France is reconsidering the purchase of military light drones as the army falls behind

PARIS — France is changing its process for acquiring light military unmanned aerial vehicles to make them more agile and has signed a pact with local drone makers, as the country’s military threatens to fall behind in technology that military leaders say is changing the way warfare is conducted.

French Armed Forces Minister Sebastian Lecornu signed a “UAV defense pact” on Monday at the Eurosatory defense fair, which lays the basis for cooperation with the domestic industry on defense drones weighing less than 150 kg (331 pounds), the French arms agency DGA said.

The country “may have been a bit behind” in the drone space, and instead of developing drones in the coming years, France will work with UAV manufacturers to make a technological leap towards next-generation drones in the early 2030s, Lecornu said in a speech at Eurosatory.

All aerial drones that France sold to Ukraine were developed internally by manufacturers, without the French armed forces’ involvement in the development, retired Major General Claude Chenuil, a former director of military acquisitions, said during a roundtable discussion at Eurosatory. He said the Ukrainian armed forces will use 1 million drones this year, while the French army plans to buy “several thousand drones.”

France will invest 5 billion euros ($5.4 billion) in drones by 2030 as part of its military programming law, with a stated goal of growing France’s loitering munitions industry by the end of this decade, as well as achieving swarm flight capability. The defense budget bill assumed that the army would have 3,000 tactical drones by 2025.

Drones are changing the way we fight, from circulating munitions to intelligence gathering, “and if we’ve fallen behind, it’s time to catch up,” said Maj. Gen. Erwan Salmon, head of the DGA’s ground combat management unit.

France must be able to quickly acquire drones and refurbish them in line with the pace of drone innovation, as well as be able to mass produce UAVs, “that’s the whole point of the defense drone pact,” Salmon said. This will require a change in acquisition strategy to avoid creating drone systems that are “totally incompatible with innovation.”

French defense contracts often start with requirements from the armed forces, with the Armaments Directorate developing specifications before organizing the contract, leading to programs that can take 10 years from expression of demand to delivery, said Bastien Mancini, CEO of French drone manufacturer Delair.

“Structurally, this is not possible with drones,” Mancini said. “Technologies are developing rapidly. We need to be able to reduce turnaround time.”

The Munitions Directorate will likely need to provide funding to be able to quickly buy and test finished products and determine whether they need to be acquired in larger numbers, Salmon said. The directorate’s procurement service is considering funding technological components that could underpin the development of new systems, he said.

According to Éric Lenseigne, vice president of counter-drone operations at Thales, the UAV defense pact will be a useful forum for industry cooperation, including between smaller French drone manufacturers and larger defense companies. Given the size of the French market, exports will be necessary to reach the critical volume, and export commitments may be an area for further cooperation, Lenseigne said.

Thales estimates that the global sub-150kg drone market is worth over €2.5 billion, with a growth rate of 14% per year, according to Lenseigne, with the market expected to remain “dynamic” even if hostilities cease in Ukraine .

Four French drone manufacturers – Parrot, Eos Technologie, Delair and Hexadrone – have delivered drones to Ukraine, where they appear to be doing a “good job,” Mancini said.

However, according to the CEO, the military UAV industry in France is volatile, and developing an industrial-scale drone requires an investment of 5 to 10 million euros compared to Delair’s revenue of around 30 million euros this year. . “So consolidation will definitely come naturally.”

According to Colonel Hervé Mermod, program coherence specialist at the General Staff of the French Armed Forces, a minimum purchase threshold will be required for the French drone industry to develop new solutions and payloads. France will need to finance a strategic reserve that will cover the costs of maintaining industrial capacity to increase drone production if needed, he said.