On Wednesday, December 10, 2025, the French Directorate General of Armaments (Direction générale de l’Armement, DGA), under the Ministry of the Armed Forces and Veterans, awarded the European company Airbus Defence and Space a framework contract worth up to 50 million EUR for integrating artificial intelligence components into the weapons, information, communication, and cybersecurity systems used by the French Armed Forces.
Image: Airbus Defence and Space
The contract covers information systems supplied by Airbus Defence and Space and Airbus Helicopters. Under its framework, Airbus and the DGA are cooperating with the Ministerial Agency for Defence AI (l’Agence ministérielle pour l’IA de défense, AMIAD), established in May 2024 to enable France to master these technologies and avoid dependence on other countries. This initiative is part of the ministry’s defense AI strategy, aimed at meeting the challenge of sovereignty in this domain and developing AI applications for military operations.
The first phase of the contract will focus on enhancing the capabilities of the Spationav system – France’s maritime surveillance system – with artificial intelligence elements that will enable the automatic fusion of observational data from satellite systems and Spationav.
Numerous other potential applications are also being explored, especially in the fields of intelligence, cybersecurity, and communications, such as real-time support for managing and optimizing military telecommunications networks.
Given the proliferation of information sources (satellites, radars, drones, smartphones, social media), which generate massive volumes of data, only artificial intelligence can process them quickly and efficiently. The goal is to save time for personnel performing existing tasks and to enable actions that humans cannot accomplish due to time constraints or excessive data loads. A second major challenge associated with AI is the ability to store, archive, and structure all the data that feeds these systems using appropriate infrastructure.
Airbus to implement artificial intelligence in French armed forces' information systems.
The French Defence Procurement Agency (DGA) has awarded Airbus Defence and Space a framework contract for the integration of artificial intelligence components into the weapons, information,… pic.twitter.com/hL43utZvmo— Airbus Defence (@AirbusDefence) December 10, 2025