Franck Saudo interview: Safran deploys AI-powered weapons in weeks, not years

Safran Electronics & Defense CEO Franck Saudo outlined how modern warfare is driving demand for agile defense technologies, emphasizing the company’s rapid deployment capabilities and AI-powered solutions during an interview at the Paris Air Show. The insights reveal how Europe‘s largest military optronics supplier is adapting to battlefield transformations seen from Syria to Ukraine, where traditional defense approaches are being challenged by drone swarms, electronic warfare, and cost-efficiency demands.

The big picture: Modern conflicts have fundamentally altered defense requirements, creating what Saudo calls a “transformation of the defense demand” that requires both reinforced protection of existing assets and entirely new categories of military equipment.

• Syria introduced GNSS-denied environments and contested electromagnetic spectrum warfare, while Nagorno-Karabakh showcased drone swarms, and Ukraine represents “the fusion of both conflicts, adding the return of the war of attrition.”
• Battlefield transparency has increased dramatically through ground, air, and space sensors combined with open-source social media data.
• New military objects like drones and loitering munitions require “a different trade-off between technology and needs, and cost efficiency.”

How Safran is adapting: The company has demonstrated remarkable deployment speed, completing complex integrations in weeks rather than years.

• Safran equipped French frigates with Paseo XLR electro-optical sensors in just four weeks, enabling 40-kilometer drone detection and allowing cost-effective 76mm cannon responses instead of expensive missiles.
• The company developed its Skyjacker counter-UAS system using GNSS spoofing in six months.
• In Ukraine, Safran integrated AASM Hammer precision-guided munitions on Soviet-era MiG-29 and Su-25 aircraft in four months.

AI at the battlefield edge: Safran’s artificial intelligence unit employs 250 people, which Saudo claims is “the biggest defense and security pool of AI professionals in Europe for production AI.”

• The company acquired Preligens in September, now called Safran.AI, which analyzes images, video, and acoustic signals to identify military targets.
• Safran focuses on “edge AI” solutions embedded directly in equipment like the Euroflir 410 electro-optical system and PASEO sights for real-time data processing.
• The company also provides “embarked data hubs” that concentrate sensor data close to battlefields, whether on frigates or ground positions.

In plain English: Edge AI means the artificial intelligence runs directly on the military equipment itself rather than sending data to distant computers for analysis—like having a smart calculator built into a rifle scope instead of texting math problems to a distant mathematician.

What they’re saying: Saudo emphasized the importance of decentralized decision-making based on lessons from Ukraine.

• “What we know out of Ukraine is the importance of decentralizing the decisions. If the armed forces decentralize the action, it requires different level of data concentration and making sense of the data.”
• “We do not believe in one size fits all, where all the data goes from the battlefield to a satellite to another satellite, and then down to a big sort of center.”
• On AI architecture: “What we stand for is an open architecture, meaning capacity for the AI solutions of Safran to be agnostic to sensors and harbor data coming from different sensors.”

Growth opportunities: Saudo identified five key areas where Safran expects expansion driven by battlefield evolution.

• AI-enhanced Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR), leveraging the company’s electro-optical and AI capabilities.
• Resilient position, navigation and timing systems that combine inertial navigation with GNSS to resist spoofing and jamming.
• Precision-guided munitions, including the Hammer air-launched weapon and missile seekers.
• Drones and loitering munitions, with Safran producing the Lanner 50-kilogram drone and Warbler loitering munition.
• Standalone AI solutions through Safran.AI’s open architectures for integration into larger defense suites.

Why this matters: The interview reveals how traditional defense contractors are rapidly pivoting to meet modern warfare demands while maintaining their role in major programs like the U.S. Next-Generation Air Dominance and Collaborative Combat Aircraft initiatives. Safran’s approach of combining rapid deployment capabilities with edge AI processing represents a broader industry shift toward agile, cost-effective solutions that can operate in contested electromagnetic environments—a critical capability as conflicts increasingly feature drone warfare and electronic jamming.