This order was placed on 22 August 2025 by the French Defence Procurement Agency (DGA) to a consortium comprising MBDA, Safran Electronics and Defence, Thales and CILAS. It concerns the development of a demonstrator for a laser weapon system, known as SYDERAL (for Système Laser de Défense de Nouvelle Génération or New Generation Laser Defence System), intended for anti-drone warfare and short-range air defence, as part of the 2024-2030 military planning law.
French Ministry of the Armed Forces press release
The SYDERAL demonstrator will enable the effectiveness of the laser weapon to be assessed for neutralising tactical drones, rockets, mortar shells and remotely operated munitions, with a view to equipping the armed forces by 2030.
Built on the basis of a scalable and modular architecture, usable day and night, this demonstrator is designed to be relatively compact in relation to its target power.
The consortium will provide high-level expertise in the complex technologies required to build the demonstrator, particularly in the areas of laser beam combining, high-precision automatic video tracking and adaptive optics, offering increased efficiency compared to other systems developed around the world.
The development of this sovereign solution was the subject of an initial notification in 2024 to the consortium formed by Lumibird and CILAS, for an amount of €10 million. The aim was to develop a range of laser sources with characteristics that would allow a large number of them to be combined in order to achieve very high power.
The SYDERAL demonstrator will be a first step towards achieving very high power and being able to deal with more complex threats such as missiles.
