First Contract for Airbus Helicopter and Naval group

The 29th of December, French defense procurement agency awarded Naval Group and Airbus Helicopter to develop their first drone together into technology development contract . The goal of this partnership is to develop rotary wings unmanned vehicul UAV demostrator for French Navy.

© Naval Group

Airbus Helicopter and Naval Group partnership

This demonstration project lead to trial of the drone launch system. As this technoloies doesn't exist, the main objectives are to identify, deploy and test the neccessary technologies that will be needed for naval integration of this tactical drone.

These studies will help to select technologies for SDMA(Navy Airbone Drone System). To monitor this project, Airbus Helicopter and Naval Group have been selected and will be joinly responsible, main subcontractor will be Hélicopter Guimbal, Safran, Thalès and ONERA.

“We are proud to have been selected by the DGA together with our long-standing partner Airbus Helicopters to allow the French Navy to integrate aerial drone systems into its units and strengthen its operational capabilities,” said Hervé Guillou, president and CEO of Naval Group.

© Emmanuel Huberdeau

As a base for this project, the two european company will use Airbus Helicopter VSR700 rotary wings. This 700kg drone is derived from Cabri G2 that made his fist autonomous flight un June 2017. First flight for VSR700 is planned for this year. It can exceed 10 hour flight and has a payload capacity up to 150kg.