Small French Company Unveils Aarok For MALE UAS Market

A French defense contractor has unveiled a 5.5-ton-class uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) now in development to perform medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) surveillance and strike missions. 

Turgis & Gaillard, which will display the single-engine Aarok prototype at the Paris Air Show on June 19, plans to achieve first flight by year’s end and complete a self-funded series of airworthiness tests in 2025. 

The 12-year-old company has built a business worth €50 million ($54.1 million) in annual revenue as a military support contractor, but now wants to break into the large UAS market as a nontraditional supplier. The founders—Fanny Turgis and Patrick Gaillard—are modeling their strategy on the experience of Abe Karem, who introduced the UAS that became the Predator, and Turkey’s Baykar, which developed the Bayraktar. 

“Dassault is a wonderful company. Obviously they are perfectly capable of making certain aircraft. Airbus, too. But we think they are too big to make such a small aircraft,” Gaillard told Aerospace DAILY in an interview. “So we think it is the new entrants that have to do that.”

The French military currently operates General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. MQ-9 Reapers and is co-funding the 11-ton Airbus Eurodrone. 

The Aarok is intended to provide the French military a homegrown alternative to the MQ-9 and other MALE-class UAVs, with half the size of the Eurodrone and a fraction of the cost. 

Turgis & Gaillard are designing the Aarok with several unique features, including a sense-and-avoid system to integrate into civilian airspace and robust landing gear for operations on austere landing strips.

A cockpit has been added to the prototype to accommodate a safety pilot during flight tests, smoothing the path to a certification milestone in European airspace, said Gaillard, a co-founder of the company based in Neuilly-sur-Seine. The designers removed a fuel tank to accommodate the cockpit.

After the first 50 or 100 flights, the cockpit will be removed and the UAS will be operated by a human operator from a ground station only, Gaillard said.

The prototype is powered by a 1,200-shp Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 engine, but Turgis & Gaillard plan to integrate either a Safran Ardiden 3 or GE Aviation Catalyst turboprop engine for the operational aircraft. 

In operational service, the Aarok would carry a surveillance suite with a 25-in.-dia., electro-optical/infrared turret and a radar. For missions such as close air support, the aircraft also would carry up to four Safran Hammer precision-guided glide bombs or Lockheed Martin AGM-114 Hellfire missiles.