According to “Challenges,” France’s Directorate General of Armaments (DGA) placed an order in 2023 with the Toulouse-based SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) Delair for 2,000 kamikaze drones. The drones were intended for use by both the French and Ukrainian defense forces and followed a competitive tender process involving a total of 19 producers.
The requirement called for a drone with a minimum endurance of 30 minutes, a range of 5 kilometers (3 miles), at a unit cost below €20,000 ($22,000).
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France launched the project after French Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu said that France was “falling behind” its allies and potential adversaries in the development of loitering munitions.
He told Le Figaro in February 2023 that the lessons learned from Ukraine showed that the French Army immediately needed “at least 1,800 low-cost remote-controlled loitering munitions,” with plans to field “thousands” of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) by 2030.
Delair is an experienced manufacturer of commercial surveillance drones but had no previous experience with combat drones although it had already provided 150 of its reconnaissance drones to Ukraine under a separate DGA contract last year.
Delair entered into partnership with the Franco-German weapons manufacturer KNDS to develop the drone which is a modified version of its UX 11 drone, calling the kamikaze version “Colibri” (hummingbird). The drones were originally due for delivery in the summer, but Delair / KNDS encountered unspecified technical issues.
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Lecornu said on Oct. 16 that the problem had been sorted and Colibri had successfully passed pre-acceptance testing, jointly carried out by the DGA and France’s Defense Innovation Agency (AID), and was entering serial production. A video of the successful live test of the Colibri was released by DGA to coincide with the announcement:
Lecornu confirmed on Wednesday, Oct. 29 that 100 of the drones would be ready to be sent to Ukraine in the next few days with an operator’s training course also planned. The balance of the first tranche will be transferred to the French armed forces in the coming weeks.
Delair says it is now capable of producing up to 1,000 units of the UX 11 UAV annually, split between its reconnaissance and attack versions.
The Colibri has a wingspan of 1.1 meters (3.6 feet) and a weight of around 2.5 kilograms (5.5 pounds). It can be rapidly deployed in less than five minutes after tasking.
It has a maximum flight duration of around 45 minutes and a 25-kilometer (15-mile) communication range employing an encrypted data transmission system capable of functioning in GPS-compromised areas and guided from an intuitive control station. Delair and the DGA were tight-lipped on whether or not the system uses artificial intelligence (AI).
The Colibri is intended for short-range attack missions against previously identified and located targets. It carries a 0.5-kilogram (1-pound) pre-fragmented high explosive warhead within a reinforced military specification casing. The warhead functions either by crashing into its target or being detonated remotely in flight.
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