Latest news with #Vaujour
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
French Navy tests unmanned beach assault, expands drone tactics
PARIS — The French Navy is stepping up drone use in the air and in the water, relying almost entirely on unmanned systems to recapture a beach in southern France in an amphibious operation during an exercise in March, according to the commander of the force. In the exercise to retake a stretch of shore in the Bay of Hyères on France's Mediterranean coast, the Navy used aerial drones and underwater gliders for maritime surveillance, drones to assault enemies targeting the beach, and to counterattack hostile drones, Navy Chief of Staff Adm. Nicolas Vaujour told a parliamentary hearing last week. 'We did it almost entirely with drones,' Vaujour told the National Assembly's defense committee. 'We are in the experimental phase to see exactly how far we want to go with each of these things.' In the exercise called Dragoon Fury, the French Navy used its amphibious helicopter carrier Tonnerre as a drone platform. Vaujour said drones don't fully replace amphibious maneuvers, and the Navy will still be dropping off troops and piloted military equipment on beaches, 'but we are fully invested in this concept of drone carriers.' Vaujour said the Navy is 'starting to achieve some interesting things,' for example using first-person view drones or tele-operated munitions to take out attacking unmanned surface vehicles. Despite these advancements, a drone force today isn't able to provide the power projection of an aircraft carrier strike group, Vaujour told lawmakers. 'Being able to drop six 125-kilogram bombs 400 to 600 nautical miles from the aircraft carrier, that's something a drone can't do.' Drones are particularly well-suited for operations in confined areas such as the Baltic Sea, and can offer additional capabilities especially when operating near coastlines or a carrier platform, such as in the beach assault, said Vice Adm. Emmanuel Slaars, the French Navy commander in charge of operations, speaking after Vaujour. Still, don't count on drones for all the solutions, he said. 'This is not high seas action, it is not the ability to fight against nuclear attack submarines,' Slaars told lawmakers. 'We don't yet have drones, either in the air or on the surface domain, capable of operating sustainably in contested environments – and I think it will still be a very long time before we do so in the surface domain.' The Navy embarked around ten defense companies aboard the Tonnerre during Dragoon Fury in the first two weeks of March, to create a real-life laboratory for tactical and technological innovation. Participating companies included Alseamar with underwater gliders, Delair with several drones from its portfolio and Exail with its DriX H-8 unmanned surface vehicle. The French Navy has been experimenting with autonomous underwater gliders for several years, with the systems truly operational 'for some time now,' according to Vaujour. The Navy works with Alseamar, which makes a 2-meter long underwater glider called Seaexplorer with an advertised 1,700-kilometer range and 110-day endurance. During last year's Polaris 24 exercise, in which the French and Italian navies faced off in the Mediterranean, the French force deployed gliders that were able to detect a number of Italian vessels. The French then struck the opposing ships with carrier aircraft from 'a very, very long way off,' leaving the Italians clueless to how they'd been localized, according to Vaujour. Locating the opposing vessels relied on 'lots of artificial intelligence' to detect small signals in the data collected by the gliders, according to the admiral. 'So that was quite an interesting breakthrough that shows there's a place for gliders,' Vaujour said. 'On the other hand, with passive detection alone, you can't detect everything.' Gliders are 'still a long way off' from being able to sniff out a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, according to Vaujour. However, they will have their place in maritime surveillance, and passive swarms combined with artificial intelligence for data analysis are an interesting means of detection, he said. 'There's still a lot of room for improvement,' the admiral said. 'We're developing these tools on a national level, with real capabilities, but also real limitations. The manufacturer who says they're going to make the oceans transparent isn't credible yet, let's say.' AI hasn't yet been able to replace the human ear for analysis of acoustic signals, 'even though a lot of money has been spent trying to do so,' Vaujour said. What the Navy needs are acoustic warfare analysts that understand the technology and 'who will help the AI to help them,' he said. The Navy is taking an 'iterative approach' to AI development, bringing aboard experts so they can see what the force needs, according to Vaujour. The Navy's center for data services and AI developed an onboard data hub that was tested onboard the frigate Provence, with Vaujour describing the hub as 'a huge computer' collecting all data from a ship, with subsequent analysis catching signals that would previously have gone unnoticed. The success of the test prompted the Navy to put four data hubs on ships taking part in a five-month deployment of the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier strike group, from late November to late April. The Navy also invited data scientists from French defense firms along for a month-long stint during the mission. Vaujour gave lawmakers a non-classified example of AI use on the Provence, in which algorithms tracked down the underlying cause of a diesel alternator valve failure, identifying a rising fluid temperature elsewhere in the system as the culprit. In another example, before passing a strait in Indonesia during the Charles de Gaulle deployment, the Navy used AI to analyze hundreds of possible locations for a Chinese submarine to work out the best tactical screen for the carrier, which Vaujour said 'wasn't entirely intuitive.' The Navy now needs to build up its AI skills, which must become generalized, and structure how the subject is approached from a human-resources angle, Vaujour said in the committee hearing. 'How do we inject artificial intelligence modules into all naval training, not to turn people into data scientists, but to create maritime experts in a field who can easily plug into artificial intelligence,' Vaujour said. 'I'm not going to turn data scientists into acoustic experts. However, I can make acoustic experts compatible with data scientists. That's the direction we're headed.'
