Paris 2024 Olympic Games. “Everything doesn’t really work as we would like”, an anti-drone fight that questions and worries

À quatre mois des JO 2024, l’efficacité de la lutte antidrones interroge. dpa – Silas Stein

À quatre mois des Jeux Olympiques de Paris 2024, l’efficacité de la lutte antidrones interroge et inquiète les plus hautes sphères de l’État.

A parliamentary report too sensitive to be made public, inconclusive exercises, and growing concern…hellip;. If officially everything is going well, the effectiveness of the anti-drone shield for the Paris Olympics raises questions.

"It's annoying that this comes out publicly, but yes unfortunately, contrary to the official discourse, everything doesn't really work as we would like", cowardly at AFP , on condition of anonymity, a high-level security source.

In the spring of 2023, the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin identified drones as "undoubtedly the main (threat) to be apprehended" during the signing of the security protocol for the Olympic Games.

Delays

The specter of a terrorist attack has haunted every Olympic host country for more than fifty years. The scenario of an attack, with a swarm of drones streaking across the Seine on July 26 for the opening ceremony with nearly 300,000 spectators on the quays, is the authorities' nightmare .

Despite a Vigipirate plan raised to its maximum level after the attack in Moscow on March 22, claimed by the Islamic State group, Emmanuel Macron assured Thursday during the inauguration of the Olympic Aquatic Complex (CAO), that the opening ceremony on the Seine remained "the preferred scenario".

With a fleet estimated at nearly 3 million drones in France, the armies and the Ministry of the Interior are working to avoid any untimely overflight of sites by drones.

The military response was entrusted in April  2022 for the Paris Olympics to Thales and CS Group following a call for tenders orchestrated by management General of Armaments (DGA). But since then, the problems have continued. Scheduled for June 2023, the delivery of the six systems called Parade was a few months late.

This raised initial concerns, and convinced the Senate Defense Committee to look into the matter at the end of 2023 by launching an information mission. The president of this commission, Senator Les Républicains Cédric Perrin, told members of the Association of Defense Journalists (AJD) in December that the fight against drones was & quot;not at the level".

"Dangerous"

The large-scale exercise organized by the Air Force in mid-March, to test the first Parade systems in Villacoublay, in the southwest of Paris, clearly did not convince all of the participants.

The senators announced on March 20 that their report would not ultimately be made public. According to several sources familiar with the matter, Cédric Perrin expressed his frustration to the military. "This is a national security issue" and publishing "this report may be dangerous& ;quot;, justifies a source close to the army.

The Minister of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu closed the closed-door hearings of the information mission on April 2. "We actually asked the industrialist, Thales in this case, to kindly improve by responding precisely to all the requests made to it by the armies and by the DGA to be ready", the minister had previously told the press.

Solicited by AFP, Thales did not comment. "Yes it doesn't work perfectly. And yes the system can be improved. The problem is that in three months the room for maneuver is narrow", summarizes another security source wishing to remain anonymous.

Three and a half months before the opening ceremony,"the time to train the staff, to significantly improve the system, it seems impossible", assures this source.

"No system is as effective as expected. We have proof of this almost daily with what is happening in Ukraine", believes Alain Bauer, professor of criminology. "Despite systems that are undoubtedly among the best in the world, several drones nevertheless manage to get through."

Plan B

Will the French army persist with Parade ? "We'll see", eludes a source close to the matter. Recently, the Air Force acquired several anti-drone systems "Bassalt" manufactured by the Aéroports de Paris subsidiary, Hologarde, born in 2018, to locate and intercept any drone within a radius of 10 km.

The army would have "enough to equip all the sites of the Olympic Games", including the ceremony of& rsquo;opening, with Bassalt, a sort of anti-drone plan B, added the security source.

"It’It’s like if you had a broken down car, or not in great shape, and in your garage, you have a working car . What do you take to go on vacation ? I know", anticipates a senior official.