image will accompany the published edition.

Italy Clears the Leonardo-Baykar Drone Venture: Which Leonardo Systems Could Upgrade Baykar's UAVs

Technical Summary

Italy's Council of Ministers has granted conditional approval, under the country's "golden power" foreign-investment screening regime, to the 50/50 joint venture between Leonardo S.p.A. and Türkiye's Baykar Technologies. The venture, named LBA Systems and headquartered in Italy, covers the design, development, production and support of uncrewed aerial systems (UAS). Reporting in the Italian daily Il Messaggero, carried onward by Reuters, sets out two binding conditions: international business may be directed only at states "aligned" with European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) policy, and the technologies used in the aircraft are to be treated as classified, with the Italian intelligence services imposing additional confidentiality controls.

The headline is political, but the substance is engineering. The agreed division of labour places Baykar in the lead on airframe and flight-control design, where it is the world's largest exporter of armed drones, while Leonardo supplies the mission systems: radar, electro-optics, electronic warfare (EW) and weapon integration. This piece sets the deal in context, then spends the bulk of its length on the question that matters to capability planners: which specific Leonardo products could be fitted to Baykar's TB2, TB3, Akinci and Kizilelma, and what each would actually add.

Golden power did not block the deal. It fenced it: sales restricted to EU and NATO-aligned states, and every drone technology classified, with the Italian intelligence services holding the confidentiality ring. ISC assessment of the 17 June 2026 conditions

The Deal and Its Conditions

The venture has a clear lineage. Leonardo and Baykar signed a memorandum of understanding in Rome in March 2025, formalised the 50/50 joint venture as LBA Systems at the Paris Air Show in June 2025, and through late 2025 set out an Italian industrial footprint for the work. Open-source reporting places Kizilelma composite manufacture at Grottaglie, TB3 manufacture and final assembly at Ronchi dei Legionari, and Akinci and TB2 final assembly at Villanova d'Albenga. Separately, Baykar completed its acquisition of Piaggio Aerospace in July 2025, giving the Turkish firm an existing Italian aerostructures and engines base to build from.

News footage of the launch at Le Bourget:

The golden-power conditions are the new element. Italy's golden power, set out in Decree-Law 21/2012 (converted into Law 56/2012) and broadened repeatedly since, lets the government attach binding conditions to, or block outright, foreign investment in strategic sectors including defence. The "aligned states only" clause is an export-control fence drawn at the joint-venture level rather than the individual-licence level: it pre-commits the venture's customer base to the EU and NATO political camp before any single sale is assessed. The classification condition, with the intelligence services overseeing confidentiality, is aimed at protecting Italian and European mission-system know-how inside a structure that is half-owned by a non-EU, non-NATO-headquartered shareholder. Both conditions point the same way. Italy wants Baykar's airframes and production volume, but it wants the high-value electronics, and the customer list, kept under European control.

Reading Baykar's Current Fit

An important caveat frames the whole capability discussion. Baykar's platforms are not empty airframes waiting for sensors. The Akinci already carries a Turkish active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, the ASELSAN MURAD family, together with the ASELFLIR-500 electro-optical/infra-red (EO/IR) targeting turret and a signals-intelligence and EW fit. The TB3 flies with ASELFLIR-500 and has been seen carrying ASELSAN ANTIDOT self-protection EW pods. Kizilelma has been tested with the MURAD AESA radar, a Toygun EO turret and the GOKDOGAN beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile.

So the Leonardo opportunity is not, in most cases, filling a blank. It is offering a European alternative subsystem that does three things at once: it satisfies the golden-power requirement for European-controlled, EU and NATO-aligned content; it removes US International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Turkish export-permission friction for European customers; and, in selected areas, it brings a genuinely distinct capability that Baykar does not field today. The table below grades each candidate Leonardo system by how firmly it has been signalled for these platforms.

