Action / Reaction – To improve the anti-drone fight, especially in the context of the war in Iran, the French army will test laser-guided rockets under Rafale and Tigre, and test drone interceptors for drones.
Deployed in the Middle East to support its partners, such as Qatar, Kuwait, or the United Arab Emirates, in the anti-drone fight, France would have shot down more than 80 drones of type Shahed since the beginning of the conflict, according to the JDD.
The French army deployed fourteen Rafale aircraft to reinforce the ten aircraft permanently stationed in the region. The Army strengthened this device by sending four Tigre helicopters from the Alat (light aviation of the Army) to the Gulf.
Now the question is how to adapt these devices to the specification of the anti-drone fight, to equip them with more efficient vectors, and above all, less costly. Currently, the Mica missiles used by the Rafale cost between 600,000 and 700,000 euros per unit, while the targeted Shahed drones cost about 30,000 euros each.
Integration in three weeks instead of twelve to eighteen months
The Ministry of the Armed Forces announced on Wednesday in a statement that the “DGA [General Directorate of Armament] combat has mobilized from the beginning of the conflict in the Middle East to accelerate the evaluation of solutions responding as quickly and pragmatically as possible to the evolving threats”. The Expert Referencing Centers (CeR), created at the end of 2025 to work on short-cycle technologies, are thus “put to the test in the context of current conflicts.”
It is notably the Expert Referencing Center for anti-drone fight (CeRLAD), attached to (…)
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War in Iran: What is the Tigre helicopter, deployed by the French army to shoot down drones?
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/2026/04/22/69e942d33ce79763612437.jpg "War in the Middle East: second French soldier killed in Lebanon, ships seized in the Strait of Hormuz…")
