Paris Air Show 2023: French UAVs to feed into army's artillery fire-control system

The French Army's ATLAS automated FCS, provided by Thales, is being upgraded to receive UAV intelligence and target information. (Janes/Giles Ebbutt)

Thales has been awarded a contract by the French military to integrate most of their “in-service UAVs” into the army's ATLAS (Automatisation de Tir et des Liaisons l'Artillerie Sol-sol) automated artillery fire-control system (FCS), Janes learnt at the Paris Air Show 2023, held from 19 to 25 June.

The contract was awarded this month, Jean-Michel Negret, command chain product line manager for Thales, told Janes.

Once the integration is complete, the ATLAS FCS will receive electro-optical (EO) information from the UAVs to support target reconnaissance, acquisition, and provide real-time battle damage assessments, he added.

This integration is important considering 70% of the targets identified in Ukraine are acquired by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), he added.

ATLAS is a command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I) system for artillery regiments that collects target acquisition and intelligence data and performs real-time fire sequence management. It has been in service with the French Army since 2002 and forms part of the military's battlefield digitisation programme.