Paris (France) (AFP) – Frigates and submarines no longer sail alone: ​​faced with evolving threats at sea, navies are banking on “hybrid fleets” combining warships and drones, at the heart of Euronaval, the world’s largest naval defense exhibition which opens Tuesday in France, in a booming market.

Published on: 01/11/2026 - 09:57

With more than 700 exhibitors expected for this 30th edition of the biennial show in Villepinte, north of Paris, Euronaval will give a large place to drones: around sixty specialized companies are expected there, compared to 17 two years ago.

“The world of drones is extremely innovative,” underlines Pierre-Eric Pommellet, president of Naval Group which manufactures nuclear submarines and frigates.

“In naval combat, you have to see first and act first,” adds Mr. Pommellet, also president of Gican, a group of French naval industries.

This requires increasing the number of detection methods, from satellites to drones and underwater sensors, as well as making greater use of artificial intelligence to use the information collected more quickly.

Phantom enemy, asymmetric threat

For the navies, the threat no longer comes only from opposing war fleets but also from actors who are more difficult to identify, whether armed groups, militias or ghost fleets.

The Strait of Hormuz offers an illustration of this. Despite the relative weakness of its navy compared to the great Western powers, Iran remains able to disrupt maritime traffic thanks to drones, missiles and surveillance means deployed from its coasts, underlines Guillaume Merveilleux du Vignaux, Commissioner General of Euronaval.

“There is no necessarily need to deploy a fleet offshore. We can strike from land with very sophisticated systems.”

“They use ballistic missiles, extremely difficult to intercept, but also drones” which are inexpensive but sent en masse, adds the commissioner.

“Drones are a democratization of precision firepower on land, in the air and at sea,” summarizes Vincent Tourret, researcher at the Ifri Center for Security Studies.

The Ukraine effect

The war in Ukraine accelerated this revolution. Since 2024, Ukrainian Magura surface drones have sunk several Russian ships in the Black Sea, demonstrating that a relatively cheap machine could threaten buildings worth hundreds of millions of euros.

The great navies are inspired by it. The United States has therefore launched a call for tenders to acquire surface drones comparable to those used by Ukraine in order to strengthen Taiwan's defense against China, according to a study published ahead of the show.

In July, three US surface drones destroyed an Iranian shipyard.

Underwater drones are also progressing rapidly. Ukraine is already deploying the Marichka, capable of traveling several hundred kilometers with an explosive charge of around one ton. It was used in particular against the pillars of the Crimean bridge.

These machines are expected to play an increasing role in future “hybrid fleets”.

A development which accompanies the sharp increase in investments in naval defense.

According to the pre-Euronaval study, the global military shipbuilding market is expected to reach $122 billion, compared to $82 billion during the previous period studied two years ago.

Nuclear attack submarine programs alone represent more than $27 billion in investments, with 17 units launched or under construction over the 2024-2025 period, compared to six previously. Orders for conventional submarines increased from 11 to 18 units.

Tensions around Israel

Euronaval will be held in a context of recurring tensions between Paris and Israel around the participation of Israeli industrialists in arms fairs organized in France since the start of the war in Gaza.

After the controversies surrounding the Paris Air Show in 2025 and then Eurosatory in 2026, the French authorities have established a “very defined and restrictive framework”.

Only equipment “exclusively dedicated to anti-aircraft, anti-missile and anti-ballistic defense” can be presented.

© 2026 AFP

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