STM Kargu

History

The Kargu is a Turkish portable quadrotor loitering munition produced by Savunma Teknolojileri Mühendislik ve Ticaret A.Ş. (STM). The name Kargu means "mountain observation tower" in Turkish, reflecting the platform's initial design as an airborne surveillance and sentry tool for asymmetric warfare or counter-insurgency.

The Kargu was used by the Turkish Armed Forces in Syria and Libya. In 2020, a Kargu 2 was deployed against forces in Libya; the UN Panel of Experts on Libya reported in March 2021 that the system was used "to attack targets without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the munition: in effect, a true 'fire, forget and find' capability." The report did not confirm that human beings were killed by the system while operating without human supervision.

The Kargu was also reportedly used by Azerbaijan during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, although this has not been verified by Azerbaijani authorities.

On 21 October 2026, the armed wing of Ansar Allah (the Houthis) released footage showing the recovery of at least two Kargu loitering munitions following attacks on Saudi-backed forces east of Raghwan in Yemen's Marib governorate. This marked the first recorded use of the Kargu in Yemen. One recovered unit still carried its directional fragmentation warhead and a compact antenna component labelled as a product of Taoglas, an Irish company. A second unit appeared configured to carry an armour-piercing warhead, although that warhead was not visible in the footage.

Design

The Kargu is a portable quadrotor system comprising a rotary-wing attack drone and a ground control unit, deployable and operable by a single soldier in both autonomous and manual modes. The platform uses domestically developed real-time image processing and machine learning algorithms for automatic target recognition against static or moving targets. STM states the system includes a facial recognition capability for seeking out specific individuals.

STM describes the system as operating according to "the man in the loop principle," a characterization that stands in contrast to the autonomous operation described in the UN Panel of Experts report on Libya. STM advertises a swarm capability in which up to 30 Kargu units operate together under a single ground station, autonomously identifying and tracking targets; promotional footage shows Kargu 2 units in formation, but the autonomous target-selection and coordinated-attack capability has not been publicly demonstrated by STM.

The system supports day and night operations, in-flight mission abort, and emergency self-destruction.

Operators

• Turkey — 500 operational
• Azerbaijan — minimum 27
• Peru — unknown quantity of anti-personnel and anti-armour systems procured by Diseños Casanave International
• Houthis (Yemen) — use confirmed by recovered munitions

Specifications

Parameters below combine STM-published figures with other published values; where they differ, both are given with their stated conditions.

• Crew: 0 on board, 1 in ground station
• Length: 60 cm (2.0 ft)
• Wingspan: 60 cm (2.0 ft)
• Weight: 7,060 g (15.56 lb) or 7.7 kg with warhead fitted (STM figures give both values); 7 kg in other published material
• Range: 6.5 km with standard internal antenna (STM) or 15 km (other published material)
• Endurance: up to 30 minutes (STM) or 30 minutes with payloads (other published material)
• Payload capacity: 1.3 kg; options include an electro-optical day camera, infrared night camera, fragmentation and thermobaric munitions, and a passive wideband sensor for detecting and tracking radio-frequency transmissions