French Navy to Become First Operator of Airbus’ Aliaca VTOL Drone.

France’s defense procurement agency has amended its SMDM contract with Airbus Helicopters to introduce a VTOL version of the Aliaca unmanned aircraft system for the French Navy. The move gives naval crews a faster, simpler way to deploy shipborne ISR while preserving existing fleet integration.

Airbus Helicopters announced on 3 February 2026 that France’s Directorate General of Armament (DGA) has formally amended its ongoing SMDM contract to include a vertical take-off and landing variant of the Aliaca unmanned aircraft system for the French Navy. Ordered through Airbus Helicopters subsidiary Survey Copter, the updated agreement makes France the first operator of the VTOL Aliaca, with deliveries scheduled to begin in May 2026 following a DGA-led qualification campaign.
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The Aliaca VTOL is positioned as a tactical mini-drone rather than a long-endurance MALE asset (Picture source: Army Recognition)

The Système de mini-drones de la Marine (SMDM) has already established itself as a routine capability for maritime domain awareness. Since 2022, the French Navy has operated earlier fixed-wing versions of Aliaca from both ship decks and shore sites, using the system for coastal surveillance, search and rescue, and the monitoring of illegal activities. That experience matters because the Aliaca VTOL is not presented as a disruptive redesign but as an adaptation of a proven mini-UAS to broaden its employment envelope. Airbus Helicopters underscores that the VTOL configuration retains the same ground control station, the same core system architecture, and comparable sensor payloads, reducing training friction and enabling a faster transition from the trial phase to operational service.

The operational logic behind VTOL is straightforward in maritime conditions. Fixed-wing mini-UAS can deliver endurance and range, yet they impose launch-and-recovery constraints that are not always compatible with sea state, deck layout, or ship class. By removing the need for auxiliary launch systems, the Aliaca VTOL aims to expand deployability to a wider set of vessels, including ships that previously lacked the space or stability margins to support catapult launches and net recovery.

The Aliaca VTOL is positioned as a tactical mini-drone rather than a long-endurance MALE asset. Airbus Helicopters describes a hybrid design: vertical take-off and landing enabled by four propellers, followed by efficient fixed-wing flight once airborne. The air vehicle reportedly has a maximum take-off weight of around 25 to 27 kg, a wingspan of 3.5 m, and a length of 2.1 m, aligning with the “mini” category suited for shipboard handling by small teams. Endurance for the VTOL Evo configuration is given at up to two hours, with an operational range of around 50 km, figures that correspond to short-cycle maritime reconnaissance, rapid cueing, and tactical overwatch rather than persistent wide-area surveillance.

The Aliaca family is equipped with a gyro-stabilised electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) payload, designed to deliver day and night imagery for identification tasks. In French reporting, the EO/IR turret is described as a high-performance GX5 system, a detail consistent with a stabilized gimbal optimized for shipborne observation, where vibration and wind loading can degrade imagery. The UAS can also carry an Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver, allowing it to detect and correlate cooperative maritime traffic data, and Airbus indicates the AIS capability can support identification of ships across very long distances in permissive conditions. In practice, this combination supports the classic maritime ISR chain: detect, classify, identify, then transmit actionable information back to the ship in real time.

Airbus also highlights the maturity of the VTOL configuration. Trials are conducted on land and at sea at the end of 2024 and throughout 2025, and the VTOL version is unveiled in April 2025, reportedly developed in less than a year from the fixed-wing baseline already proven with the Navy. The near-term schedule now centers on qualification in early 2026, before operational declaration and the start of deliveries in May 2026. Importantly, the VTOL system does not replace the fixed-wing SMDM already in service: Airbus states that existing fixed-wing Aliaca will remain deployed on equipped ships and maintained operational for at least seven more years, suggesting a mixed fleet approach optimized for ship class, mission profile, and logistics.

Aliaca VTOL strengthens the French Navy’s ability to compress decision cycles at sea. A ship that can launch a drone within minutes gains a “remote binoculars” capability beyond the horizon line, supporting faster identification of contacts of interest and more discreet shadowing of vessels without committing a helicopter. In counter-illicit activity missions, this matters: a mini-UAS can keep visual track of suspect behavior, cue boarding teams, and provide evidentiary imagery, while keeping the ship at tactically appropriate distance. In search and rescue, EO/IR detection improves the probability of spotting survivors or debris, especially in low-light conditions. The VTOL mode also improves resilience in constrained conditions, enabling launch and recovery when deck motion or space would have prevented safe catapult operations, though endurance remains limited compared with larger systems and is likely sensitive to wind and weather profiles typical of maritime environments.

Beyond the platform itself, the procurement signals a broader trend in European naval modernization: embedding modular, exportable, and ship-agnostic UAS capabilities into surface fleets as standard equipment rather than niche experimentation. For France, which sustains naval presence from the Channel to the Indo-Pacific, a scalable VTOL ISR tool supports sovereignty missions in overseas territories, improves maritime traffic monitoring, and contributes to coalition interoperability where information sharing and contact classification are daily operational requirements. Internationally, the French Navy becoming the first operator of Aliaca VTOL also provides Airbus Helicopters with a reference customer for allied navies facing similar constraints, potentially accelerating adoption of small shipborne VTOL UAS across Europe and partner regions. In a security environment shaped by gray-zone competition, contested maritime corridors, and increased monitoring of sea lines of communication, such systems quietly reshape naval posture by making persistent tactical surveillance cheaper, more routine, and harder for adversaries to evade.