The Direction Générale de l'Armement has just launched a call for information to beef up its anti-drone capabilities. A field that absolutely must develop, particularly to secure the 2024 Olympic Games. A few French companies are trying to make their way in this fast-moving field.
A real headache, the fight against drones, which has become a government priority in view of the organization of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, is making progress. Earlier this month, French company CS Group, which specializes in defense, cybersecurity and space technologies, carried out several demonstrations in Brétigny (Essonne) in front of the French Air Force to convince them of its ability to bring together several anti-drone tools in a single command system, while start-up Cerbair touts the merits of its new Chimera anti-drone rifle.
Drone attacks attributed to Iran against Aramco refineries in Saudi Arabia in September 2019 have turned military doctrine on its head: some twenty low-cost drones have put essential refineries out of action for six months. "We can calculate that the cost of the attack barely exceeded one million dollars".sums up CS Group CEO Eric Blanc-Garin. Hence the urgent need to develop an anti-drone system that is not as costly as conventional air defense systems, which are designed to intercept highly sophisticated missiles.
Interconnecting multiple sensors
In this quest, CS Group has taken a step ahead. At the end of 2017, it won the MILAD (mobile anti-drone means) contract from the French Army to deploy its anti-drone system Boreades to protect French military bases and those in theaters of operation in Mali.
On the strength of this contract, the company is investing heavily in anti-drone systems, in the hope of securing the next government order for the Olympic Games. "The challenge is to be able to interconnect several thermal, optical and radar sensors in a command center, to scan the horizon from a few meters to hundreds of kilometers.explains Group Operations Director Mary de Saint Salvy. "But the most important thing is to obtain clear signals afterwards, to distinguish flying objects clearly, thanks to artificial intelligence."she adds. Drone technology will revolutionize the way war is waged, with swarms of drones designed to confuse conventional air defenses.
Call for information by DGA
At Brétigny, CS Group combined several sensors, including three interconnected radars, and demonstrated its ability to track several drones at different distances, in order to gather and process the data in different command and control (C2) systems. Detecting, sorting, identifying and neutralizing drones is a highly complex task.
CS Group hopes that the government will launch a tender for an integrated anti-drone command before the end of the year, for selection of the winner next year, in order to implement the systems as early as the Rugby World Cup in 2023, in order to test the systems before the 2024 Olympics.
Earlier this week, the French Defence Procurement Agency (DGA) launched a request for information on industrial solutions in the field of anti-drone warfare, available today or in the next 6 months. The DGA emphasizes the need to fight against "micro and mini drones in any situation: protecting sites, vehicle convoys, maneuvering troops. We need to move faster, say CS Group executives, who point out that "the United States put $1.9 billion on the table last year to fight drones"..
A new anti-drone gun
In this field, missile-maker MBDA is banking on start-up Cerbair, founded in 2015 for anti-drone combat aimed at the civilian market. Cerbair has since raised €8 million and has just developed a portable drone detection and jamming system, dubbed "Chimera". Comprising two systems - a backpack carrying the detection and characterization capabilities, and a jamming rifle - the Chimera should be ideal for the police and gendarmerie, providing a relatively inexpensive, easy-to-use solution that can be carried around stadiums or anywhere else.
"We created Cerbair with the intuition that the major defense groups would take on military drones but there is also a growing need to detect and neutralize enemy drones".explains company founder and CEO Lucas Le Bell. He points out that the use of consumer drones for terrorist attacks has become commonplace in recent years. During the battle for Mosul in Iraq, there were up to 79 drone attacks per day. Cerbair (25 employees), a specialist in radio-frequency techniques, has already worked with the Raid and helped secure the G7 summit in Biarritz. The company hopes that its Chimera system will be included in the list of anti-drone solutions for the 2024 Olympic Games.
