The landscape of tactical intelligence is moving toward highly adaptable, unmanned systems designed to operate within contested modern battlefields. Eviden, an Atos Group brand specializing in mission-critical systems, and French industrial drone manufacturer Hexadrone have announced a joint development agreement to field sovereign signals intelligence capabilities directly onto modular tactical mini-drones.
The partnership combines specialized hardware engineering to create a flexible, rapidly deployable intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance asset for armed forces.
The Plug-and-Flight Approach to Electronic Warfare
Modern military operations face an increasingly complex electromagnetic environment. To build an effective picture of an adversary’s electronic order of battle, command units require versatile platforms that can be customized on the ground without prolonged logistical delays.
The core of the new collaboration centers on a plug-and-flight design logic. Eviden, through its Avantix electronic warfare business unit, will supply compact, multi-platform compatible SIGINT payloads. These specialized sensor systems are built to detect, intercept, geolocate, and analyze adversarial communication networks and radar emissions in real time.
Rather than engineering a fixed, single-purpose reconnaissance aircraft, these compact sensors will be integrated into Hexadrone’s flagship TUNDRA 2 open-architecture drone platform.
Hardened Architecture for Harsh Theaters
The TUNDRA 2 platform is specifically optimized for multi-mission scalability in the field. Built on a rugged framework featuring interchangeable arms and an IP54 weatherproofing rating, the drone can carry payloads of up to 6 kilograms with a maximum takeoff weight of 15 kilograms. Depending on configuration, it can achieve flight times of up to an hour and speeds up to 65 km/h.
Traditional drone systems often suffer from rigid vendor lock-in, forcing operators to deploy separate aircraft for electronic warfare, mapping, or standard optical scouting. By pairing Hexadrone’s physical modularity with Avantix’s software-defined payloads, a single drone body can be reconfigured using basic field tools. Technicians can rapidly adapt the aircraft from an urban reconnaissance asset to a specialized long-endurance SIGINT collector by swapping components right at the operational line.
Immediate Field Deployment and European Standards
The initiative responds to an urgent push within European defense ministries to build secure, domestic supply chains for tactical unmanned aerial systems, reducing dependencies on foreign commercial hardware.
“By partnering, we are taking another step forward in the development of drone platforms designed to integrate advanced intelligence capabilities,” said Bernard Payer, Director of Critical Mission Systems at Eviden and President of Avantix. “By combining Hexadrone’s modular drones with Avantix payloads, we are providing armed forces with safe, operationally proven solutions ready for immediate deployment in the field for demanding operations requiring high performance and technological control.“
Alexandre Labesse, President of Hexadrone, added that the collaboration aligns directly with the company’s long-term strategy to deliver ruggedized tactical systems that satisfy the highest European industrial and regulatory safety benchmarks while directly serving the immediate, evolving infrastructure needs of frontline armed forces.
