Morocco Aerospace Exports Target $5B as Rabat Eyes 2,000-km Strike Drones

Morocco’s aerospace industry could lift annual exports to about $5 billion within three years, up from $3 billion in 2025, as new suppliers start producing higher-value parts, Mohammed Bellatig, president of the Moroccan Aerospace Industries Group (GIMAS), told Reuters on October 8, 2026, at the Marrakech Air Show. The sector employs about 25,000 people across roughly 160 companies, including suppliers to Airbus, Boeing and Safran.

The target comes as the industry shifts from build-to-print components toward complete aircraft systems. Official data put aerospace exports at roughly $2.6 billion in 2024 after growth of nearly 15 percent, so the GIMAS goal implies compound annual growth of about 14 to 19 percent, depending on whether the target year is 2028 or 2029. Bellatig, a former Royal Air Maroc technical director, returned to lead GIMAS on July 8, 2026, two decades after serving as its first president. The October 7 to 10 show centered on industrial sovereignty and locally made defense hardware.

How Safran Engine and Landing Gear Plants Drive Morocco Aerospace Exports

Bellatig said Morocco would soon assemble engines and landing gear “so that we provide much bigger added value than we have today.” Safran anchors that shift. On October 13, 2025, the French group selected Casablanca for a final assembly line for the CFM International LEAP-1A, the turbofan that powers the Airbus A320neo family alongside the Pratt & Whitney PW1100G. Safran committed €200 million to the line, which is sized for 350 engines a year, about 25 percent of its Airbus-related LEAP output, and is due in 2028. Safran chairman Ross McInnes described it as the group’s only engine assembly line outside France. Until now, the Villaroche plant near Paris has built virtually all LEAP-1A engines on three lines with capacity for up to 1,000 units a year.

The new line joins a LEAP maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) shop in the Casablanca airport zone, an investment of about €120 million. With extensions at Safran Aerosystems in Tiflet, Safran Electronics & Defense in Casablanca and Safran Electrical & Power in Ain Atiq, the group’s Moroccan program exceeds €350 million. Safran already employs more than 4,800 people at 10 Moroccan sites and plans to hire over 2,000 more within five years. The timing tracks CFM International’s goal of producing about 2,500 LEAP engines a year from 2028; a second LEAP-1A source also reduces single-site risk at Villaroche.

On February 13, 2026, Safran announced a 26,000-square-meter plant to produce landing gear components, modules and hydraulic equipment for short- and medium-haul aircraft. The investment is reported at more than $330 million, with about 500 jobs and operations targeted for 2029. Industry Minister Ryad Mezzour said in October 2025 that the Safran plants would help Morocco double its aerospace exports.

Harmattan AI and Baykar Anchor Morocco’s Push Into Military Drones

Rabat sees unmanned aircraft as the next layer on that base. Bellatig said drone production could draw on materials, assembly and engineering skills already present in the aerospace supply chain. At the Marrakech Air Show, Morocco signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with French startup Harmattan AI to manufacture Moroccan autonomous drones for deep-strike missions at ranges of up to 2,000 km, with key technologies developed and produced locally. No airframe designation, propulsion type, payload, production quantity, contract value or delivery schedule has been disclosed.

The MoU builds on a strategic partnership Harmattan AI signed with the Royal Armed Forces (FAR) in June 2026, covering local production of autonomous defense systems, a defense artificial intelligence research center and ties with Moroccan universities. Founded in 2024 by Franco-Moroccan entrepreneur Mouad M’Ghari, the Paris-based firm raised $200 million in January 2026 at a $1.4 billion valuation, with Dassault Aviation as its reference shareholder. It has since opened an engineering center in Rabat, and its recruitment points to a locally developed fixed-wing drone to be flight-tested in southern Morocco.

A 2,000-km reach would roughly double the range publicly attributed to the Israel Aerospace Industries Harop loitering munition. Türkiye’s Baykar, maker of the Bayraktar TB2, registered a Moroccan subsidiary, Atlas Defense, in early 2025 to design, build and maintain unmanned aircraft, with a production site planned in Benslimane. The legal framework rests on Law 10-20 of 2020 and a June 2024 decree creating two defense industrial acceleration zones. Morocco’s defense administration said in November 2025 that ten licensed projects worth more than $260 million would create over 2,500 jobs.

Analysis: The $5 billion figure rests on two Safran projects that reach output only at the edge of the three-year window, the LEAP-1A line in 2028 and the landing gear plant in 2029, so near-term growth must still come from existing tiers. Strategically, Morocco is converting a civil aerospace workforce into a dual-use base that French, Turkish and Israeli suppliers can use to serve Africa. A locally built 2,000-km strike drone would be Morocco’s first domestically produced long-range strike system, reducing reliance on imports subject to foreign export approvals.

Next milestones include a firm Harmattan AI contract with disclosed specifications, the start of LEAP-1A assembly in Casablanca in 2028 and landing gear production in 2029. Full-year 2026 export data will show whether growth is accelerating. Export control remains an open question: France belongs to the Missile Technology Control Regime, whose guidelines cover unmanned aerial vehicles able to fly 300 km or more, and the parties have not said how technology transfer for a 2,000-km system will be structured.