Images of the Aarok drone. (Turgis & Gaillard)
PARIS AIRSHOW — The buzz on the first day of the Paris Airshow was made by the Aarok, a prototype medium altitude, long endurance (MALE) remotely piloted combat aircraft unveiled at the show.
The brainchild of hitherto little known French company Turgis & Gaillard, the 14m long, 22m wingspan, 5.5 tonne (6.06 tons) maximum take-off weight, aircraft is larger than the Reaper (11m long, 20m wingspan 4.5 tonne). The company claims Aarok will fly at 250 knots (463 km/h or 288 mph) for 30 hours at a height of 30,000 feet. It is powered by an aircraft turbine engine and has a reinforced landing gear so it can land on unprepared terrain.
Patrick Gaillard, director general of the company, told Breaking Defense, “It’s made for warfare.” But, he also admitted, the prototype “was finished just a few weeks ago and hasn’t yet flown.”
Gaillard, a former French army intelligence officer who founded the company in 2011 with childhood friend Fanny Turgis, explained that “we simply make the platform, basically a small, rotor aircraft. In France we have all the technologies needed to turn this simple aircraft into a MALE: we have the engines, we have the weapons, we have the sensors.”
He added that “we are very conscious that our company is small, so rather than going to companies like Snecma, Airbus, Thales, Safran and MBDA saying ‘hey, here’s an idea we’re working on, will you come aboard?’ we preferred to develop the prototype first and bring it here at the show so that these companies and others can see what we’re capable of doing.”
He said the higher echelons at the French Ministry of the Armed Forces had been kept abreast of the project, but that it had been developed on the company’s own funds.
Turgis & Gaillard employs 300 people on nine different sites spread around France, with its headquarters in posh Parisian suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine. It has an annual turnover of €50 million ($54.6 million). The company is a Tier 1 supplier to Airbus, undertakes the MOC for the French Army’s Pilatus PC-6 light transport aircraft and is responsible for the maintenance of military bases in eastern France. Perhaps its most notable effort was developing the Sefiam 1602e electric, remotely-controlled aircraft weapon loader, which is used aboard the Charles-de-Gaulle aircraft carrier to load weapons onto the Rafale combat aircraft.
Gaillard recounted that the Aarok project was launched “just before COVID hit but we organised ourselves in such a way as to keep everyone safe. But the 300 of us, managers and technicians, all came to work every day.”
As to what’s next for the system, “We’re aiming to have it fly in early 2024 but there’s a lot of paperwork to do to get all the permissions necessary to fly an unmanned aircraft in French airspace.”
