Armed Forces sign contract for a new surveillance aircraft made in the US
This King Air patrol aircraft is being manufactured in Kansas
Malta’s armed forces have signed a contract for a new aircraft to be used for surveillance and detection, the US Embassy announced on Thursday.
The plane, a King Air patrol aircraft, was manufactured in Kansas, the embassy said in a social media post. It will be delivered by German aviation specialists Aerodata AG, with whom the contract was signed.
The agreement reflects the “practical cooperation between America and Malta to enhance security across the central Mediterranean,” the embassy added.
In a Facebook post late last year, AFM said this would be the fourth King Air aircraft in service. The plane is expected to be “primarily employed in border control, maritime surveillance, maritime law enforcement, and search and rescue”.
AFM’s website currently lists a Hawker Beechcraft King Air B200 among its equipment. The 13 metre aircraft can hold up to seven people on board and is “specially modified to airdrop a life raft anywhere in the Malta SRR”.
That aircraft had been purchased in 2010, at a cost of €9.6 million, partly financed through EU funding. It had also been manufactured at Beechcraft’s facilities in Kansas, with Aerodata AG fitting the aircraft with maritime surveillance and imaging radars.
The aircraft had eventually been delivered in 2011, with a second identical aircraft arriving the following year.
The army had later signed a contract for a third King Air aircraft in 2015.
The army also boasts a Britten-Norman BN-2T Islander small utility aircraft among its current arsenal, together with several helicopters.
However, a parliamentary question last summer revealed how two of the AFM’s five helicopters had been retired, with a further two undergoing maintenance at the time.
The government first announced the investment in last October’s budget, with finance minister Clyde Caruana saying the army would be kicking off the process to invest in a new helicopter and aircraft by 2028, with an initial investment of €10 million.
The army’s budget received a sharp bump this year, rising from €86 million in 2025 to just over €100 million this year.
More broadly, Malta has almost doubled its defence spending over the past decade. Nevertheless, it remains one of Europe’s lowest spenders on defence, with just 0.5 per cent of its GDP going towards defence in 2022. In total, Malta typically spends just a little over one per cent of its total expenditure on defence each year.
The only EU countries to spend less on defence are Ireland and Iceland, both of which dedicate less than 0.2% of their annual GDP to defence spending.