According to Agence France-Presse on April 12 ，With three and a half months to go before the Paris Olympics, concerns are growing that the drone defences set up to keep the Games safe are not up to the task of protecting the capital from potential attacks.
Last year, the interior minister singled out drone attacks as "undoubtedly the main [threat] to be dealt with during the Olympics."
The spectre of "terrorist" attacks has haunted every Olympic host since Munich in 1972.
At the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics on July 26, swarms of drones will fly over the Seine river, with 300,000 spectators expected to watch from both sides of the river, which is a nightmare for security services.
There are about three million drones in France, most of them privately owned. The armed forces and the government are working to prevent the flight of any potentially hostile aircraft.
The development of the security system for the Paris Olympic Games has been commissioned to the French Thales Group in April 2022. But since then, it's been one little problem after another. The delivery of six anti-drone modular protection systems, originally scheduled for June 2023, has been delayed by several months.
That led a Senate committee to launch a fact-finding mission in late 2023, concluding that measures to combat drones "fell short."
The French Air Force organized the first large-scale tests of the anti-drone modular protection system in Villacoublay, near Paris, in mid-March, but the results apparently failed to convince all participants.
"We have asked the manufacturer, Thales, to make improvements to precisely meet all the requirements of the armed forces and the French Defence Procurement Agency," lecorny told the media earlier. But the security source replied: "Yes, it's not perfect and there are many things that could be improved. But the problem is there's only three months left, and there's not much you can do in a short period of time.
Questions remain over whether the French military will continue to use the anti-drone modular protection system. "We'll see what happens," one source said.
More recently, the French Air Force has purchased several "Basal" anti-drone systems designed to detect and intercept drones within a 10-kilometer radius. Together with the anti-drone system, the military will have "enough equipment to protect all Olympic venues, including the opening ceremony site," the source said.
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