The €160 million (U.S. $193 million) contract was signed with the two companies Dec. 31, 2020, according to a DGA statement. Early capabilities of the new system will be delivered in 2023 and full capabilities by 2025.

The system will consist of a series of combinable sensors adapted to the needs of a given theater of operation and whatever environment — land, naval or air — in which it is to be operated.

Signals intelligence involves using an adversary’s signals — either communication (such as radio) or electronic (such as radar) — to gather data. “This information is necessary to safeguard the forces engaged, to determine the enemy’s intention and to be able to independently assess the situation. It contributes to the freedom of action of forces in a theater of operations,” the DGA said in a statement.

The French armed forces’ current tactical sigint capabilities were developed to meet the specific needs of each service. The purpose of the joint system is to provide the three services with a homogeneous system, using as many common bricks as possible to guarantee operational continuity and joint use of the information collected.

The new system will modernize and complete the current tactical sigint capabilities, taking into consideration new communications technologies used by adversaries — whether these are detecting emissions, characterizing and localizing transmitters, or intercepting communications on different frequency ranges — according to the procurement agency.

In the Army, the new capability will be used by the 54th Signal Regiment on Scorpion vehicles. It will also equip the Navy’s capital ships and the Atlantic 2 maritime patrol aircraft, replacing and complementing the current systems. Members of the Air and Space Force will use the system as deployable ground equipment to protect air bases.

Although the radar’s design phase has been finalized it still needs testing airborne. Nevertheless, Stéphane Lavigne, a sales director at Thales, said that the French Armed Forces Ministry had already notified its intention to buy the equipment for the future light joint army helicopter, the Guépard, developed by Airbus Helicopters and due to enter service in 2026.

Jon Bye, Thales’ head of customer marketing, said that the AirMaster C would ensure customers got “that great picture, first time, every time.”

The active antenna radar is based on SiGe (silicon-germanium) technology fully validated in 2019. Thales says SiGe is “much more energy efficient than other technologies used for AESA radars, and allows the radar to self-cool.”

François Arpagaus, the company’s airborne surveillance product line director, said that AirMaster C is easy to integrate, less complex to operate and would allow users to “see more, more of the time” thanks to “multi-polarization” which allows the radar to automatically select the optimal settings for each mission.

The radar was designed for a small footprint, making it 30 percent lower in size, weight and power than other radars in its class. It is small, no bigger than two A4 pages side by side, weighs less than 20 kg (45 lbs) and uses about 1 Kw of power. “It’s perfect for small and medium-sized platforms, both manned and unmanned,” Arpagaus said.

Lavigne said the sensor had been designed with a lot of input from radar users. “The program is launched, we are ready to take orders,” he said, adding that typical delivery time from contract signing would happen within two years.

The procurement agency DGA awarded the contract on Dec. 30, but it wasn’t announced until Tuesday. The program was launched Nov. 18 by Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly.

The companies would not specify how much the contract was worth.

Thales is expected to install a universal electronic warfare capability on three Dassault-manufactured Falcon 8X aircraft, although the announced deal is only for two aircraft. Another contract is expected to cover a third aircraft at a later date. The first two aircraft should, by 2025, replace the two Transall C-160 Gabriel aircraft that provide the French Air Force which signals intelligence.

The electronic warfare system, known by its French acronym CUGE (capacité universelle de guerre électronique), will make use of sigint technologies developed by Thales over the past decade to enable the system to simultaneously detect and analyze radio and radar signals. Thales said in a statement that this is possible thanks to multipolarization antennas and the use of artificial intelligence for automated data processing.

The tri-jet Falcon 8X is Dassault’s flagship business jet. It has a range of 7,500 miles, but a spokesman for Dassault told Defense News that this did not necessarily mean the sigint version, called Archange (avion de renseignement à charge utile de nouvel génération), would have the same range.

The contract also includes the supply of a ground-based training platform, which will be based at Evreux, south of Paris.

