The French defense sector has taken a decisive step towards closer cooperation with Ukraine. They plan to create a new production line for drones on the territory of our country, which will be provided by a consortium of an automaker and a defense enterprise from France.
The French defense sector has taken a decisive step towards closer cooperation with Ukraine. They plan to create a new production line for drones on the territory of our country, which will be provided by a consortium of an automaker and a defense enterprise from France.
France and Ukraine will launch a joint production of drones on Ukrainian territory. This was announced by French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu during his speech on June 7, Le Monde reports. According to him, this is an «absolutely unprecedented partnership» between a major French automaker (whose name is not yet disclosed) and a national defense plant.
The goal is to deploy full-fledged production facilities for drones in Ukraine, which will be supplied to both the Ukrainian and French armies. Lecornu emphasized that French workers will not be sent to Ukraine for production, as local specialists have higher qualifications in the field of UAVs.
«Ukrainians have a fantastic ability not only to create drones, but also to form a new military doctrine for their use,» the minister said.
The drone model has not yet been announced, but France plans to use it not only on the battlefield, but also for training troops according to new standards. Ukraine’s experience in using drones will become the basis for future training of the French military.
Against the backdrop of this initiative, the contrast between the armies is only growing: the Ukrainian General Staff states that they plan to deploy over 4.5 million drones by 2025, and already UAVs provide about 70% of successful strikes on enemy equipment. France, on the other hand, is only catching up — its arsenal only has a few thousand devices.
Since 2022, Ukraine has become a testing ground for the combat use of drones and at the same time a driver of their technological development. The government launched the «Drone Army» platform, and hundreds of companies in Ukraine have received licenses to manufacture UAVs. At the same time, France, despite its status as a technological power, has only recently begun to actively modernize its army in the field of drones, in particular after studying the Ukrainian experience. The new production will be the first time that a NATO member state has invested in UAV production facilities on Ukrainian soil.
We previously wrote about how specialists from the Security Service of Ukraine developed special drones for Operation «Cobweb», as a result of which they managed to damage more than 40 enemy aircraft.
