Airbus-Dassault-Leonardo EuroMALE

History

EuroMALE represents the latest joint European initiative to equip its diverse armed forces with locally designed, developed and built unmanned aerial systems (UAS). The company is led by major defense contractor Airbus and France's Dassault as well as Italy's Leonardo (with participation from Germany and Spain).

Until now, defense forces on the continent have had to rely on a range of foreign drones - mainly from the US and Israel; the Predator and Heron drones, respectively.

On April 26, 2018, a full-scale model of EuroMALE was presented to the audience at ILA Berlin. The example shown - not the finished design form - has the usual bulbous front end containing avionics.

The fuselage is slender, with almost flat sides, while the tail is covered by a vertical tail with a high mounting level (in the traditional "T-shaped" or "multhopp tail" arrangement). Wings The main aircraft is slender and mounted at or near the midship, while being mounted lower along the sides of the fuselage. Between the main aircraft position and the empennage is an externally fixed turboprop nacelle that drives the conventional propeller unit in a "thrust" fashion - likely a design quality accepted to better meet European civil airspace regulations. Each engine drives a six-bladed propeller.

The landing gear is in a tricycle arrangement and appears to be fully retractable into the design - including a front leg and two main legs.

Little is known about the performance of the EuroMALE, other than its general appearance. Expect a long wait at moderate top speeds, as the powerplant scheme will revolve around a conventional propeller system.

The system is likely to support the same sort of operations as General Atomics' Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance-focused Predator series -- albeit probably without the ground-attack capabilities of its associated Reaper.

The final draft form of EuroMALE is expected to be completed before the start of 2019, with a production-quality version expected to achieve a service date sometime around 2025.

The performance and structural information on this page is an estimate.

Specification

Basic

Production

Roles

Dimensions

Weight

Performance

Performance

Armor

Changes