The aim of the project is to see if stratospheric platforms of this type, operating from an altitude of 20 kilometers (65,600 feet), where the winds are moderate and the air density sufficient to carry them, could be useful to the French armed forces.

The companies have been asked to design an operational concept study for an ISR mission, including exercises simulating its use in theaters of operation. The contract, whose value was not disclosed, also calls for a full-scale demonstrator to be built capable of flying in the stratosphere to demonstrate how an ISR mission of this type would perform.

Thales Alenia Space (held 67 percent by Thales and 33 percent by Leonardo) launched development of the 100 meters (328 feet) long “Stratobus” airship in April 2016. Powered only by solar energy and measuring 33 meters (108 feet) across, the balloon would rise on its own to its final altitude, with no need for a launcher. To maintain its position and to withstand winds of up to 90 kph (56 mph), Stratobus would have four electric motors operating 24/7, which are controlled by GPS to keep the vehicle permanently in line with a reference point at ground level.

The energy would be broken down into dihydrogen and gaseous oxygen stored separately in tanks placed in the nacelle. At night, the two gases would be recombined, providing water and electricity to power the balloon.

The Stratobus would significantly increase the area monitored by a single platform, as the high altitude puts the horizon at 500 kilometers (310 miles). Considered a hybrid between a drone and a satellite, it would be able to linger for up to a year over a given area after which time it would have to be grounded for maintenance. During these maintenance periods a second airship would ensure mission continuity.

It is expected that each Stratobus would last five years.

Cyber Defence Command was created in 2017 and was expanded in January when Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly announced France will develop and deploy offensive cyber weapons. Tisseyre took on the lead role Sept. 1 from his predecessor and most recently served as the deputy to that former commander. He spoke to Defense News earlier this month in a meeting room at the Armed Forces Ministry.

What is your role as the head of Cyber Defence Command?

I am a conductor, and my orchestra is made up of the Army, Navy and Air Force chiefs of staff, ANSSI [France’s National Agency for the Security of Information Systems], and defense industry leaders.

We must protect our systems, be robust, be resilient because if France’s vital interests are attacked, then the armed forces must be able to react. Our weapons systems, our command systems are all computer-controlled. This makes them powerful and effective but also vulnerable, so we must be able to protect them. And today this protection must be as global and end-to-end as possible. This means that everyone in the Ministry of the Armed Forces must work together, and there must be a conductor to coordinate the protection and the defense of our interconnected networks. That is my job.

I have a staff and a number of specialized units who contribute to this defense and coordinate it. But within each armed force — the Navy, the Army, the Air Force — there are cyberwarriors who liaise with us to defend their systems.

We work very closely with ANSSI, exchanging information so that we can anticipate future attacks. We also work closely with our fellow NATO members, our bilateral partners and other international organizations. The idea is to be able to anticipate and not just to react.

What does France consider a top cyberthreat?

Cyberspace is a very positive place for bringing people together and is wonderful for the economy, for arts and so on. But precisely because it brings thousands of people into contact with each other, it is also used to get money fraudulently, to influence, to destabilize, to spread ideologies. And even if we must maintain freedom of expression, there are certain things in France which cannot be said publicly — [incitement to ethnic and racial hatred, for example]. Our principle is that everything that happens in real life is transposable into cyberspace, so for France and many other countries, the law is just as applicable in cyberspace as it is in real life. But because there is a general impression that no rules apply in cyberspace, then individuals and groups use it for criminal activities, spying, destabilizing electoral processes. And the question arises as to whether these individual or groups are being backed by states.

As a member of the armed forces, my duty is to be paranoid and assume that the cyber enemy may have a strong, state-backed criminal intent to prepare conflicts, and so that is what we must be prepared for.

How do you anticipate the ways imaginative hackers will act?

By hiring imaginative youngsters ourselves. Our cyberwarriors have to be extremely motivated to protect the ministry’s systems and France, obviously. They must have very specialist IT technical or social media know-how, or be brilliant intelligence gatherers. A lot of what is said on social networks allows us to learn about our enemy, to anticipate possible attacks, or even enables us to hinder their propaganda, particularly on our theaters of operation in Africa or the Levant, for example, where part of our mission is to stop jihadist groups from recruiting.

