“More than a million detections”: this Le Havre company which tracks drones has grown from 15 to 50 employees in three years

“Drone” is certainly one of the most used words regarding various geopolitical crises at the moment. How can we protect ourselves from this in sensitive areas such as ports, airports, chemical industries and military sites? Launched by three partners in Le Havre (Seine-Maritime) in 2021, Drone XTR is working on their detection to protect air corridors.

“Thanks to a service delivery principle where we install antennas and rent our interface, we are present at the airports of Nice, Marseille, Toulouse, and Bordeaux. At the moment, we are working on those of Beauvais and Basel-Mulhouse and the next ones are Lyon and Nantes. We have won numerous civilian contracts including amusement parks, Seveso sites, major events and also with the military who came to look for us,” explains Jean-François Adam, president and CEO of Drone XTR.

The market is growing very quickly and the number of banned flights is increasing. The Le Havre company, which today has 15 employees, 50% of whom are engineers, for a turnover estimated in 2026 at 4 million euros, must expand and above all wants to “reinternalize production in France”.

A race for technology

With more than a hundred customers in the region and 400 users connected day and night to the surveillance interface, Drone XTR “will exceed one million theft detections since our creation. Using a drone has become as simple and common as taking a photo with your smartphone. However, the regulations are not always known. With our principle of recovering the drone’s protocol and therefore its GPS position, at our first client, the Port of Le Havre, we have reduced prohibited flights by 50% while the number of professional authorizations has exploded. The more we control these prohibited flights, often leisure flights, the more we will avoid threats on chemical sites, accidents with planes, industrial espionage or in areas controlled by armies. »

The founders therefore decided to invest 2 million euros in the construction of a new infrastructure “equipped with a test bench, a radio frequency analysis room, a latest generation control center and above all an assembly line for our anti-drone systems. At the moment they are manufactured in different countries. It is now important to enter into the France 2030 program and ensure sovereign production of more than thirty sensors per month. These are important issues,” adds the CEO.

A development which will also make it possible to increase from 15 to 50 employees and 10 million euros in turnover by 2028, “to offer a nursery of specialized engineers and also launch new developments in the neutralization of civilian drones or even the detection of drones by cameras coupled with AI. You have to be on standby, because it’s a race for technology.”

A hub will open in May 2027 which will allow these pioneers in the fight against drones, “leaders in the civilian market”, to stay one step ahead, especially as large companies are showing up, including Orange: “We want to remain agile and reactive, because that is our strength. We have been in this promising field since the beginning” indicates Jean-François Adam.