France turns to its automotive industry-Renault, Valeo and Forvia-to accelerate military drone production

France wants to harness the production strength of its automotive industry to ramp up the manufacture of military drones. Since the start of the year, carmakers such as Renault and suppliers including Valeo and Forvia have announced a series of tie-ups with defence-sector companies, as part of a French Government-backed push to strengthen the country’s industrial and military self-reliance.

The idea is to bring the automotive sector’s industrial scale, automation know-how and manufacturing efficiency to one of the fastest-growing areas of military technology.

France’s automotive industry and military drones

“Why now? Because the need is now,” Valeo chief executive Christophe Perillat said in July. “And why in France? Because we are being asked to guarantee our sovereignty,” he added.

Insufficient stock

While French officials do not expect an imminent conflict on national soil, they argue that France must be ready to react quickly should that situation arise. A report by the French Senate’s defence committee, published in July, described France’s current military drone inventory-estimated at only a few thousand units-as “insufficient to reach a critical mass”.

The heavy use of this equipment in the war between Ukraine and Russia has significantly reshaped how conflicts are fought, prompting France and several European countries to speed up investment in the technology.

Rising pressure from the United States for Europe to bolster its military capabilities has also helped drive the shift in strategy.

If all currently announced projects go ahead, France would gain an industrial base capable of producing tens of thousands of drones each year-a scale that would be difficult to reach through defence-specialist firms alone.

“It’s not the same thing to produce a drone in a defence start-up and to create something that can be reproduced in very high volumes, using production-line robots.”

Patrick Pailloux, Direction générale de l’armement

What has already been announced

Among the initiatives already made public, Valeo will manufacture electric motors in France for drones developed by defence technology company Harmattan AI.

Forvia: anti-drone systems and interceptor output

Forvia, meanwhile, said at the end of July that it had reached an agreement with a European defence company-whose identity was not disclosed-specialising in AI-assisted anti-drone systems. At the same time, it is assessing the creation of a French facility able to produce 1,000 interceptor drones per month.

Renault, Thales and Toutatis industrialisation

Renault has gone further. The manufacturer is working with Turgis Guillard to build drones at its Le Mans plant in the west of the country. In June, it also announced a partnership with Thales to industrialise the Toutatis kamikaze drone, aiming to reach a rate of 1,000 units per month from 2027.

Also in June, French drone maker Delair teamed up with German supplier Schaeffler to set up, in France, an assembly line intended to produce around 100 drones per day by November.

If these plans progress as expected, the combined capacity of Renault, Schaeffler and Forvia could come close to 60,000 units per year. Even so, in the event of a high-intensity conflict, that volume would still fall short of the operational needs estimated by French authorities.

Scaling production without building obsolete reserves

French officials face another constraint: increasing output without accumulating large reserves that could rapidly become technologically outdated.

“Drones evolve very quickly,” Thales chief executive Patrice Caine said this summer. That is why the approach is to secure enough industrial capacity to respond quickly in a crisis, without building up excessive stocks.