Our cyberwarriors have to have a particular frame of mind because we are not asking them to configure the network or equipment, we are really in a combat situation in cyberspace. We work on operations to defend or to undertake offensive actions to protect our systems, our freedom to act, to guarantee the sovereignty of our systems.

Is France confronting specific threats that are different from those faced by other countries?

Fundamentally, no, because we are all cyberattacked by people trying to block our computers, and attackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their ways of hacking.

How does France respond?

We must be prepared to react. But France considers that attributing an attack — notably where advanced persistent threats, [or APT], are concerned — is a very political, highly sensitive thing to do. APT can be the work of individuals seeking ways to make money, or being paid by others and potentially linked to intelligence services of other nations.

If an organization such as NATO is attacked, then France is, by principle, against collective attribution. Each member of the organization must agree that the attacking individual or group is taking its orders from a state because attribution of blame, as I said, is highly political: You’re designating a state as being responsible for attacking another one, and that has a very strong impact. You have to be able to prove it, and the state that has been blamed might not appreciate having the finger pointed at it.

In the physical world when an aircraft crosses into another nation’s airspace or a vehicle crosses a border, there is concrete proof: radar, photographs and so on. The difficulty in cyberspace is that it’s very easy to pass oneself off as somebody else and to hide one’s tracks; [just] because an APT is perpetrated by attackers physically present in one country, that [doesn’t mean] they were taking their orders from that country. Here’s an example to illustrate my point: They could use a server in Germany to send the data to the U.K., which then rebounds in France and finally attacks the United States. So Washington would try and work back to see where the attack came from and would eventually discover that it came from Germany, but that doesn’t mean the order to attack came from Germany. In cyberspace, leads very quickly get entangled. So we really have to be extremely careful about a hack-back before thorough due diligence has been undertaken.

What France wants is that each member state validates the blame before the finger is pointed. We are against the idea that just because one member blames a state for attacking it, that NATO takes it as a given and invokes Article 5 of the NATO treaty, [which calls for collective action if a member state is attacked].

What would happen if France is attacked?

It depends. If France thinks that the attack came from a state and wants a collective reaction from NATO, then there’d be a whole lot of discussions about the risk of escalation, Article 5, the right to self-defend and so on. These notions involve significant commitments for countries, and so we want things to be clearly defined where cyberspace is concerned: What is an attack? Who was targeted? What are the consequences of the attack? Did it touch the physical integrity of nationals of the country? Were the operating systems of a hospital or a power station impacted?

We want to take into account the economic or human impact of the attack and the nature of the attacker: Was it an individual having fun? Was it a group, and what were its motivations? Was it a jihadist group with terrorist intent, or was it outright a state pre-positioning itself for future conflicts or trying to wield influence?

France wants things to be clear. We want to establish how international laws apply to cyberspace, and as I mentioned earlier, we insist on due diligence.

Could you explain what you mean by “due diligence”?

If, for example, France sees that it has been attacked via a server in Germany, then “due diligence” means that instead of us simply hacking Germany back, we would ask the authorities in Berlin to act to stop that server being used. So even if, within NATO, a member state is attacked, then France holds that that state is not authorized to hack back without due diligence being undertaken first.

It’s a bit complex, but we’ve listed the types of attack, the principle of digital sovereignty, the references to the Tallinn Manual — [the independent academic research product authored by an international group of about 20 experts to guide how international law applies to cyber conflicts and cyberwarfare]. And we’ve positioned ourselves with regards to this, and in certain particular cases have said, “Be careful, our interpretation of X is slightly different for these reasons,” and we explain why.

We also explain that we consider an attack on information systems in France is an attack on our national sovereignty. That gives us the right to riposte, not necessarily in a cyber way but it could be a diplomatic response or an economic one ― it depends on the nature of the attack and the impact it has and on the attacker himself, what his motivations were and in what framework the attack took place.

How does the ministry work with industry?

