A company made of companies

Selex ES was the end product of a decade of corporate reshuffling. In 2005 Finmeccanica and BAE Systems combined their avionics businesses into SELEX Sensors and Airborne Systems, which Finmeccanica took over completely in 2007 and merged with its Italian avionics firm Galileo Avionica under the SELEX Galileo name. On 1 January 2013 SELEX Galileo absorbed its sister companies SELEX Sistemi Integrati and SELEX Elsag and became Selex ES, with about 17,000 staff and revenue above €3.5 billion, with headquarters in Rome and Basildon.

The Falco over the Congo

Most of what Selex ES made went inside other aircraft: radar, electronic warfare kit and avionics, including the Euroradar CAPTOR for the Eurofighter Typhoon. But it also built its own aircraft, the Falco tactical surveillance drone designed by Galileo Avionica, which first flew in December 2003, and Mirach target drones. In August 2013 a Falco went to the Democratic Republic of Congo for the UN’s MONUSCO mission, an unarmed surveillance drone flown for UN peacekeepers to track armed groups. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh bought Falcos, and Pakistan Aeronautical Complex built them under licence from 2008.

Absorbed into Leonardo

The company was short-lived by design. From 1 January 2016 its activities were folded into the Electronics, Defence and Security Systems sector of Leonardo-Finmeccanica, today Leonardo, which still markets the Falco family, including the Falco EVO that first flew in 2012. In its last full year the company also won a NATO cybersecurity contract, and a 2016 deal to equip Angola’s maritime surveillance centres was among its final wins.

Factories

• Basildon · Basildon, Essex, UK — UK headquarters
• Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (licensee) · Kamra, Pakistan — Falco production since 2008

Records and firsts

• Falco deployed with MONUSCO in the DR Congo, August 2013, as an unarmed UN surveillance drone