France to Deploy New Neptune and MAJES Jammers on FDI Frigates to Defeat Maritime Drone Threats.

France is equipping its FDI frigates with Neptune and MAJES jammers to counter drones and electronic threats. The move expands naval defenses beyond missiles, aligning with modern U.S. and allied priorities against swarm warfare.

Announced by Admiral Nicolas Vaujour on April 9, 2026, the upgrade integrates digital electronic warfare and future directed-energy systems into France’s newest frigates. The decision follows the March 31 order of the fifth FDI, Amiral Cabanier, and reflects a broader shift toward layered defense combining missiles, jamming, and low-cost counter-drone capabilities. The FDI already fields advanced sensors, including the Sea Fire AESA radar and Aster missile system, but is now being adapted to handle saturation attacks and unmanned threats more efficiently.

Related topic: France confirms 32-cell FDI frigate upgrade to double missile firepower against large-scale attacks.

French Navy FDI frigates will receive Neptune/MAJES digital jammers and future directed-energy weapons, strengthening their ability to counter drones, missiles, and saturation attacks through layered electronic and close-in defense (Picture source: Naval Group/MC2 Technologies).

The timing matters: France had just ordered its fifth and final FDI, Amiral Cabanier, on March 31, 2026, for delivery in 2032, while the class is also moving toward a larger missile load with 32 Aster cells, showing that Paris is upgrading both the frigate’s hard-kill magazine depth and its soft-kill survivability at the same time.

The FDI is already one of the most modern surface combatants in Europe in its size bracket. Naval Group describes it as a compact first-rank frigate built around a highly digital architecture, with two redundant data centers, a cyber-secure design, high automation, and native capacity to operate aerial and surface drones in networked combat. Its Panoramic Sensors and Intelligence Module, or PSIM, concentrates most of the ship’s sensors, electronic-warfare functions, the combat information center, one of the data centers, and even a dedicated counter-drone warfare center in a single integrated structure; this module alone contains about 70 percent of the combat system. Physically, the ship is in the 4,500-ton class, roughly 122 meters long, can reach about 27 knots, and can embark a 10-ton-class helicopter plus a VTOL UAV.

That architecture gives the FDI the sensor and command backbone needed for layered defense. Sea Fire, the frigate’s fully digital fixed-panel AESA radar, provides more than 300 km of air coverage and can detect and track over 800 objects. Paired with Aster missiles, it gives the ship credible area and local air defense, while the broader combat fit includes Exocet MM40 Block 3C anti-ship missiles, a 76 mm gun, MU90 torpedoes, close-in guns, and decoys. Exocet Block 3C itself is a 250 km-class sea-skimming weapon with a new J-band active coherent seeker, 3D waypoint programming, and improved performance in contested electronic-warfare environments. In other words, the FDI was already a high-end escort; France is now strengthening the layers below that top tier.

The Neptune/MAJES pairing is central to that lower-layer reinforcement. MC2 Technologies presents Neptune as a specialist GNSS jammer designed to create a protective bubble against GNSS-guided weapons by blocking adversary positioning and navigation. MAJES is more versatile: a modular, fully digital, multimodal tactical jammer that can be integrated on land, air, or sea platforms, uses omnidirectional and directional antennas, supports reactive or hybrid jamming, and can be networked to cover larger sectors while limiting interference with friendly systems. MAJES can also neutralize UAV guidance systems based on GPS/GLONASS and their communication links. Admiral Vaujour’s point was operationally important: the new fit lets the Navy attack both a drone’s satellite-based positioning and its tactical datalink simultaneously, something older naval jammers could not do with the same finesse.

That is not a laboratory concept anymore. A French FREMM deployed in the Red Sea in 2024 reportedly neutralized a hostile UAV using jamming systems, including Neptune and MAJES DFB6, in what was described as the first operational use of French counter-UAS technologies at sea. That matters because it suggests the FDI is not receiving an experimental gadget but a sea-validated soft-kill capability shaped by real combat conditions and by anti-drone exercises. Operationally, this implies a more economical engagement sequence: use the spectrum first against drones and cheap asymmetric threats, preserve missiles for leakers, supersonic threats, or complex raids, and avoid spending high-end interceptors on every low-cost target.

The directed-energy component is the next step, and it could be the more consequential one. Vaujour indicated that the Navy wants eventually to pair the new-generation jammer with a radiofrequency directed-energy weapon, while Naval Group has already showcased near-field ship-defense concepts built around an open-architecture core already fielded on FDIs and replenishment ships, linked to jamming, missiles, a modular launcher, and potential future integration of high-power electromagnetic systems or lasers. The exact effector selected for the French FDI has not yet been publicly detailed, but the logic is clear: directed energy would add a rapid-response, low-cost-per-shot option for close-range drone defense and swarm disruption, precisely where missile expenditure becomes tactically inefficient.

From a tactical perspective, this strengthens the FDI where modern war at sea has become most uncomfortable: the dense, ambiguous zone between long-range missile combat and last-ditch gunfire. The ship already has 360-degree sensor coverage, with no blind spots from very short to long range, and a combat system built to fuse radar, optronics, and electronic warfare. Adding Neptune/MAJES means the frigate can now detect, classify, and electronically engage drone threats earlier and more precisely in that intermediate layer, before escalating to guns or missiles. For a navy facing saturation attacks, loitering munitions, and maritime drone threats, that is not a marginal upgrade; it is a doctrinal change in how scarce defensive firepower is managed.

Strategically, France is converging on a more resilient escort model. The FDI is becoming not just a digitally advanced frigate, but a platform for active electronic warfare, deeper missile magazines, and eventually directed-energy close-in defense. The larger point is that the French Navy is absorbing the same lesson seen in the Red Sea and in Ukraine: expensive ships cannot rely only on expensive interceptors against mass, attritable threats. The class is evolving into a more credible multi-layer combatant whose value lies not only in what it can shoot, but in what it can blind, disrupt, and defeat before firing at all.