The ministry knows how to defend itself, and we have the right, within a very strict framework, to undertake offensive cyberattacks in foreign operations. The attacker knows that a direct attack on us is thus likely to fail. So he will ruse. He’ll attack the weak link: the defense industry, notably the subcontractors that may only make a small component of a weapon or an IT system. He’ll put a virus or malware in that subcontractor’s system, and it will progressively make its way into the major contractor’s system and then into the weapon system. And as all these are interconnected, then this is how we would be attacked. So we need to have confidence in the entire supply chain, and we are on the verge of signing a convention with industry aimed at raising general awareness of this risk at every level of industry.

France has allocated €1.6 billion (U.S. $1.8 billion) to cyber defense in its 2019-2025 military program law. What are the main spending priorities?

To ensure that the system is protected and defendable. Until recently, we concentrated on the functionality of the system: what it was designed to do and who for (the Air Force, the Navy, the Army, etc.). And making the systems secure was an additional layer to the basic functions, so if funds ran out, then sometimes the layer would be only half done or had holes in it.

Today we are aware that there is such vulnerability in computer systems that security has to be built in by design. It’s part and parcel of the functionality of the system.

We’re also spending money on the detection of attacks. Our network has sensors in it to detect whether anyone is using the network who shouldn’t be. We’re working on the characterization of attacks, which means we’re collecting data on malware — a bit like a laboratory that might keep a sort of library of viruses and bacteria — to be able to quickly establish what type of attack is being undertaken and therefore what the best “medicine” is for it.

And of course we’ll be hiring another 1,000 cyberwarriors between now and 2025.

“Mass,” or the capacity to generate and maintain an ample number of soldiers, is one of eight factors of operational superiority identified by the French Army, according to a speaker at a seminar on how the service will fight in future high-intensity wars. The event was held under Chatham House rules, which means the speaker can not be identified for this story.

A smaller ground force of 77,000 — compared to 220,000 or so in 1996 when conscription was mandatory — could be supported by robots, but French officials insist there will always be a man in the loop.

A senior officer outright rejected the idea of “autonomous killer robots.” He added that future conflicts will likely take place in urban areas and would result in “ferocious attrition of men and materiel,” both of which would be “hyper-connected and thus hyper-powerful.”

However, that would also serve as “their major weakness,” he added, as enemy disruption of IT systems would prove crippling. He identified redundancies as one solution to both materiel attrition and IT issues.

Another suggestion that came out of the event aimed at ensuring operational superiority by numbers involved delegating most noncombat tasks to civilians. That could enable military personnel to concentrate on combat missions.

However, Army personnel attending the seminar argued strongly against employing mercenaries or private security companies in combat roles. Instead they suggested strategic partnerships with privileged partners such as the U.S. and the U.K., or alliances such as NATO.

They also favored local ad hoc cooperation such as the G5 Sahel Joint Force in central Africa and the use of 24,000 French reservists for positions such as linguists and cyber analysts.

“Today, France is choosing to procure cyber weapons for its military operations. We consider the cyber weapon as a full-fledged operational weapon,” she said.

“We will use it proportionately,” Parly added, noting at the same time, “We will not be scared of using it.”

“On average we have more than two security events daily,” Parly said, “some of which were aimed directly at us [whilst] others were aimed at our industries and partners.” She revealed a serious breach of security, which lasted from late 2017 to April 2018, that could have imperiled the navy’s entire fuel chain. “In case of a cyberattack against our forces, we reserve the right to retaliate, in a legal framework, with the means and at the moment of our choosing,” Parly said. “We also reserve the right, whoever the attacker is, to neutralize the effects and the digital means employed.”

She added: “We will also be ready to employ the cyber weapon on foreign operations for offensive purposes, on its own or to support our conventional means, or to multiply their effects.”

