Turgis & Gaillard to showcase France's largest unmanned aircraft at Le Bourget

As the largest UAV to be built in France, the scale of the Aarok is apparent in this image of the aircraft parked next to a Turgis & Gaillard employee. (Frédéric Lert)

The Turgis & Gaillard group will be presenting the prototype of its Aarok unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) at the Paris Air Show, held from 19 to 25 June. With a wingspan of 22 m, the Aarok is the largest UAV designed in France.

The Turgis & Gaillard group, named after its two founders, has been working on the Aarok project since 2020. The aircraft – designed for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), communication relay, and strike – will have an empty weight of around 2.5 ton and a 5.5 ton maximum take-off weight. The 3 ton payload will be divided between fuel (two ton in the fuselage and one ton in the wing), sensors, and weapons.

Thanks to its size and payload capacity, the Aarok will be able to simultaneously operate a large optronic payload (likely the Wescam MX25 or the Euroflir 610), a multimode radar, and an electronic intelligence (ELINT) payload.

With the radar in a central position under the fuselage, the aircraft will be able to carry a twin-munitions pylon on each of the inner wing hardpoints, an air-to-surface missile on each of the fairings of the main landing gear, and three light air-to-surface missiles under each outer half-wing hardpoint.