EADS Talarion

The EADS Talarion was a proposed European medium-altitude long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle, a large twin-jet drone meant for aerial reconnaissance, military intelligence and surveillance. It was designed by EADS, whose defence arm Cassidian later became part of Airbus Defence and Space. A mockup was shown at the 2009 Paris Airshow, showing a twin-jet airframe with a wingspan of about 28 metres and avionics to be built by Saab. EADS ran a preliminary design review in 2010. The programme was courted by Turkish suppliers led by Turkish Aerospace Industries in 2011 and by Alenia later that year, but France, Germany and Spain never committed to buying it, and Cassidian announced plans to wind the programme down in 2012. English Wikipedia records the project as discontinued in 2015. The name recalls the Talaria, the winged sandals of the Greek messenger god Hermes. No Talarion was ever built or flown.