What the organizers bill as Europe’s largest defense show, Eurosatory 2024, kicked off at France’s Paris-Nord Villepinte Exhibition Centre, 20 kilometers northeast of the capital, on Monday, June 17.
Speaking to Defense News in the days before the event, retired French Maj. Gen. Charles Beaudouin, who is running the show, said visitors would notice ground-breaking developments in six main areas of military technology: drones, mobile air defense, long-range artillery, landmine clearance, electronic warfare, and armored vehicles.
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Even a quick scan of the exhibits reveals the impact of lessons arising from the more than two years of the ongoing war in Ukraine following Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion, on all six of those fields – let’s look at four of them in a bit more detail.
Drones
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and unmanned surface vehicles (USV) have the biggest and probably most unexpected impact on warfighting.
Unsurprisingly drones and counter-drone technology feature strongly at the exhibition with some innovative ideas on display on both sides of the fence.
The increase in the number of weapons-carrying UAV systems is a noticeable change since the 2022 Eurosatory when surveillance and reconnaissance was the main order of the day. Now nearly every drone on display carries or has the potential to carry a weapon.
Off the shelf drones modified to become first-person view (FPV) attack drones, as widely used by both sides in Ukraine has sparked manufacturers into building purpose-built systems such as the German Donaustahl company’s MAUS FPV drone. This is said to do what the homemade drones do – only better. It will incorporate AI to make it effectively autonomous.
Ukraine Modifies Domestic UAV Into FPV Strike Drone ‘Aircraft Carrier’
Tethered drones to carry out surveillance, event monitoring, border security, infrastructure inspection and early warning above a defensive position is also a new trend. Some can carry payloads, some also carry explosive charges and can be released from the tether to attack an incoming threat. Drone Evolution’s SENTINEL carries its power to the drone through its tether so that it can fly continuously and can carry a payload up to 5 kilograms (11 pounds).
Another development is the attack cargo drone, such as Nurjanatech’s. The Italian company is exhibiting its NT Stealth Cargo Drone Swarm System. This consists of a sizeable UAV cargo drone whose materials, shape and propulsion system reduce its radar, infrared, and acoustic signature giving it a stealth capability. Contained within its cargo hold are an unspecified number of smaller AI-equipped kamikaze drones that can be released in a swarm to operate independently against a number of targets or in coordinated groups to attack high-value objectives.
These include those more suited for “passive” missions including electronic warfare, information gathering, target detection and identification, surveillance and reconnaissance.
One such system is Couach’s MAGELLAN, which uses a hybrid microturbine diesel-electric propulsion system that allows it to operate for up to five days and results in a reduced noise signature for “enhanced discretion.”
Those configured for aggressive tactics include Tecpro Technologies' AI-equipped Vidar FP USV which is fitted with advanced electronic countermeasures and encrypted communications. It can deliver torpedoes, sea mines, and UAV, autonomously or remotely controlled over distances up to 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) in high seas.
Mobile Air Defense
As with all successful military technology the countermeasures to it swiftly follow-on and so it is with the success of drones on Ukraine’s battlefield. The air threat from drones and loitering munitions against armored vehicles, field constructions, and troops out in the open has perhaps never been higher. This has created a need for increased, cost-effective, close-in and mobile air-defense capability at unit level.
Missile systems like Patriot are still needed to protect strategic areas, key points and installations but using a million-dollar missile to take out (possibly dozens) of drones costing a few thousand or a few hundred dollars is out of the question.
Most of the major manufacturers are showcasing air defense and anti-drone systems mounted on armored personnel carrier (APC), infantry-fighting vehicle (IFV), or tank chassis.
While there are also numerous cannon-based systems on offer there are a number of specialist drone-jamming technologies on show. Counter-unmanned aircraft system (C-UAS) systems rely on elements including high-performance radars and ultra-high definition cameras to detect, identify and track threats combined with powerful countermeasures that include wide band, omnidirectional and directional jamming and signal capture to defeat the threat.
Anti-drone weapons on display at Eurosatory are primarily cannon based, either as a complete system on a dedicated vehicle or as an add-on that can be mounted on the type of vehicle employed by the military end user, often supplemented by a modified man-portable air defense missile system (MANPADS) mounted in parallel with the cannon.
An example of the former is the Turkish 35mm dual cannon Korkut system manufactured by ASELSAN which can fire airburst ammunition at 1,100 rounds a minute out to 4 kilometers. The weapons being displayed at Eurosatory is mounted on both the company’s wheeled 8×8 armored vehicle and on an FNSS-manufactured tracked armored vehicle.
Germany’s Rheinmetall and the UK/US BAE systems are both showcasing turreted cannon that can be mounted on a variety of vehicles.
