The French DGA orders a high-power counter-drone laser demonstrator
Paris, September 4th, 2025 – This order was notified on August 22, 2025, by the French Defense Procurement Agency (DGA) to a consortium comprising MBDA, Safran Electronics and Defense, Thales, and CILAS.
It involves the development of a demonstrator for a laser weapon system, called SYDERAL (Système Laser de Défense de Nouvelle Génération, New Generation Laser Defense System), intended for counter-drone and short-range air defense, as part of the 2024-2030 military planning law.
With a power output of several tens of kilowatts, the demonstrator will benefit from innovative technologies that combine and concentrate laser energy to neutralize tactical drones, in particular, with maximum effectiveness.
The SYDERAL demonstrator will assess the effectiveness of laser weapons in neutralizing tactical drones, rockets, mortar shells, and loitering munitions, with a view to equipping the armed forces by 2030.
Based on a scalable and modular architecture, usable day and night, this demonstrator is designed to be relatively compact given the targeted power.
The consortium will provide high-level expertise in the complex technologies required to develop the demonstrator, particularly in combining laser beams, high-precision automatic video tracking, and adaptive optics, offering greater effectiveness than other systems developed worldwide.
The development of this sovereign solution was the subject of an initial notification in 2024 to the consortium consisting of Lumibird and CILAS, for a total of €10 million. This aimed to develop a series of laser sources with characteristics that allow a large number of them to be combined to achieve very high power.
The SYDERAL demonstrator will be a first step toward achieving very high power and being able to face more complex threats such as missiles.
Source French Ministry of the Armed Forces
Unofficial translation by EDR On-Line
Photo courtesy MBDA