Piaggio Aerospace, formerly Piaggio Aero Industries, is a multinational aerospace manufacturing company headquartered in Villanova d’Albenga, Italy. It shares its ancestry with motor vehicle manufacturer Piaggio and is one of the world’s oldest aircraft manufacturers. The Rinaldo Piaggio S.p.A. company was founded in Genoa in 1884, originally outfitting ocean liners and manufacturing rolling stock for the developing railway infrastructure at the turn of the century. Due to financial gains in this industry, Rinaldo Piaggio was able to build a factory in 1906 in Final Marina. By 1998, the assets of Rinaldo Piaggio S.p.A. exchanged hands and a group of entrepreneurs headed by the Di Mase and Ferrari families and Piaggio became Piaggio Aero Industries. This acquiring of assets brought Piaggio Aero Industries back to its roots, as a designer and producer of business aircraft.
Piaggio Aerospace designs, develops, manufactures and maintains aircraft, aero-engines and aircraft structural components. It has a subsidiary in the United States, Piaggio America, located at West Palm Beach, Florida. Piaggio Aero Industries has production facilities covering 120,000 square meters (1.3 million square feet) in the northwest Italian cities of Genoa Sestri and Finale Ligure, as well as a High Technology Center based in Pozzuoli, near Naples. Piaggio Aerospace has entered the field of defence and security as a major player, designing and developing innovative Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and advanced Multirole Patrol Aircraft (MPA). Piaggio Aerospace is one of the few companies in the world in possession of both the technology and the experience to design, develop and build unmanned Medium Altitude Long Endurance class systems (MALE).
Piaggio Aerospace P.1HH HammerHead is an unmanned aircraft system consisting of a remotely piloted aerial vehicle (UAV), a ground control station (GCS) and integrated navigation and mission systems. Positioned at the very top end of remotely piloted MALE aircraft, it is ATOL capable (Automatic Take Off and Landing), able to reach altitudes of 13,700 meters maintaining 16 hours of flight endurance. With datalink connections to the UAV delivered through a line of sight communication system (LoS) and via satellite beyond line of sight (BLOS), the P.1HH Hammerhead ground control station enables the aircraft’s navigation and mission systems to be remotely controlled at all times in all places. Derived from the P.180 Avanti platform and redesigned with a new aerodynamic configuration, greater wing extension (15.5 m) and a higher payload capacity.
The Piaggio Aerospace MPA is a manned Multirole Patrol Aircraft, designed as an evolution and development of the P.180 Avanti II for Special Mission applications. The aircraft is intended for aerial surveillance missions as well as ground, coastal and marine patrols. Unlike its civilian aircraft forerunner, MPA has a new aerodynamic configuration, greater wing extension and a higher payload capacity. The combination of specific structural interventions to the established P.180 turboprop propellers and its unique three lifting surfaces configuration developed by Piaggio Aerospace, allow the MPA to patrol broad areas in low altitude operations for up to 7 hours, an operating range of over 6,100 km, maximum flight altitude of 12,500 meters and a cruise speed of 650 km / hour.