Part of the €1.6 billion ($1.8 billion) earmarked in the 2019-2025 military program law for cyber defense would be used to hire “1,000 cyber fighters” between now and 2025, according to the defense minister. Some of those would be under the orders of Brig. Gen. Olivier Bonnet de Paillerets, commander of the French cyber-defense force founded in 2017. Others would be employed by the DGA procurement agency or by the DGSE, France’s foreign intelligence service. Parly noted that “cyber fighters on foreign operations will benefit from the same protection as our military.”

Following Parly’s speech, Gen. François Lecointre, the chief of staff of the French armed forces, announced that Bonnet de Paillerets would craft a new offensive cyberwarfare doctrine meant to “ensure the defense of our interests and the preservation of our sovereignty.”

PARIS — France has launched the first of three identical military imaging satellites, which, when they reach full operational capability at the end of 2021, will replace the aging Helios system and provide 800 very high-resolution black and white, color, and infrared images per day for European military and civilian intelligence agencies.

CSO-1 (Composante Spatiale Optique, or Optical Space Component), made by Airbus Defence and Space as well as Thales Alenia Space, was launched by a Soyuz rocket on Dec. 19 from the European space base in Kourou, French Guiana, 24 hours late because of high-altitude winds.

This 3.5-ton satellite and its sister CSO-3 — to be launched by the new Ariane 6 European rocket in October 2021 — are very high-resolution observation satellites that orbit 800 kilometers above Earth. The CSO-2, an extremely high-resolution identification satellite — to be launched by a Soyuz rocket in May 2020 — will orbit Earth at an altitude of 480 kilometers. At this altitude, the satellite will need to automatically reset its orbit twice a day to compensate for the planet’s gravitational pull.

Completing the €1.485 million (U.S. $1.688 million) CSO system are the SSM ground mission base in Toulouse, southwest France (operated by the CNES French government space agency) and the SSU ground user center at the CMOS Military Center for Observation by Satellite at the 1/92 Bourgogne French Air Force Base in Creil, just north of Paris.

CMOS will receive and prioritize all image requests from France, but also from CSO partners Belgium, Germany and Sweden (Italy will sign up in early 2019).

The center also currently manages requests from Greece and Spain, in addition to those countries mentioned above, for images from the Helios system — of which they are all (except for Germany) co-owners.

All images will be centralized at CMOS before they’re dispatched to clients. In addition to this main SSU center, there will be 29 deployable units and 20 fixed units once the CSO system is fully operational.

The images will be downloadable every 90 minutes — instead of every six hours, as is currently the case with the Helios system — thanks to the Kiruna ground station in northern Sweden, which will be more often be within the satellite’s swath than the CMOS, which is more than 2,000 kilometers further south.

“This will considerably shorten the time lapse between a request being issued and the image being received by the client,” Gilles Chalon, director of the CNES observation service, said at the launch.

The telescope carried by each satellite is more agile than those carried by 14-year-old Helios 2A and 9-year-old Helios 2B, which can only take infrared and black and white images. The newer telescopes mean photos of a particular geographical zone can be taken at a variety of different angles as the satellite passes over the area.

Specific image resolution information is classified, but Jean-Baptiste Pin, director of the MUSIS-CSO program at the DGA French procurement agency, said the CSO-2 will supply images at an extremely high resolution — a level of detail only attainable by airborne captors.

“The quality of the image is without equivalent in Europe,” he said, “but what is important is the agility” of the system. This means that the satellite’s image-taking program can be modified in real time to meet an urgent request.

Chalon explained that he could not describe the focal planes in detail, but said “they are stuffed full of innovations.” He added that the black and white images could be combined with the color images to give analysts a more comprehensive picture.

He also noted that 3D imagery — a capability of the three CSO variants — helps with precision targeting and avoiding collateral damage in a bombing campaign.

CSO is a component of Europe’s €1.75 billion MUSIS, or Multinational Space-based Imaging System. This initiative, born at the end of 2006 and involving Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Spain, aims to replace all of Europe’s military and civilian-military space-based observation systems. Today these consist of France’s two optical Helios II military satellites and two optical Pleiades dual satellites; Germany’s SAR-Lupe five-satellite military radar system; and Italy’s Cosmo-Skymed four-satellite dual-radar system. These radar systems allow for observation through thick clouds.

