This paper presents a general state-space realization of the unsteady vortex-latticemethod together with a bespoke model-order reduction strategy. The aim is to providea computationally-efficient aerodynamic description suitable for integration in aeroelasti-city with arbitrary kinematics. The state-space realization is obtained from linearization,around arbitrary geometries and static loading conditions, of lifting surfaces and their freewakes. All components of the forces are evaluated in time domain using Joukowski’s the-orem. As the wake is also modelled, however, the state-space description has a large num-ber of states. High-order modelling of the apparent mass, projection on low-dimensionaldegrees-of-freedom, and balanced residualization are combined to reduce the system dimen-sionality. A parallelized low-rank square root algorithm for balancing is also introduced toreduce the computational cost. Numerical investigations on airfoils and cantilever wingslinearised around non-zero reference conditions are used to exemplify the approach.