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Europe is plagued by too many naval yards, French Navy chief says
PARIS — Europe has too many naval shipyards competing for business, and the industry needs to consolidate to a handful of players than can win export contracts, French Navy Chief of Staff Adm. Nicolas Vaujour said in a parliamentary hearing last week. The Naviris joint venture between Italy's Fincantieri and France's Naval Group, created in 2020 and meant as a first step in wider European naval consolidation, 'unfortunately didn't quite live up to expectations,' Vaujour told the National Assembly's defense committee on Wednesday. 'Today in Europe, we have around 14 shipyards that are competing with each other pretty much everywhere,' Vaujour said. 'In an ideal world, we would have three or four that challenge each other, but would above all be winning export market share abroad.' Europe lacks a single naval strategy, with countries having their national strategies and struggling to converge, the French Navy commander said. With governments keen to safeguard regional industrial activity and economies, political initiatives are probably not the way to consolidating military shipbuilding, according to Vaujour. 'We have the political ambition to be more coherent, from an industrial point of view, and to divvy up the market a little, so to say,' Vaujour said. 'But the reality is, we all agree here that if we must choose between Naval Group and Fincantieri, obviously it's Naval Group. And when you're in Italy, they of course say Fincantieri.' France also wants to protect the smaller naval yards along its coast, such as Piriou, Socarenam and CMN, according to the admiral. That means creating a naval equivalent of European aircraft maker Airbus would depend on the shipbuilding companies first and foremost, 'that is, if they manage to merge,' Vaujour told lawmakers. 'We didn't succeed with Fincantieri.' When Naval and Fincantieri created Naviris, they said the joint venture would serve the French and Italian navies, but also pursue export opportunities outside Europe and be a leader in shipbuilding consolidation. While Naviris won part of a €1.5 billion contract to upgrade the French-Italian Horizon-class frigates in 2023, success in the latter two areas has been more elusive. France and Italy have 'very, very different' strategies for shipbuilding and vessel size, according to Vaujour. France has been moving towards smaller frigates, with the newest Frégate de Défense et d'Intervention, or FDI, displacing 4,500 metric tons, whereas Italy's new PPA offshore patrol vessel displaces 7,000 tons and the DDX destroyer design is for 14,000 tons, Vaujour said. 'We consider that the size is a little too large,' Vaujour said. He said the FDI is drawing interest from European countries because the frigate is suitable for small navies, an accessible vessel that can be operated by a small crew. 'So we have divergence in our vision of the vessel of the future.' France and Italy also use different economic models, with the Italians buying 'a lot of ships' for their navy that they can resell, allowing to rapidly fill potential export orders, according to Vaujour. The French are in discussion with Naval Group about ordering a 'blank hull' that would be either available for export, or join the French fleet ahead of schedule if there's no buyer, Vaujour said. Naval Group currently has a minimum production rate of one FDI per year at its yard in Lorient, and says it can raise capacity to two per year, according to the admiral. France has ordered five FDI frigates from Naval Group, with the lead vessel of the class Amiral Ronarc'h completing sea trails last month. The first of three FDI frigates for the Hellenic Navy, HS Kimon, started sea trails on May 21 in Lorient. 'The first thing partners interested in the FDI ask about is the lead time – how soon can you supply me with a frigate?' Vaujour said. 'That's the only question the Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes ask when they ask for the FDI: `When can you deliver?'' Naval Group is convinced of the blank hull concept, while the Directorate General for Armament considers the model 'really relevant,' Vaujour said. He said the idea of ordering an FDI hull without a guaranteed buyer does carry risk, and the Finance Ministry still requires convincing. 'The acceleration of new contracts, we have to be able to do that,' Vaujour said. 'Lorient is capable of moving to two per year, and we can help with that.' A recent partnership agreement between Naval Group and Norway's Kongsberg should be seen in the context of a potential sale of frigates to the Royal Norwegian Navy, according to Vaujour. Norway is 'quite interested' in the FDI, which is in competition with British, German and Italian designs, and should France win the deal, there will be work sharing with Kongsberg, Vaujour said.
