A Bayraktar TB3 with wings folded at the Paris Air Show 2025, the platform on which the Astore Levante is based. Photo: Tpe.g5.stan, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Astore Levante: Baykar and Leonardo Take the Bayraktar TB3 into European Service

LBA Systems, the equal joint venture between Italy's Leonardo and Turkiye's Baykar, declared full operational readiness at the Farnborough International Airshow on 21 July 2026 and unveiled its first product, the Astore Levante. The aircraft is a European-built Bayraktar TB3 fitted with Leonardo sensors, mission systems and a ground control station, with the first Italian delivery due by the end of 2026.

Technical Summary

The Astore Levante is a re-badged and re-equipped Bayraktar TB3, a carrier-capable unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) developed by Baykar. LBA Systems retains the TB3 airframe and autonomy stack, then substitutes a Leonardo payload package. Leonardo has named the LEOSS-T electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR) turret, the BriteStorm expendable electronic-warfare system and an IFF428 identification-friend-or-foe unit for the type, with an Osprey 30 or Gabbiano T-80UL active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar and a SAGE electronic-support-measures (ESM) suite offered as options. Leonardo also supplies the ground control station (GCS) and leads European qualification and certification against the NATO military unmanned-aircraft airworthiness standard STANAG 4671, the gate that decides whether the type can enter service with a NATO air arm.

Baykar quotes a maximum take-off weight (MTOW) of 1,450 kg for the TB3 and a payload of up to 280 kg carried across six external hardpoints, with endurance in excess of 24 hours. The wing folds for shipborne operations. The TB3 completed its first take-off and landing aboard the Turkish landing helicopter dock TCG Anadolu on 19 November 2024, which is the capability Leonardo markets when it says the Astore Levante can work from short-runway carriers. Propulsion is a Turkish Engine Industries (TEI) turbo-diesel, either the PD-170 or the higher-rated PD-200 that Baykar has introduced for the naval airframe. A 14 m wingspan and roughly 8.4 m length place the type in the medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) bracket.

A 280 kg payload across six hardpoints lets the TB3 airframe carry the full Baykar munitions family. The export question for the Astore Levante is therefore not whether it can strike, but whose guided weapons a European operator will be cleared to hang under it. ISC Defence Intelligence assessment

Analysis of Effects

For weapons, ordnance, munitions and explosives (WOME) planners, the load-out is the point of interest. In Turkish service the TB3 has test-fired the MAM-C, MAM-L and MAM-T smart micro munitions, the Cirit 70 mm laser-guided rocket and the KEMANKES-1 loitering munition. The L-UMTAS long-range anti-tank missile and the Kuzgun modular air-to-ground family appear in Baykar's stated load-out as further options rather than demonstrated firings. The MAM-L is a roughly 22 kg-class glide weapon with selectable warheads, including high-explosive fragmentation, thermobaric and tandem shaped-charge variants for armour. The MAM-T adds wings and a satellite-and-inertial guidance package to push stand-off range into the tens of kilometres. None of these energetics figures should be read as precise: published net explosive quantity (NEQ) values for the MAM series are not authoritative, so warhead mass and fill are recorded below as data gaps.

The open question is what the Astore Levante actually carries in Italian and wider European service. Leonardo's own guided-weapons and effector portfolio, rather than the Turkish munitions family, is the more probable integration path for a NATO customer, both for supply-chain reasons and to avoid end-use friction. Roketsan has already shown it can make a Western bomb body smart on a Baykar platform, as seen with the TEBER-83 guidance kit on the Mk 83 for the Akinci, so the reverse substitution of a European seeker or weapon onto a Turkish airframe is technically routine. That choice matters for ammunition interoperability: a European TB3 firing European effectors draws on a different logistics, qualification and hazard-classification chain than a Turkish TB3 firing Roketsan stores. Until Leonardo names the weapons it will qualify, the strike fit is a design intention, not a delivered capability.

Personnel and Safety Considerations

For ammunition technicians and explosives-safety staff, the practical work sits downstream of the announcement. A European TB3 that reaches Italian squadrons will need arming and de-arming procedures, flight-line and magazine explosives-safety cases, and quantity-distance (QD) calculations tied to whichever guided weapons are finally certified. None of that is defined yet. Where the Turkish munitions family is retained, its hazard division and compatibility group have to be re-evidenced against Italian and NATO storage and transport rules rather than assumed from Turkish documentation. Where Leonardo effectors are substituted, existing Italian safety cases for those stores offer a shorter route to a licensable flight-line load-out.

Data Gaps

Several load-bearing details remain unconfirmed in open sources: the Italian order quantity beyond the reported two air vehicles with two options; which of the named Leonardo radar and mission-system options are actually fitted to the first Astore Levante airframes; the guided weapons Leonardo intends to qualify for European service; and the warhead mass, NEQ, hazard division and compatibility group for any munition in the fit. Each is flagged here rather than asserted.

Corrections & updates welcome. If you hold open-source data that refines or corrects any parameter in this article, please contact [email protected] citing the specific claim and your source. Verified corrections will be incorporated and credited in the revision history. AI-assisted technical assessment based on open-source material. Not a formal intelligence product.