The Armée de Terre may order additional Contact radios via the 2027 French defence budget, with the force also considering the development of a backpack variant.
Officials close to the French Ministry of Defence’s Contact land tactical communications programme shared with Armada that additional orders for Thales Contact tactical radios could be included in the country’s 2027 defence budget. The officials were speaking during the 2026 Eurosatory defence exhibition held in Paris between 15th and 19th June. Thales is currently on contract to deliver circa 10,000 new transceivers to the French armed forces. The largest user of Contact radios will be the Armée de Terre (ADT/French Army), however land forces components of the Armée de l’Air (ADLA/French Air Force), Marine Nationale (French Navy) and Gendarmerie Nationale (National Police Service) will also receive Contact equipment.
PRG Replacement
The Contact radios replace the French military’s existing Thales PR4G Very/Ultra High Frequency (V/UHF: 30 megahertz/MHz to three gigahertz/GHz) radios which entered service from 1990. The Contact programme will see the PR4G radios being superseded with new dual band 30MHz to 108MHz, and 225MHz to 512MHz V/UHF handheld and vehicular radios.
The five watt/W handheld Contact radio is known officially as the ESR-P (Equipement Radio Standard-Portatif/Standard Handheld Radio Terminal). The Contact vehicular radio is officially designated the NCT-T (Node de Communications Tactique–Terrestre/Land Tactical Communications Node). An airborne radio (ERS-A) is in the offing and will be rolled out across France’s fleet of military aircraft.
Contact radios carry several waveforms. Importantly, from an interoperability perspective, they will have the pan-European ESSOR (European Secure Software Defined Radio) wideband networking waveform. French army sources have told Armada in the past that the ESR-P and NCT-T will carry the French version of the waveform. This latter version of ESSOR is known as ESSOR-VF. While ESSOR-VF will support multinational and coalition operations, the radio’s new CONVERT waveform is for exclusive French use. Like ESSOR-VF, CONVERT carries voice and data traffic. North Atlantic Treaty Organisation waveforms like SATURN (Second Generation Anti-Jam Tactical UHF Radio For NATO) are accommodated by the Contact radios. SATURN primarily carries air-to-surface/surface-to-air traffic. Furthermore, the Contact transceivers are outfitted with a Blue Force Tracking waveform.
Manpack machinations
France’s Direction Générale de l’Armement (DGA/General Armaments Directorate) procurement agency awarded a contract to Thales to fulfil the Contact requirement in 2012 with production commencing in 2019. Open sources state that circa 25,000 radios across all types could eventually be manufactured and delivered. The first tranche of circa 10,000 radios is scheduled to complete production by 2027. In 2024, Thales officials shared that the company was producing an average of 100 radios per month at its site in Cholet, western France. However, some figures in the French armed forces have complained about the pace of radio deliveries. As a result, a second production line is opening in Cholet which could see manufacturing volumes double over the coming year. Production lines are heavily tasked as Thales is also delivering its Synaps tactical radios to several customers including the Belgian and Irish armed forces. Synaps has a high degree of similarity with Contact sans French proprietary communications/transmission security standards.
The officials also revealed that France’s 2027 defence budget could see a new order for between 4,000 to 5,000 Contact radios. Current estimations suggest that Contact deliveries could conclude in 2035, assuming all 25,000 are ordered. Thales is in discussions with the ADT concerning the development of a backpack Contact radio variant. Funding for the formal development of this transceiver could be allocated in the 2027 defence budget, Armada understands. The 20W system will have a similar configuration to the NCT-T and will carry similar waveforms.
Budgetary challenges
The Contact programme appears to be on course not only to enlarge, but to include a new transceiver in the form of the backpack variant. Nonetheless, both these initiatives are contingent on the 2027 defence budget. Writ large, French government spending faces a key challenge: The first is the size of the public debt which currently stands at $4 trillion, according to official French government figures. The government has committed to a defence spending increase from two percent of gross domestic product to 3.5 percent by 2030. Whether the current, or future, French governments can stick to this commitment remains to be seen, particularly if an extreme right or extreme left candidate wins the 2027 presidential election. Ensuring that the Contact programme remains running smoothly will depend not only on next year’s budget: Future expenditure will be needed to guarantee that the full complement of radios is delivered to the French armed forces, and that the backpack Contact variant comes to fruition.
by Dr. Thomas Withington