Rheinmetall is highlighting the Skyranger 35mm system mounted on a Leopard 2, and the 30mm version mounted on Lynx and Boxer IFVs, all three of which use AHEAD (Advanced Hit Efficiency and Destruction) ammunition - an airburst round that releases a cloud of sub-projectiles ahead and close to a target. The turret can also be fitted with a launcher for two FIM-92 Stinger or Mistral missiles
BAe is showcasing its 40mm Tridon Mk2 air defense system which uses Bofors 3P (Pre-fragmented, Programmable, Proximity-fused) ammunition.
Prototype of Skyranger 30 air-defense system mounted on a Boxer IFV. Photo: X/Twitter
Long-range artillery
While the war in Ukraine has seen loitering munitions, precision-guided weapons, and most particularly drones, playing an increasingly major role on the battlefield, artillery is still and probably always will be an indispensable weapon on the battlefield. Now, even more than ever, speed in deployment, rapid firing and moving is the key to survivability but outranging the enemy in the counter-battery fight is critical to winning.
More than 20 manufacturers are presenting solutions in the long-range artillery domain, these include multiple-launch rocket launchers (MLRS), “tube artillery,” and improved artillery ammunition.
Not surprisingly the success of the US wheeled M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) and its cousin the tracked M270 in Ukraine, analogues feature highly at Eurosatory.
Rheinmetall and Lockheed Martin jointly unveiled their Global Mobile Artillery Rocket System (GMARS), having resisted the urge to call it Improved HIMARS. It will be wheeled using the proven German HX 8 x 8 chassis. The two-pod launcher will be compatible with existing HIMARS ammunition including ATACMS but will offer ranges in excess of 400 kilometers (250 miles) by using the US new generation Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) as well as the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM).
A variation on the theme was displayed by South Korea’s Hanwha Corporation’s is K239 Chunmoo MLRS, itself a modernized version of an earlier system. The most significant feature is its multi-caliber capability of firing a variety of munitions – 130mm, 227mm, and 239mm rockets and missiles.
In the same (but different) vein is Brazil’s Armadillo system which consists of a 24 tube, mini-MLRS mounted on a US M1152 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) chassis. It can fire anti-tank and short-range air defense rockets furnished with MK40/MK66 rocket motors out to 12 kilometers and with the ability to automatically reload from two spare pods carried on board it is considered an ideal short-range “shoot-and-scoot” weapon.
There are no real surprises among the long-range artillery howitzers with wheeled varieties following the success of the weapons systems in Ukraine where the 155mm x 52 caliber guns have consistently outperformed Russian artillery. Eurosatory sees updated versions of the French CAESAR and the Anglo-Swedish Archer truck mounted 155mm howitzers.
Two notable absences are the Ukrainian Bohdana, all of which are needed on the battlefield and Soltam Systems’ Autonomous Truck Mounted Howitzer System (ATMOS) after France took the decision to block Israeli companies because of its war in Gaza.
The third pillar of long-range artillery on show in Paris are improved tube artillery ammunition. Among the exhibits are the improved US Excalibur S and French Katana and Sabir precision-guided munitions which use a combination of GPS and inertial guidance to improve accuracy.
Also on display are enhanced effect artillery munitions such as BAe’s BONUS 155mm round that deploys two sensor-fused munitions able to search for targets within a given 32,000 square meters footprint, In addition, several companies including Norway’s NAMMO have extended range artillery ammunition on show employing various techniques including Rocket Assisted Projectiles (RAP) and base bleed rounds produced by General Dynamics.
Armored vehicles
Eurosatory 2024 showcases the changing face of main battle tanks, which in the the future will have a lower profile, reduced thermal and radar visibility, integrate stealth technologies, and provide increased overhead, side and underbody protection from kamikaze drones and improvised explosive devices (IED) and the use of active self-protection devices to neutralize the devices where possible.
This new doctrine is perhaps exemplified by the offerings made by Rheinmetall’s Leopard 2A8 and France’s Nexter Leclerc XLR main battle tanks. While these are likely to be adopted by a number of European armies as their next generation of tank replacements, for the two manufacturers they are a steppingstone to what they call the Main Ground Combat System, MGCS which they hope to bring into service around 2035.
The MGCS will not be a single armored fighting vehicle, but a series of systems conceived around a base vehicle – what some have dubbed the “Powerpoint Panzer.”
It is still very much at the conceptual stage, but some perquisites have been established – it will be large caliber (140mm is proposed), it will have unmanned turrets, capable of operating both manned and unmanned, the ability to deploy drones and defeat drones probably with directed energy (laser), have beyond-line-of-sight strike weapons, and, of course, AI will feature highly its decision making, operational planning, fire control, communications and every aspect of its use on the battlefield.
Discussions (apparently heated) are ongoing over the balance between mobility, weight and resistance to hits with the Ukraine experience that armored vehicles were cracked open by missiles, drones, artillery and loitering munitions in the forefront of the designers’ minds.
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