The French Army is accelerating the adaptation of its SCORPION combat vehicles to the drone age, and Arquus’ new Hornet Air Guard remote weapon station (RWS) sits at the heart of that effort. Unveiled in its latest configuration at the 2025 Forum Innovation Défense (FID) in Paris, the system embodies a pragmatic French approach: build a layered counter UAS (C-UAS) capability by evolving equipment that is already fielded at scale, rather than starting from scratch.

French Army concept: organic C UAS for SCORPION combat units

The massive employment of small, unmanned aircraft over Ukraine and the Middle East has made local air defence and immediate self protection a priority for French land forces. Rather than relying solely on dedicated air defence units, the Army wants its formations to possess an organic ability to detect, identify and defeat drones in the close and very short range air domain. This thinking is being implemented inside the SCORPION modernisation programme, which already provides digitised command and control, protected mobility and networked fires across platforms such as GRIFFON and SERVAL.

The Army, the Direction Générale de l’Armement (DGA) and Arquus have chosen the HORNET T1 RWS – standard on these vehicles – as the baseline for a new self defence C-UAS layer. By experimenting within an in service programme rather than launching a stand alone system, the stakeholders aim to compress timelines and costs. The objective set by DGA, the Army and industry is ambitious: conduct field experimentation of a new anti drone self protection capability with operational units as early as spring 2026, in line with Army planning cycles.

Lessons from those trials should then allow rapid transition to series realisation if the concept is validated. This spiral approach also reflects a broader CONOPS choice. Instead of seeking a monolithic, perfect C UAS system, the Army intends to field successive capability increments that can be integrated on SCORPION platforms and combined with higher tier sensors and effectors at brigade and division level. HORNET AIR GUARD is therefore conceived as a modular building block within a wider, multi layered architecture.

Arquus’ proposal builds directly on more than a decade of investment in a sovereign French RWS “filière”, now embodied in the HORNET family. Because the industrial and technical base is already mastered, Arquus and its Hornet business unit can adapt existing bricks rather than designing an entirely new turret.

HORNET AIR GUARD retains the familiar architecture of the T1, with its stabilised mount, day/night optronic sighting system and precision weapons – typically a 12.7 mm heavy machine gun or 7.62 mm weapon, combined with banks of 40 mm grenades as seen on the latest demonstrator. The new C-UAS variant adds three main enhancements:

• 360° drone detection and cueing. HORNET has developed an initial innovation that allows the system to detect a drone over the full azimuth, then automatically slew the optronic sensor head onto the track to speed up visual identification. This automation is intended to reduce operator workload and compress the detect to engage timeline.

• Enhanced optronics for identification and engagement. The AIR GUARD configuration exploits the high performance optronic package already fielded across the Hornet family, optimised for precise fire control and positive identification – both critical when engaging small, fast moving aerial targets in cluttered environments.

• An open, 'C UAS ready' architecture. The turret’s electronic and mechanical design is prepared to integrate sovereign detection and effector modules as they mature, avoiding costly redesigns later on.

The system presented at FID illustrates this roadmap. On the sensor side, HORNET is working with MC2, a micro and nanotechnology specialist from Villeneuve d’Ascq, which has developed a high frequency radar demonstrator tailored to drone detection.

For future effectors, Arquus is collaborating with French laser house CILAS, which is providing a laser weapon mock up to explore high energy options. Taken together, these partnerships underpin a national C UAS ecosystem in which Arquus can offer the vehicle integration, RWS and battle proven fire control, while MC2 and CILAS contribute advanced sensors, jammers and directed energy effectors.

The emphasis on French partners reflects a deliberate choice by the DGA to anchor C-UAS solutions in a sovereign industrial base.

Agile experimentation within SCORPION

The DGA’s chosen development format is almost as significant as the hardware itself. Instead of a long, linear programme, HORNET AIE GUARD is being matured through an experimentation scheme embedded inside SCORPION, starting with a demonstrator supplied by Arquus and followed by a series of experimental kits installed on operational vehicles.

These kits will allow units to trial different combinations of sensors, software functions and effectors in realistic conditions, assessing not only technical performance but also manning, training and doctrinal aspects. The aim is to validate how best to employ an RWS based C UAS solution alongside dismounted teams, higher level surveillance assets and electronic warfare cells. This approach mirrors the French Army’s broader experimentation culture, where operational feedback from contemporary theatres is fed directly into capability development.

The Army’s Chief of Staff has already flagged Hornet Air Guard as an example of “concrete solutions based on mastered equipment”, underlining the desire to move rapidly from concept to fielded capability. Future perspectives: towards layered, multi effector C-UAS Beyond the initial configuration, Arquus and Hornet are exploring a full spectrum of technologies to reinforce platform protection against drones. These include:

• Kinetic effectors, leveraging the precision stabilisation and fire control accuracy of Hornet to engage drones with machine gun fire or airburst munitions.

• Directional jamming, potentially developed in cooperation with MC2, to disrupt drone command links or GNSS guidance in a more graduated, reversible manner.

• Laser solutions, already studied in partnership with the École militaire supérieure scientifique et technique (EMSST) and CILAS, to provide silent, deep magazine effectors against small UAS.

In the medium term, integrating these capabilities into the SCORPION combat cloud could allow Hornet equipped vehicles to share tracks, alarms and engagement orders with other sensors and shooters, contributing to a networked C UAS posture at battlegroup level. Export customers operating GRIFFON, SERVAL or other Arquus platforms fitted with Hornet RWS would also be natural candidates for the Air Guard roadmap.

Continuity of innovation

For Future Warfare Magazine readers, HORNET AIR GUARD represents a logical continuation of trends already observed during Arquus Technoday 2025, where the company highlighted Franco Belgian cooperation and the evolution of its remote weapon and protected mobility offerings. That event underlined Arquus’ determination to invest in scalable architectures that can be adapted to emerging threats rather than replaced wholesale. With HORNET AIR GUARD, the company, the DGA and the French Army are translating that philosophy into a tangible counter UAS tool: a sovereign, modular RWS that can evolve from enhanced situational awareness today to a full spectrum of kinetic and non kinetic effectors tomorrow. In an era where the drone threat is proliferating faster than traditional procurement cycles, such agile, SCORPION embedded innovation may prove decisive in keeping French combat units one step ahead on tomorrow’s battlefields.

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