Maturity key: Flight-trialled / proven = demonstrated on a real platform. Signalled = named for Baykar integration in Leonardo's Industrial Plan 2025 but not yet flown on a Baykar type. Concept = plausible on capability grounds and discussed publicly, not formally committed.

Sensors: Radar and Electro-Optics

Leonardo's clearest near-term contribution is in the sensor bay. In its Industrial Plan 2025, Leonardo named four sensor lines for Baykar integration: the Gabbiano nose radar, the Osprey AESA family, the Skyward IRST and the LEOSS EO/IR turret.

The Gabbiano is a modular surveillance radar with synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and ground moving-target indication (GMTI) modes and an instrumented range of around 220 nautical miles in the maritime surveillance mode. Its physical form factor suits the nose volume of the larger Baykar types, which is why open-source analysis links it to the Akinci and TB3. For a maritime-patrol or wide-area land-surveillance customer, a nose radar of this class turns a primarily EO/IR aircraft into an all-weather, day-or-night search platform that can cue its own optics onto contacts at range rather than relying on the narrow field of view of a turret.

The Osprey family is Leonardo's second-generation AESA surveillance radar. It is offered in several sizes scaled to the airframe, with Osprey 30 the lightest member; all use a fixed, flat-panel array with no mechanically scanning parts, which lowers weight, drag and maintenance burden and allows multiple panels to give wide angular coverage. On a medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) class platform such as the Akinci, an AESA of this type supports simultaneous air-to-surface, maritime and limited air-to-air modes from a single aperture, and offers electronic protection against jamming that older mechanically scanned sets cannot match.

The LEOSS S/T is Leonardo's stabilised EO/IR targeting turret. Functionally it overlaps with the Turkish ASELFLIR-500 already fitted to TB3 and Akinci, so the case for it is less about new capability and more about supply-chain control: a European EO/IR turret with European laser designation keeps the targeting chain inside the EU and NATO content boundary the golden-power conditions demand, and avoids re-export questions when the venture sells into European air forces.

The Skyward IRST is the most interesting sensor on the list because it is the one that opens a new mission rather than re-sourcing an old one. IRST detects the heat signature of an aircraft passively, without radiating, which means a Kizilelma using Skyward could track and engage an adversary without lighting up its own radar and giving away its position. That is precisely the sensing philosophy of a stealthy, fighter-like unmanned combat air vehicle. Skyward is already in service on the Saab Gripen, so it is a mature fighter-grade sensor rather than a development item. It is the clearest technical signal that Leonardo sees Kizilelma in the air-to-air and loyal-wingman role, not merely as a strike drone.

Electronic Warfare: BriteStorm

Leonardo's BriteStorm is a stand-in jammer designed expressly for small, attritable uncrewed platforms. It weighs around 2.5 kilograms and is built around a Miniature Techniques Generator paired with transmit-receive modules and antennas. Crucially, it uses digital radio-frequency memory (DRFM), the technique that captures an enemy radar's pulse and replays a manipulated copy to create false targets, range and angle errors, and the impression of multiple "ghost" aircraft. BriteStorm has already completed flight trials with the UK Royal Air Force.

For Baykar, BriteStorm fits two roles. As a self-protection payload it lets a TB3 or Kizilelma degrade the tracking solution of a surface-to-air or air-to-air radar that has locked it. As a stand-in jamming role it lets a cheap, expendable drone fly into the threat envelope and screen more valuable manned or unmanned aircraft behind it, generating confusion at the point where it does most damage to the enemy air picture. Baykar does field Turkish EW pods such as ANTIDOT, so BriteStorm is again partly a European-content alternative, but its DRFM core and demonstrated airworthiness on an attritable form factor make it a credible capability addition in its own right, particularly for European customers who want a NATO-sourced jammer.

Weapons: The MBDA Lever

Leonardo holds a 25 percent shareholding in the European missile house MBDA, alongside Airbus and BAE Systems. That stake is the venture's most under-appreciated lever, because it gives LBA Systems a route to fit European precision weapons to Baykar airframes for European buyers.

