During the 29th edition of Eurosatory 2026, the international defense industry trade show organized by Coges Events and taking place June 15-19 of this year in Paris-Nord Villepinte near Paris, French group Thales presented elements of the architecture of SkyDefender, its multi-layered, multi-domain integrated air and missile defense system powered by cortAIx artificial intelligence.
Photos: Jakub Link-Lenczowski, MILMAG
- SkyDefender is a multi-layered, multi-domain integrated air and missile defense system that will provide full protection against all types of aerial threats on land, at sea, and in space.
- SkyDefender integrates a network of advanced sensors and effectors with a comprehensive command and control (C2) system. Thanks to its open and modular architecture, it is fully compatible with existing air defense systems.
- By combining Thales’s expertise in cybersecurity and advanced artificial intelligence through cortAIx, Thales’s AI accelerator, SkyDefender will provide operational superiority and proactive defense against cyberattacks and evolving threats.
As air and missile threats evolve faster than ever ‒ ranging from slow-moving drones to hypersonic missiles ‒ attacks are becoming increasingly complex, widespread, and unpredictable.
Thales SkyDefender is designed to provide full protection against all types of aerial threats, from a few kilometers to several thousand kilometers:
- Short range: for protecting forces, key assets, and sensitive sites, ForceShield creates a genuine protective bubble against lower-tier and surface threats at very short and short range, such as drones.
- Medium range: for theater-level defense, the Eurosam consortium’s SAMP-T NG system with a range of up to 150 km, including the Thales Group’s GroundFire radar with a range of 350 km and 360°/90° coverage against medium-range threats.
- Long range: for protection against long-range threats with early-warning capabilities, a unique capability that will give armed forces improved tracking, identifying hard-to-locate targets including combat aircraft and ballistic missiles, while strengthening space domain awareness. Key differentiators include the Thales SMART-L MM and UHF radars, which can detect potential threats at distances of up to 5,000 km. Thales Alenia Space offers an early-warning solution from geostationary orbit using satellites equipped with infrared sensors that can detect a missile threat and provide the precise launch location, even before it enters areas covered by ground-based radars. Combined with advanced ground-based long-range UHF radars, this solution provides a unique capability for continuous surveillance, early detection, and trajectory tracking of long-range threats.
All elements are managed by the Thales Group’s SkyView command and control (C2) system, which guarantees seamless interoperability with NATO and allied multi-domain platforms.
Built on an open, modular architecture, SkyDefender will integrate easily with existing defense systems and can be further developed as threats evolve. The system’s development and deployment are open to partnerships with other industry players.
SkyDefender is intended to be fully compatible with a wide range of sensors and weapon systems, including those from different manufacturers and existing legacy platforms.
The SkyDefender concept was first unveiled on March 11 of this year.