Falco Xplorer unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), unveiled by Leonardo at the Paris Air Show 2019, left behind an important milestone last week.

In a statement made by Leonardo, it was announced that the UAV made its maiden flight on January 15. The test flight conducted at the Trapani Air Base stationed in Sicily, and lasted about 1 hour. Platfom returned to the same base and completed the flight without any problems.

Falco Xplorer, is a MALE (Medium Altitude Long Endurance) class UAV, has been developed by Leonardo. It has 24 hours endurance. With a payload capacity of 350 kilograms, the platform will be able to serve at an altitude of 30,000 feet. The 9-meter-long system has a wingspan of 18.5 meters and propelled by a Rotax engine. Thanks to Gabbiano T-80UL multi-mode synthetic aperture radar (SAR), Falco Xplorer, which can perform tasks such as mapping and moving target tracking, will be equipped with LOASS stabilized electrooptic turret and SAGE signal intelligence (SIGINT) suite.