The Eyes and Brains of Modern Warfare: The Armenia-Safran Partnership
03/04/2026
On March 27, during an official visit to France, Armenian Defense Minister Papikyan held talks in Paris with the head of the defense division of the French company Safran Electronics & Defense. Following the meeting, an agreement was signed, the details of which (product nomenclature and amount) are not officially disclosed. The very fact of concluding such a document indicates a gradual transition of interaction to practical military-technical cooperation.
Possibilities for joint production and supplies of high-tech systems had already been discussed previously, so cooperation with Safran is not a new direction. The beginning of the systemic nature of Armenian-French defense cooperation is confirmed by an official report of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces presented to the country's parliament. The document indicated that in 2023–2024, Armenia signed defense contracts with France and received export licenses for the supply of military products in the amount of 2.756 billion euros. This confirms that the agreements with French companies are part of a broader institutional program of military-technical interaction anchored at the state level.
The practical start of cooperation with Safran was laid about two years ago, when a JIM Compact thermal imaging device was spotted in the arsenal of the Armenian army, in at least one instance. The appearance of such devices usually indicates a preliminary phase of military-technical cooperation. From this point of view, the current agreement looks like a logical continuation of an already existing technological dialogue.
Papikyan's visit to Paris as a whole was multi-layered. In addition to negotiations with Safran, he held meetings with French defense companies at the Movement of International French Enterprises platform, which indicates an attempt to build a wide network of contacts with the French military-industrial complex. Such an approach shows that Armenia is striving to form a stable system of technological partnership in which different companies will cover different areas — from optics and electronics to artillery and anti-aircraft systems. The political symbolism of the visit deserves separate attention. As part of the trip, Papikyan was awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor. France presents such awards to many politicians and famous figures.
If we assume that receiving the award was a concurrent goal of the visit, then the trip can be considered productive. The Minister combined business with pleasure: Armenia received a practical agreement in the defense sphere and a political signal of support at the level of the French leadership. In diplomacy, such gifts, in the form of orders and medals, sometimes play no less a role than the contracts themselves, as they form trust between military and political elites.
Looking more broadly, cooperation with such a defense giant as Safran reflects a further possible transformation of the Armenian defense strategy. After 2020, there is a gradual understanding that a modern army is built not only on the quantity of armaments, but also on the quality of technologies — primarily reconnaissance, observation, communications, and navigation. In this sense, Safran is interesting because it produces the "eyes and brains of the army" – thermal imagers, sensors, navigation systems, and optical complexes. This is critically important for modern conflicts, where early target detection, rapid information transfer, and the delivery of a precise strike play a decisive role. The development of these systems allows for increased situational awareness, and modern inertial navigation solutions are capable of compensating for GPS suppression, ensuring the resilience of artillery and drones. From a military point of view, such a partnership gives Armenia several key advantages: increasing the target detection range, resilience to EW, and the formation of its own technological base for unmanned systems. All this creates a foundation for a new type of army – more compact, technological, and oriented toward mobility and precision rather than mass numbers.
Theoretically, Armenia can also assess the feasibility of integrating individual high-tech elements, such as night vision systems, target designation, and digital communication tools, into the equipment of its special forces units. At the same time, despite its reputation as a high-tech manufacturer of electronics and optics, the company also produces a number of ready-made combat solutions and components for them. Among them are AASM Hammer kits, which turn free-fall bombs into guided munitions with a range of up to 70 km and are capable of adapting to platforms like the Su-25. In the anti-tank segment, the company produces guidance systems for the 5th generation Akeron MP ATGM, which operates on the "fire-and-forget" principle, as well as the Patroller tactical UAV with long endurance and the possibility of installing weaponry. The technological base includes guidance systems for Caesar artillery and Mistral air defense. The process of French-Armenian cooperation can be directly related to a broader strategy for the development of the Armenian defense-industrial complex. At the current stage, interaction may be concentrated on the supply of components for the Armenian defense industry and the integration of French systems into existing infrastructure.
The experience of modern conflicts, such as the war in Ukraine and confrontations in the Middle East (in particular, the war against Iran), clearly demonstrates that in conditions of protracted combat operations, it is critically important to possess one's own assembly/production base, allowing for the integration of small-sized high-tech components into national developments and ensuring the resilience of the army to political and logistical restrictions on supplies. In this model, Safran Electronics & Defense can provide access to engineering solutions critically important for development and modernization. The integration of French "intellectual filling" into Armenian developments may allow for the development of local production, gradually moving toward a full-fledged technological partnership.
Eduard Arakelyan
RCDS