After South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria, Morocco should soon join the circle of African countries manufacturing military drones. The announcement was made by Ronen Nadir, the founder and chairman of Israeli company BlueBird Aero Systems, partly owned by state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries. In a statement published on April 13 by the Spanish magazine Military Zonethe former commander of the Israeli Air Force claimed that an unmanned aircraft (ASP) production unit had been established in Morocco and would begin operating in the near future.
No details have been filtered on the location of this installation or its start date. Contacted by The world, BlueBird Aero Systems did not wish to react. Ronen Nadir’s comments did not trigger an official comment from the Moroccan side either, but they coincide with the announcement, in November 2023 by the Minister of Defense, Abdellatif Loudiyi, of the project to develop a national military industry focused on ASP production.
Which drones will be manufactured in Morocco? WanderB and ThunderB models, assures Asher Fredman, the director for Israel of the Abraham Accords Institute for Peace. These devices are mainly intended for reconnaissance, intelligence and target detection missions. In 2022, Rabat has ordered 150 copies, part of which will be produced on Moroccan soil.
“More and more decisive on the battlefields”
The Israeli company’s SpyX drone, a kamikaze version recently acquired by Morocco, could also be manufactured locally. These lurking munitions, which have proven themselves in Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh, “are increasingly decisive on the battlefield”underlines Nizar Derdabi, a former officer of the Moroccan gendarmerie who teaches at the School of Economic Warfare in Rabat.
The manufacturing costs and sales prices of these ASPs were not communicated by BlueBird Aero Systems, but the Emirati conglomerate Edge, which the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) had classified in 2019 among the 25 largest arms production companies in the world, last year offered between 29,000 dollars (27,000 euros) to acquire a kamikaze drone and 1.1 million dollars for an Istar model.
This is not the first time that BlueBird Aero Systems has established a drone production unit outside of Israel. The company already produces ASPs in India through a joint venture with Cyient. As for its competitor Elbit Systems, whose Israeli liaison office in Rabat announced a year ago that it planned to open two drone manufacturing sites in Morocco, it has facilities in the United States, Europe, in Brazil and Australia, reports Asher Fredman.
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