By Simone Chiusa
On March 25, the Chief of the Italian Navy, Vice Admiral Giuseppe Berutti Bergotto, appeared before the Italian Senate’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee for his first parliamentary hearing since taking command in November 2025. His remarks included a disclosure that will reshape European naval aviation: Italy intends to acquire the Turkish Bayraktar TB3 drone, to be operated from the aircraft carrier Cavour. With this move, Italy is set to become the first European operator of a carrier-capable armed drone.
The Bayraktar TB3 is a navalized evolution of the TB2, the Turkish-made drone already seen in combat in Ukraine, Libya, and Syria. It was built specifically for operations from short-deck carriers, with design features like folding wings for deck handling and storage, reinforced landing gear for carrier operations, and systems adapted for maritime environments. It carries a 280kg payload and can be armed with more than six precision-guided munitions. The TB3 is also compatible with loitering munitions and supersonic missiles.
The TB3, Vice Admiral Berutti Bergotto told senators, would be acquired through Leonardo and integrated aboard the Cavour, providing both surveillance and the possibility of carrying armament. The procurement pathway runs through LBA Systems, the joint venture that Leonardo and Baykar established in 2025. LBA Systems is headquartered in Italy and tasked with the design, development, production, and maintenance of unmanned aerial systems. Video footage presented during the Senate hearing showed a TB3 taking off from the Turkish amphibious assault ship TCG Anadolu, with Italian military personnel present aboard the vessel, confirming that cooperation between Rome and Ankara on carrier drone integration was already well advanced before the parliamentary announcement.
The timing of Italy’s decision follows the TB3’s standout performance during NATO’s Steadfast Dart 2026 exercise in the Baltic Sea, the Alliance’s largest joint deployment drill of the year. Approximately 10,000 personnel from 13 allied nations participated. Notably, no US forces took part, an omission that underscored the exercise’s implicit test of Europe’s capacity to project force independently of US assistance. Three TB3 prototypes embarked on TCG Anadolu completed over 200 sorties between January and March 2026. They operated in freezing temperatures as low as minus six degrees Celsius, with strong winds and heavy snowfall. On February 14, a TB3 autonomously took off from the Anadolu, engaged a floating sea target with two precision-guided munitions, and recovered safely aboard. This was the first full ship-to-target combat cycle for a carrier-based drone in NATO exercise history. Moreover, a TB3 flew a reported eight-hour, 1,700-kilometer joint sortie alongside Eurofighter Typhoons over the Baltic, demonstrating manned-unmanned teaming in a live operational context. Turkish Naval Forces Commander Admiral Ercument Tatlioglu described the exercise as establishing a new doctrine for amphibious operations within the Alliance.
Italy’s TB3 acquisition is, in effect, an admission that Europe’s own carrier-capable drone programs have failed to deliver. For years, European navies have debated and funded concepts for carrier-based unmanned systems. None has reached operational status. The Eurodrone program, coordinated by Airbus, Dassault, and Leonardo for Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, is slowly collapsing. France is negotiating its exit, with the remaining partners facing a potential cost increase of over €700 million. The United Kingdom ran trials with the MQ-9B Mojave aboard HMS Prince of Wales in November 2023 and has not followed up with a procurement commitment. The result is a gap that no European program is positioned to close in the near term.
The Leonardo-Baykar partnership is, therefore, an anomaly in the European defense landscape. At a moment when EU defense integration rhetoric is at an all-time high, Italy has opted to co-produce a combat system with Turkey, not with a fellow EU member state. But the deal forces a question the EU has avoided for years: What role should Turkey play in European defense? Ankara is a NATO ally that operates the Alliance’s second-largest military, hosting radar and missile defense infrastructure. Its defense industry, once dismissed as a second-tier supplier, now produces platforms that frontline European navies are choosing to buy. Yet Turkey remains outside the EU’s defense procurement frameworks and is managed through a patchwork of bilateral arrangements rather than integrated into any coherent European strategic vision.