Foudre
High-mobility Long Range Strike System
High-mobility Long Range Strike System
Contemporary conflicts have revealed the importance of deep strikes. They disorganize enemy logistics, diminish their capabilities, and hamper their means of command and control. By shaping the enemy’s position, they prepare the ground for the success of friendly maneuvers. They protect combatants against the risk of becoming entangled in a fixed front line.
Thanks to AAROK, satellites, battlefield drones and combatant electromagnetic intelligence gathering systems, allied armies can detect high-value targets at ever greater distances. The battlefield is becoming transparent over extended bangs of the action zone.
Thanks to ODIN, tactical information systems, dual and redundant transmission resources and artificial intelligence, allied armies are classifying and identifying these targets on an ever greater scale. This battlefield transparency can be exploited by AI tools to assist strike planning.
Foudre completes the loop by processing targets from as far away as they can be identified. Dispersed throughout the expanse of the friendly landscape, concealed and ready to strike at a moment’s notice, it is the weapon system that maximizes all the technological assets of Allied armies, and contributes to paralyzing enemy actions.
Foudre is a compact machine with superior off-road capabilities, thanks to its six-wheel drive system equipped with CTIS, and the ability to project itself at high speed along roadways.
It is a complete weapon system, equipped with one to six different types of precision ammunition, capable of producing complementary and differentiated effects:
Its armored cabin, treated against CBRN threats, protects the crew from counter-battery fire and the most intense combat environments.
Foudre delivers powerful, precise ammunition, designed to dislocate the enemy’s position in depth, and prevent any regrouping of forces or establishment of command posts. Foudre deprives the enemy of any operational comfort, and exposes them to the constant threat of destructive strikes.
The speed with which Foudre moves in and out of battery, the dazzling rapidity of its fire and the velocity of its ammunition, make it the preferred means of dealing with Time Sensitive Targets: with Foudre, the target is detected, identified and immediately struck.
Protecting the crew is at the heart of the Foudre system: the vehicle is fast and capable of crossing obstacles. Its compactness enables it to hide in the masks of the terrain.
Equipped with latest-generation military battery, it can remain on standby for long periods, with the engine switched off, to reduce its radiation and spare the crew’s vigilance. All the while remaining ready to strike at a moment’s notice.
Designed to operate in a connected environment, Foudre is a major asset in multidomain operations: its lightning speed, range and power are a concrete military expression of the technological advantage of information superiority.
In addition to its armored cabin protected against CBRN threats, Foudre adds speed and crossing capabilities: no sooner has the ammunition left its tube than the machine emerges from its battery and disappears into the environment, reducing the risk of identification by the adversary.
Foudre is equipped with its own rapid reloading system. When the crew needs to top up the ammunition, it reaches a cache where ready-to-use ammunition has been hidden in advance, loads it in a few minutes, and continues its mission by diluting again in the area of operation.
In addition to being road-gauge, and able to project itself rapidly, alone, over long distances using the civilian network, Foudre is air-transportable.
It can fit into the cargo bay of an A400M without any preparation, and into that of a C-130 Hercules by simply adjusting its tire pressure using its CTIS. The maneuver takes just a few minutes.
Its weight and CTIS also make it suitable for amphibious landing operations.
Unlike the vehicles it replaces, Foudre is easy to maintain in operational condition. Its spare parts are easily accessible via a worldwide distribution network.
It is designed for use in peacetime and in training, with low ownership costs and short-range practice ammunition to harden crews by confronting them with the reality of firing at every training session.
A sovereign system, Foudre nonetheless retains the advantages of interoperability defined by the NATO framework: all interfaces are standard and offer total commonality with the system currently in service with allies forces.
Foudre is first and foremost a weapons system, deploying a plurality of effectors. It is therefore evolutionary in nature, and not tied to any particular type of ammunition.
The needs of each army are different, depending on the state of its threat, its strategic depth, its intelligence and targeting resources, its Command & Control system, its budget allocations, its DITB, and so on.
Foudre responds to each situation with the most appropriate munitions, while offering the possibility of progressively extending the range of effectors deployed: greater range, greater power, new supplier, creation of a sovereign sector, etc. Like a fighter jet, a frigate or a helicopter, Foudre adapts to the new weapons available and to the needs identified by the armed forces.