Drama in Europe: France canceled two projects for the development of advanced drones

The cancellation of French participation in the “Euro-Drone” project is a fatal blow to the partnership on the continent. In Paris they came to the conclusion that the drone is simply “less suitable for high intensity conflicts”.

The Chief of Staff of the French Air Force even recently defined it with open disdain as “yesterday’s UAV”, which requires huge and outdated ground infrastructure. According to ‘AeroTime’, the French abandonment is expected to increase the costs of the project by more than 700 million euros for the other partner countries in the project: Germany, Italy and Spain.

At the same time, the second canceled project, the “Patroler”, has long since become a symbol of failure and deficiencies in France’s procurement system. The project was budgeted in 2016 in the amount of approximately 330 million euros and was supposed to deliver the aircraft in 2018. In practice, the first drone was only delivered in May 2024 following a crash caused by a technical failure.

Commanders in the French army did not hide their criticism, claiming that the drone, which weighs a ton and a half, is simply too slow, too large and too easy to be detected by advanced electronic warfare systems.

Despite the resounding cancellations, France is not abandoning the sky. It is now betting on a new generation of local, lighter, cheaper and more advanced alternatives. The Ministry of Defense currently supports five development programs, including the “Aarok” designed for attack, and the “Enbata” which promises to provide half the performance of the American ‘Reaper’ at a fifth of the price.

It seems that in Paris the bloody lessons of the last conflicts have been well internalized: in the modern war, huge expensive and cumbersome projects are no longer a guarantee of victory.