French companies Rift and ChapsVision have collaborated to integrate communications signal intelligence into a sovereign fleet of long-range unmanned aerial systems.
The strategic partnership will equip Rift’s existing vertical takeoff and landing aircraft products with ChapsVision’s signal monitoring, sensing, and analysis hardware.
The combined system will fuse aerial imagery with signals intelligence and deliver real-time automated alerts to command-and-control systems used by security agencies, border authorities, and critical infrastructure operators.
‘Critical’ Solutions for ‘Strategic Challenges’
Rift’s drones can remain airborne for up to five hours and operate within a 300-kilometer (186-mile) radius, with missions managed through the company’s proprietary RiftOS software platform.
ChapsVision, often viewed as the European counterpart of America’s Palantir, will provide an artificial intelligence-enabled data processing layer, keeping collected surveillance data within European sovereign cloud infrastructure to comply with regional data and privacy requirements.
“The goal is no longer just collecting data from above, but making it actionable for authorized services when every second counts,” said Daniel Nef, CEO and co-founder of Rift.
“ChapsVision extends our aerial collection beyond optical imagery, delivering critical intelligence support to European security forces.”
ChapsVision CEO Silvano Sansoni added that the partnership “illustrates the French tech ecosystem’s ability to deliver sovereign solutions for strategic challenges.”
“The synergy between Rift’s aerial vectors and our data collection, processing, and exploitation software meets a growing demand: reliable, rapid information to speed up decision-making,” Sansoni said.
Software integration and testing are underway ahead of a planned early 2027 deployment, the companies told La Tribune.
