Euronaval 2024 – Lacroix looking to drone-based ship soft-kill defence and other duties

The French countermeasures/pyrotechnics house Lacroix is exploring the use of small, unmanned air system from its sister company Milton to contribute to the soft-kill anti-ship missile defence (ASMD) and conduct other missions in the littoral warfare

Lacroix is a well-known developer and manufacturer of soft-kill countermeasures for air and naval applications, while the Milton company, which was acquired by Etienne Lacroix in late 2023, is specialised in unmanned systems, interchangeable payloads and command and control design and applications. The Lacroix Defense Division is exploring how their knowledge can be put together to develop shipboard soft-kill systems based on unmanned air platforms deploying dedicated and sized countermeasures.

“The operational concept we are pursuing is the use of drones to provide persistent protection of vessels operating in challenging littoral contests, such as chokepoints where the ship has reduced time to react to popping-up threats,” Renaud Thetiot, Lacroix sales and marketing director told EDR On-Line.

According to Lacroix, to provide an efficient defence in such challenging scenarios where vessels are exposed to multiple simultaneous attacks, naval platforms must deploy small swarms of capable unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) offering a sustained and multispectral protection.

Milton developed and successfully marketed two unmanned air systems: the Long-Range Observer (LRO) vertical take-off and landing fixed-wing airframe, and the Sky Keeper hexacopter. The LRO UAV has a combination of four rotors for VTOL and a push motor for horizontal flight, all with electrical propulsion and batteries. It has a light and resistant Kevlar chassis (6 kg) and is easy to assemble, disassemble and transport. The LRO can fly in adverse conditions and has an 80 km range and 3-hour autonomy with a 1.5 kg payload. Two UAVs ensure a 24-hour coverage.

The Sky Keeper hexacopter is a versatile UAV with a carbon fibre structure that can carry up to 10 kg payload and has a flight autonomy of 70 and 51 minutes respectively without and with a 5 kg payload. It can be deployed in less than 10 minutes and can withstand winds of up to 60 km/h.

Both systems exploit the same ground control station alongside existing technological building blocks and interchangeable sensor payloads.

Lacroix and Milton are working on a package including the use of multiple Sky Keeper UAVs equipped with countermeasures to create a multispectral protection of the mother ship. Lacroix has established a roadmap including the development of an IR solution that could be ready in around two years, followed a year later by and electro-optical/visual multispectral masking payload. The RF payload would be ready by 2030.

The latter countermeasure payload will take the form of scaled corner reflectors which could be augmented by chaffs dispensed from standard 40 mm cartridges. The infrared countermeasure would be based on the compositions of the Lacroix SEALIR round and of standard airborne IR cartridges.

The Milton team is also working on technologies for UAVs automatic landing and take-off, to allow its products to operate from vessels or also ground moving platforms. Preliminary activities are on-going with the aim to have a viable solution to be tested by the end of 2025.

Lacroix is developing these activities on internal funds but looking to obtain funding form the French DGA armaments procuring agency to mature its concept into a full demonstrator programme. “We want to propose our solution to the DGA as we think we have a viable, effective and quite cost-efficient solution,” said the Lacroix representative.

Both Etienne Lacroix companies are also working on unmanned air solutions based on the current and under development platforms by Milton for different naval missions, including intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance (ISR) with electro-optical, radar and electronic support measures, anti-piracy with communication intelligence and jamming, but also non-lethal or lethal weapons and anti-drone with surveillance and jamming equipment.

Images and photos courtesy Lacroix