Military drones and multi-role vehicles: Renault Group puts its expertise to work for defense

Industrial expertise in the service of national sovereignty 

The story begins in 2024. Alongside other industrial players, Renault Group is approached by the French Ministry of the Armed Forces and invited to contribute its expertise to the defense sector, helping to address the challenges of scaling up production, boosting competitiveness and strengthening sovereignty. 

Renault Group’s capabilities are particularly sought after. The company is recognized for its expertise in designing and industrializing high-tech products at scale, while maintaining strict control over quality, costs and delivery times advantages not always shared by defense players, which tend to focus on small production runs and long development cycles. 

Under what conditions does Renault Group engage in defense projects? 

Renault Group has defined four guiding principles for its involvement, approved by its Board of Directors in July 2025. Projects in which the Group participates must: be conducted under the aegis of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces; involve partnerships with European defense manufacturers; generate activity for the Group’s engineering teams and sites in France; and be carried out without affecting the Group’s investment capacity. 

A first tangible step with the Chorus project 

In late 2024, the French Procurement Agency (DGA) connected Renault Group’s teams with members of the “Drone Pact” initiative, with the aim of supporting the development of a sovereign drone sector in France and promoting the design of drones that can be produced at controlled costs and at scale. 

One such partner is Turgis Gaillard, an innovative French defense aerospace company. The two groups decided to combine their expertise through a joint venture to design and industrialize the Chorus project an ultra-competitive, versatile drone designed for mass production. 

The partners are co-developing the system by leveraging their complementary strengths: Renault Group is responsible for product-process design and industrialization, while Turgis Gaillard handles aeronautical design, navigation software and test management. 

4 TROOP: a hybrid multi-mission vehicle concept 

The 4 TROOP prototype perfectly illustrates Renault Group’s contribution to the defense sector. Inspired by the Vision4Rescue emergency vehicle developed with the Paris Fire Brigade, it responds to a request from land forces to adapt the concept to their operational needs. Renault Group and Thales teams worked together with two objectives: to “merge” command systems and electronic architecture so that Thales technologies can be operated directly from within the vehicle and to carry out this integration on a production model from the Group, ensuring rapid availability at a competitive cost. 

4 TROOP is thus a civilian-based multi-role vehicle that embodies a new generation of tools for land forces. Versatile, hybrid, and equipped with an autonomous energy supply, it can perform a wide range of missions from reconnaissance and logistics to command operations effectively transforming into a fully fledged mobile command post. 

Presented at Eurosatory in a hybrid four-wheel-drive version, 4 TROOP combines low acoustic signature with extended range. Its Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) power system further enhances energy autonomy, enabling it to supply electricity directly to on-site equipment. This solution can be adapted across several Renault Group models, from SUVs to light commercial vehicles. 

Finally, armed forces can also rely on Renault Group’s after-sales capabilities to ensure vehicle maintenance and operational readiness, while streamlining logistics. 

TOUTATIS drone: advancing a sovereign drone ecosystem in France 

Another flagship initiative is the TOUTATIS remotely operated munition, also developed in partnership with Thales. The two French industrial leaders have announced a collaboration aimed at building a sovereign national drone ecosystem capable of meeting the demands of modern warfare. 

Within this partnership, Renault Group plays a pivotal role. Leveraging its “design-to-manufacturing” expertise, the Group worked alongside Thales teams to redesign the drone. While its performance and capabilities remain unchanged, Renault Group engineers streamlined its architecture reducing the number of components by 20% and fasteners by 40% there by enabling cost-controlled, large-scale industrial production. 

The ambition is clear: to reach a production capacity of 1,000 units per month from the first year, with manufacturing planned to begin as early as 2027 at one of the Group’s sites in France. Resistant to jamming and capable of operating in swarms, TOUTATIS is aligned with emerging doctrines of networked, connected combat. 

A leading industrial expertise 

The Group’s capabilities are widely recognized, particularly in design-to-cost and design-to-manufacturing. This means the ability to engineer products at optimized cost levels while meeting stringent performance and quality requirements and then to industrialize them in a way that ensures reliability and ease of large-scale production. The combination of these two areas of expertise enables rapid ramp-up, high-volume output and competitive cost structures, even for advanced technology products. 

Its ability to manage complex projects with both agility and rigor especially within partnerships also plays a critical role, supported by a proven track record in fast-paced development and execution. In addition, Renault Group benefits from a modern industrial footprint, continuously enhanced through digitalization and the use of artificial intelligence to increase flexibility and performance. 

In this context, Renault Group is not positioning itself as a defense manufacturer. Rather, it is emerging as a key industrial partner, capable of strengthening French and European strategic autonomy by bringing what has defined it for over a century: innovation and large-scale industrial efficiency.