French call for British help to protect skies at summer Paris Olympics

• Opening ceremony on the Seine may be vulnerable to drone attacks and snipers

France defending its skies at the Olympics this summer with a revolutionary anti-drone system was supposed to be a moment of national pride.

But after a series of embarrassing testing failures, there is chatter across the Channel that the French have been forced into the most humiliating climbdown – and called in the British.

With less than three months to go before the opening ceremony, France has had to bolster its much-vaunted ‘Parade’ kit with systems said to include RAF tech and manpower.

While the French armed forces insisted to the Mail there was ‘not any support requested’ from the UK, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed it has offered ‘equipment and personnel’.

And France’s satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaine has said President Emmanuel Macron had to ‘beg’ Britain, and mocked his government for the ‘humiliation supreme’.

France has called for British help to defend its skies ahead of the summer Paris Olympics

The Parade system won the French defence procurement agency’s tender to develop an anti-drone system in 2022 at a cost of €350 million.

It can detect threats, and jam and immobilise them.

It can also allow police drones to capture devices with nets and shoot down drones directly – though this is a last resort, as debris can kill or injure those on the ground.

‘It’s annoying that this is coming out publicly but, unfortunately, contrary to the official line, things aren’t really working as we’d like,’ a senior security source told the AFP news agency last month.

Le Canard reports that the French Air Force is ‘threatening to send back the six Parade systems it received without paying for them’.

The opening ceremony will be along the Seine, rather than at the Stade de France, but the river is vulnerable to drone attacks and snipers, officials fear.

An MoD spokesman said: ‘We are working across Whitehall departments on providing UK support to the security operation for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

‘Our specialist search dog units will assist with venue security, and the RAF will offer equipment and personnel to help counter potential unauthorised drones.’

A spokesman for the French armed forces ministry said it had to bolster the Parade system but insisted: ‘There is not any support requested from the UK following the results of the tests of the anti-drone system.’

A spokesman for Thales, which developed Parade, said its system – based on ‘advanced processing algorithms’ – had ‘demonstrated its relevance’ at the 2023 Rugby World Cup.

They added: ‘Given the stakes involved, it is normal that the development of these algorithms and the fine-tuning of these sensors is requiring some effort and time, but the most important thing is to be ready for the Olympic Games 2024 with a system that armed forces operators have fully adopted.’

They said that the firm is ‘fully mobilised to ensure that this system is fully operational for the Olympic Games’.

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