Press Release: The French Ministry of Armed Forces renews its confidence in the technologies developed by Preligens

07/08/2021 by The French Ministry of Armed Forces

The French Ministry of Armed Forces renews its confidence in the artificial intelligence technologies developed by Preligens for image-based intelligence.

Following the presentation by the French Minister of  Armed Forces on May 10th at Creil Air Force Base 110 on the progress of the Ministry's Artificial Intelligence roadmap, the Directorate of Military Intelligence (French: Direction du renseignement militaire, DRM) has placed a new order with Preligens to help monitor activities on strategic sites.

As a result of a long cooperation with specialists in image-based intelligence from the French Ministry of Armed Forces, the tools developed with this company implement artificial intelligence-based algorithms specifically trained for the detection of materials of military interest (armored vehicles, aircraft, ships, etc.).

The performance obtained enables the analysis of the continuous flow of images from the French CSO constellation of sovereign observation satellites, including those from the CSO-2 satellite launched on 29 December 2020. This state-of-the-art technology is available to analysts to help them develop intelligence of military interest and anticipate threats by setting up surveillance and warning mechanisms.

With this new order, the services previously deployed in one of the centers of the DRM will gradually be extended to all the Ministry's entities requiring satellite image analysis.
This tool enables the Armed Forces to increase their surveillance and intelligence capabilities by processing the growing volume of data coming from the new sensors and by relieving experts of repetitive tasks. This gives France greater efficiency in situation assessment and decision-making.

For Air Force General Jean-François Ferlet, Director of Military Intelligence  :
"For the past 30 years, our efforts have been primarily focused on acquiring new intelligence sensors. To fulfill our mission at the DRM, I have chosen to focus our new computing capabilities to make the most of the information at our disposal. AI is one of the ways to significantly increase our performance and the user feedback on Preligens tools clearlyvalidates this choice. The challenge now is to make this service available to the entire department.

For Arnaud Guérin, co-founder and CEO of Preligens:
"We are very proud to see our solution once again endorsed by the French Ministry of Armed Forces and to be able to leverage four years of work with the DRM. This support is also very important in the context of our export development, which is supported by the French Defence Procurement Agency (French : Direction Générale de l’Armement - DGA), notably through initiatives launched with certain allies. Indeed, international markets remain one of our main drivers for pursuing our hyper-growth strategy to become a European technology giant. "