C-27J maritime patrol aircraft to be supplied to Saudi Arabia by Leonardo
NewsFebruary 17, 2026
ROME, Italy. Leonardo will supply four C-27J Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA) to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Defence to add maritime patrol and multi-mission capability for the Royal Saudi Naval Forces, the company announced in a statement.
Deliveries are expected to start in 2029, the statement reads. Leonardo says the aircraft are intended to support missions that include maritime patrol focused on submarine and sea-surface threats, search and rescue, and transport and airdrop tasks. The company says this order follows Saudi Arabia’s in-country acquisition in summer 2025 of two C-27J aircraft configured for firefighting, cargo transport, and medical evacuation.
The C-27J MPA is based on the C-27J Spartan Next Generation platform and includes avionics, navigation, communications, identification, and self-protection systems, the company says. For surveillance, Leonardo says the variant integrates a mission suite with sensors for detection, identification, and tracking of surface and submarine targets, managed by a mission management system with data-fusion capability. A communications suite is intended to support real-time data sharing, including in beyond line of sight (BLOS) conditions, the statement adds. Leonardo says the aircraft can also carry weapons payloads including torpedoes, anti-ship missiles, and depth charges, and can be reconfigured for transport roles by removing mission-system consoles.
