Ukrainian Drones to be Equipped with French SAR Radars Capable of Operating Through Clouds and Fog

Ukrainian UAVs will be equipped with reconnaissance SAR radars from the French company Harmattan AI, which will enable reconnaissance even in the presence of clouds or fog.

This was announced by the CEO of Harmattan AI in an interview with Le Grand Continent.

According to him, Harmattan AI has developed a sensor that is unique in the world — a SAR radar for drones weighing less than 150 kilograms. This system will be integrated into Ukrainian systems and deployed in Ukraine.

He also noted that European manufacturers have a lot to learn from certain Ukrainian systems or certain Ukrainian manufacturers who have years of war behind them — not only since 2022, but since 2014. They have created an industry that changes every week: they have built proximity to the modern battlefield and its limitations, and this has prompted them to develop system resilience.

“Industrial cooperation is often viewed from a mercantile perspective: since some companies sell defense systems and there is a war going on, we should go and sell them there. Such a rather crude contract is undoubtedly appropriate — both for Ukrainians and for us — but it is also interesting to collect data and draw industrial and technological conclusions in order to learn what the modern theater of war is like. This involves, in particular, understanding the limitations of electronic warfare: when it is no longer possible to communicate via radio waves or position oneself using GPS, how should one act on the modern battlefield?” he explains.

In his opinion, sometimes you have to admit that the enemy is the best, and the defense sector has historically never been able to accept this. This realization is new: war has changed its form. It has become statistical. Therefore, the proportion of systems capable of operating above a certain level of capability is important.

It is not necessary for 100% of their systems to work. It is much more important that a significant proportion of the systems supplied work. Supplying 1,000 systems, 100% of which function, is much less useful than supplying 100,000 systems, 80% of which work.

This issue concerns not only production or its quality, but also the definition of the product and the program itself. Government agencies responsible for arms procurement need to completely change their approach to system procurement: it is no longer necessary to strive to completely eliminate the risks of system development. Instead, it should be recognized that fast delivery of a product is better than delivery of a perfect product — speed has become more important than quality.

“The real strategic weapon of World War II was not the bomber, but the factory. In the US, Germany, or anywhere else, all the parties that survived the war relied on it,” he emphasized.

SAR radars for drones

SAR radar (synthetic aperture radar) is an active remote sensing system that uses microwave radiation to create highly detailed images of the Earth’s surface. It allows you to obtain images of territories in any weather conditions: during rain or fog, day or night.

According to the Harmattan AI website, the Sahara SAR radar can take images with a resolution of 0.25 m at a distance of 2 km and 1.2 m at a distance of 10 km. At the same time, the radar module weighs less than 3.5 kg.

It is not disclosed which Ukrainian drones will be equipped with French radars. However, it is known that in October 2025, the Ukrainian aviation holding Skyeton and the French defense company Harmattan AI announced a strategic partnership. As part of the cooperation, in particular, it is planned to integrate Harmattan AI’s sensor technologies with Skyeton’s Raybird drone.

Ukrainian companies are also working on similar developments. In 2020, Radionix presented a compact SAR radar for UAVs. It is known that at the time of the demonstration, it had already been tested on Skyeton’s Raybird-3 UAV.