The obvious candidate is Brimstone. The current Brimstone 3 carries a dual-mode seeker, combining semi-active laser guidance with a millimetric-wave radar seeker, which lets it strike fast-moving and manoeuvring targets in conditions where a laser-only weapon would struggle. Leonardo has already integrated Brimstone onto its own Falco Xplorer MALE drone, so the airframe-to-missile engineering path is partly walked. A Brimstone-armed Akinci or TB3 would give a European operator a NATO-standard, moving-target precision weapon without depending on Turkish or US munitions clearances. Beyond Brimstone, MBDA's Marte ER anti-ship missile is a plausible heavyweight option for the Akinci in a maritime-strike fit, though that remains a concept rather than a committed line.

The Strategic Payload: Loyal Wingman and GCAP

The most consequential integration may not be a box on the aircraft at all, but the control architecture around it. Leonardo is a core partner in the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), the sixth-generation fighter effort led by Italy, the United Kingdom and Japan, and it has publicly floated Kizilelma as a candidate loyal-wingman for that programme. In 2026, Leonardo's M-346 has been used in trials to control Kizilelma air vehicles in a manned-unmanned teaming demonstration.

This is where the sensor choices connect. A Kizilelma carrying Skyward IRST for passive air-to-air detection, BriteStorm for stand-in jamming, and a European datalink and mission system from Leonardo, controlled from a manned GCAP-generation aircraft, is a far more strategically integrated asset than a strike drone with a turret and a guided bomb. It also explains the golden-power emphasis on classified technology: the teaming waveforms, mission software and combat-cloud interfaces that make a loyal-wingman useful are exactly the know-how Italy will not want flowing outside European control.

Near-Term Proof Point: TB3 at Sea

The venture already has a concrete first customer, and it is Italian. In March 2026 the Italian Navy moved to operate the Bayraktar TB3 from its flagship carrier Cavour, a programme being taken forward through LBA Systems with Leonardo mission-system content. That would make Italy the first European operator of the type. The fit is not accidental: the TB3 was designed from the outset for short-deck, ramp-assisted launch from ski-jump ships, the same flight regime Baykar proved aboard Türkiye's TCG Anadolu, and Cavour shares that short take-off and vertical-landing deck layout. For the Italian Navy it offers a carrier-borne uncrewed intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and light-strike capability without waiting for a crewed fast-jet solution.

This is where the engineering case stops being theoretical. A carrier-based, European-content TB3 needs exactly the things the joint venture is structured to supply: a sensor and mission-system fit that an EU and NATO navy can certify and export-control on its own terms, secure datalinks, and military airworthiness sign-off, all areas Leonardo owns under the division of labour. It also illustrates the wider point. The near-term return on the partnership is a proven, high-volume airframe (TB3) carrying European electronics into European service, while the longer and more strategic prize, the Kizilelma unmanned fighter in the air-combat and loyal-wingman role, matures behind it.

Data Gaps

Several parameters remain open and should be treated as such. The full text of the golden-power prescriptions is not public, so the precise definition of "aligned" states, and any carve-outs, cannot be confirmed. Leonardo's Industrial Plan 2025 names sensors as candidates for Baykar integration but does not constitute a flown, qualified fit on any Baykar type, so all sensor pairings here are signalled intent rather than confirmed configurations. Weapon integration timelines, the specific Osprey and Gabbiano variants intended, and whether MBDA weapons beyond Brimstone are formally on the roadmap are not established in open sources. Figures for Baykar revenue (above two billion euros annually) and the ten-year market (around 100 billion in the group's own estimate) are company and press figures, not independently audited.

Corrections & updates welcome. If you hold open-source data that refines or corrects any parameter in this article, please contact [email protected] citing the specific claim and your source. Verified corrections will be incorporated and credited in the revision history. AI-assisted technical assessment based on open-source material. Not a formal intelligence product.