Germany is developing the SARah radar system to replace SAR-Lupe and is also financially participating in the development of CSO-3, while Italy is working on CSG (Cosmo-Skymed Second Generation) as well as a common interoperability layer, which will render the CSG and CSO interoperable. Spain is working on a wide field-of-view optical component known as Ingenio.

Pin said the objective was to “avoid any capacity gap at the end of Helios II,” whose lifespan was set at five years. The COS satellites’ lifespan is 10 years.

The MUSIS partners will have joint and federated access to a new generation of space-based observation capabilities. However, bilateral agreements, such as the one signed between France and Sweden, will allow other European nations to join.

Wednesday’s launch also marked the first step in the French Armed Forces Ministry’s five-year, €3.6 billion plan to completely renovate its spaceborne capabilities.

As part of this space strategy France will in 2020 launch three CERES — electromagnetic, military and intelligence gathering satellites. By 2022, France will launch the first two of three Syracuse IV military communication satellites with the third ready by 2030. From 2024, the armed forces’ satellite navigation system will be modernized under a program called Omega, which will bring an autonomous geolocation capability able to use both GPS and the signal from Galileo, a European Union satellite navigation system.

The director of the DGA, Joel Le Barre, has promised to “open these programs to our European partners.”

The event was the first showcase for the new French Agency for Innovation in Defense, headed by Emmanuel Chiva. The agency is part of the DGA procurement arm but has its own €1.2 billion ($1.86 billion) budget to detect innovative ideas and accelerate their transfer into the defense ministry. Created on Sept. 1, 2018, the outfit will be fully operational by Jan. 1, 2019.

The projects on display were grouped into seven sectors: Tomorrow’s spy; Tomorrow’s war; Innovating for every day; Towards the invisibility cape; Innovating for the human; Beyond the horizon and the Defense Innovation Agency. They ranged from a bionic leg to a wearable air-bag, from an invisibility cape to the automatic analysis of images.

Among the slew of innovations, here are five noteworthy technologies:

The 100-year old, family-held company Proteor won the event competition with its version of a bionic leg. Eric Archambeaud, the company’s industrial director, called the prosthetic system “disruptive” in a brief interview with Defense News. “There is no equivalent in the world because it allows above-the-knee amputees to have a knee, feet and ankles which, for the first time, are all integrated.” The system, almost ready to market, is powered by batteries which last a week, rechargeable with a USB plug.

A technology named Cameleon renders a vehicle “hard to see” in both the visible and infrared spectra. Developed by Nexter, the French branch of the Franco-German KNDS vehicle systems group, the system connects tiles in a network piloted by a computer linked to a camera which films the surrounding landscape. The computer analyzes and decomposes the images to generate onto the tiles colors and textures that resemble the actual surroundings. Eric Petitpas, the program manager, explained “that the computer will be capable of deep learning to perfect the system.” Currently at Technical Readiness Level (TRL) 4, the aim is to reach a market-ready level 7 by 2025 or 2026.

Earth Cube, a 30-person startup founded by Renaud Allioux and Arnaud Guerin in 2016, uses the latest advances in medical imagery and artificial intelligence and applies them to automatically classify objects, detect changes and analyze scenes. The objective is to offload the drudge work for image analysts by only offering images which feature whatever it is the analyst is looking for: tanks, combat aircraft, a new building, for example.

RXR Protect, a three-person enterprise, has developed a wearable airbag that looks a bit like bubble wrap to be worn under a bullet-proof vest. “The idea is to dissipate the bullet’s kinetic energy which can cause the wearer severe injury despite the bullet not penetrating the vest,” explains David Schuller, the company’s CEO. A prototype will be presented to the DGA next April.

The Defense Health Service is interested in the so-called MedPack, which has won its inventor and developer Samuel Mercier, a nurse with the Paris military fire-brigade, several prizes. Already used by some Parisian first responders, the 8 kg MedPack takes five seconds to open on its tripod revealing a complete medical kit for treating patients.