Milipol Paris 2021

Paolo Valpolini

As usual, every uneven year in autumn Milipol Paris opens its doors to exhibitors and visitors, gathering in the French capital the players in the homeland security and safety sectors. One of the few exhibitions to escape the worst period of the COVID pandemic, and according to figures provided by organisers numbers expected for the 2021 edition should not be far from those of 2019, a record year for the Paris-based exhibition.

Some 1,000 exhibitors lined up at the Parc des Expositions in Villepinte, north of Paris, while around 150 official delegations are expected for the 22nd edition of this event. Organized under the patronage of the French Ministry of the Interior, the 4-day exhibition was inaugurated on October 19th by the Minister, Gérald Darmanin.

More and more we find overlaps between strictly military issues and homeland security (HLS) issues; beside small arms, which are often used by both military and police units, the increasing level of terrorist attacks brought police units to equip themselves with systems that differ only in colours from those employed by their military colleagues, we find night vision equipment, communications, and so on. The proliferation of UAVs is common to the battlefield and to urban areas; these systems are employed by military and HLS units, while both have also to protect them against drones used by third parties for numerous missions, intelligence, smuggling, up to direct attacks. Counter-UAS assets have therefore become another common key element in exhibitions like Milipol. The same is true for cybersecurity, although depicting the available systems and comparing them is nearly impossible due to the inherent type of system, mostly software-based, and on its secrecy.

However Milipol Paris is not only a display of equipment; in partnership with the Institut des Hautes Etudes du Ministère de l’Intérieur (IHEMI), the organisers set up a 4-day conference programme which main theme is “International Homeland Security Issues”, fighting against terrorism, National and European digital sovereignty, and Climate Change and security governance being the titles of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday discussions.

As usual EDR On-Line will do its best to provide its readers with the most in depth information on new systems, concentrating on those that have dual applications, both in the police/security as well as in the military arenas.

Beretta unveils its i-Protect Situational Awareness system for 92-series pistols

Israel Weapon Industries unveils GAL, a lightweight riot control suit

Aeraccess exhibits the latest version of its Hawker Q800X

Holistic cyber solutions from Rafael

Fused vision and long range surveillance from Photonis

Netline unveils its C-Guard Micro; light, compact dedicated to EOD teams

Cerbair and KEAS announce partnership to become the French CUAS champion

Meprolight Tigon: red dot and thermal sight, all-in-one

Nexter unveils the final configuration of its Nerva XX medium-size multi-mission UGV

XLR-40: an urban long-range sense-through-the-wall radar from Camero

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