The Nigerian military has added the Turkish Songar UAV to its growing drone fleet. At least 10 drones have been procured.
In an interview Mustafa Barış Düzgün, the general manager of Asisguard confirmed the sale to Nigeria.
The Songar armed drone is manufactured by Turkish company Asisguard, which develops systems, subsystems, hardware and software in the fields of military land vehicles electronics, autonomous micro, mini and middle-class UAVs, electro-optics, border security, artificial intelligence and big data.
Asisguard General Manager, Mustafa Barış Duzgun, said at the press conference that the company, which has made a name for itself with weapon drone systems, also has many products for electro-optical imaging systems.
SONGAR Armed Drone System can perform tasks such as target area detection, threat neutralization, post-operative damage detection and real-time image transmission.
The drone system can be integrated with automatic machine guns and grenade launchers, and equipped with a proprietary Electronic Sight and Ballistic Calculation Module.
This new acquisition comes amid earlier reports that Nigeria has ordered Turkish drones although, the exact type is still uncertain, however, unofficial sources indicate that Abuja opted for either the Bayraktar TB2 or Akinci drone, or even both.
Senator Ali Ndume, Chairman Senate Committee on Army, in a recent media interview explained that Nigerian UAV pilots are currently undergoing training in Turkey.
In January, Nigeria and Turkey entered talks on defence collaboration in counter-terrorism support as well as the acquisition of various military hardware which may include attack helicopters, armed drones, and other infantry systems.
At the meeting, leading Turkish defence companies pitched their hardware to the Nigerian military leadership in a bid to make some sales including TUSAŞ, OTOKAR, Roketsan, BMC, Tais Shipyard, Katmerciler, ASELSAN, TAI and 10 others.
Asisguard Songar armed drone appears to have equal capabilities with Nigeria’s indigenous Hexacoper armed drone built four years ago by the Aur Force Institute of Technology.
The Hexacopter drone development may have stalled due to funding constraints or lack of technical capacity.