Safran navigates the future: high-end inertial sensing in a shifting world – An interview with Safran

Due to the conflicts worldwide, the demand for high-end inertial sensors for navigation and stabilization in the Defense & Aerospace market is increasing. The challenge is to rebuild stocks while addressing the current conflicts. In addition, there is an increased need for navigational aids in several types of vehicles (land vehicles, drones, …). This is a good opportunity for inertial sensors, which help when GPS is unavailable or is jammed.

The high-end inertial market is estimated at $3.7 billion in 2023, split between defense & aerospace (48%), mobility (35%), and industrial (17%) markets. The market is expected to grow at a 4% CAGR_23-29 to $4.8 billion, as detailed in the High-End Inertial Sensors 2024 report from Yole Group. The market research & strategy consulting company is planing a new edition of this report in 2026. Stay tuned!

The high-end inertial sensor market is fragmented on the application side, while consolidation is occurring on the player side. Three major players—Honeywell, Northrop Grumman, and Safran—dominate the market. Numerous smaller players specialize in specific technologies and focus on specific market segments. The large companies maintain their market influence through extensive portfolios of high-end technologies with significant added value. However, their presence in protected defense and aerospace programs may limit their agility in addressing emerging markets or customized product requirements.

The $3.7 billion estimated in 2023 for the high-end inertial systems market is mainly generated in the USA (64%), followed by Europe and the Middle East with 28%, and Asia and RoW with 8%.

Today, Yole Group had the pleasure of engaging with Alexandre Lenoble, Senior Vice President of Product Lines Navigation & Timing at Safran. In this discussion, Pierre-Marie Visse, Senior Technology & Market Analyst at Yole Group, explores Safran’s vision, technological advancements, and the market impact of its innovative solutions.

Don’t miss this interview to learn how Safran is tackling today’s and tomorrow’s challenges.

Pierre-Marie Visse (PMV): Can you please introduce Safran and present the main technologies and applications you cover?

Alexandre Lenoble (AL): Safran Electronics & Defense, a company of Safran, is an international company with over 19,000 employees who mobilize their expertise and team spirit to design high-tech solutions in the aerospace, defense, and space industries. The company develops products and services to help civilian and military players observe, decide, and guide on land, at sea, in the sky, and in space, thus contributing to a safer world.

In an increasingly unpredictable world, we provide armed forces with solutions, tools, and equipment that guarantee their technological superiority. Our optronic, inertial, and PNT solutions are critical defense systems at the heart of surveillance and deterrence. Our Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) technologies allow users to guarantee a trajectory, even in hostile environments, to control orientation with our inertial measurement units (IMU), to navigate with precision, and to keep and distribute accurate time even without a satellite system.

By designing technologies to protect soldiers and populations, we contribute to global balance, a crucial challenge given the current geopolitical tension.

PMV: Please explain to our readers how your inertial devices portfolio fits within the current global market trends.

AL: As military forces know all too well, the primary source of PNT information is GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) sources such as GPS or Galileo. Hundreds of thousands of military systems depend on navigation satellite systems to move, attack, and communicate.

These satellite signals are vulnerable to interference. Every day, all around the world, we observe jamming and spoofing of GNSS signals, and they affect all users on air, land, and sea platforms and critical infrastructure, for both civilian and military domains.

A European project called STRIKE3 was launched in 2016. During the three years of this project, the European Commission decided to monitor interference on GNSS signals. They found over 450,000 instances of non-GNSS signals appearing in the GNSS band. Of those, 73,000 were strong enough to deny services to receivers, and out of those, 59,000 were deliberately transmitted to deny GNSS services. And while most of the events were very short, some lasted for more than 30 minutes, and up to 5 days.

Since september 2023, several airlines have reported “false electronic signals imitating satellite data from Global Position System satellites”, causing complete navigation failure for dozens of aircraft flights around the world, especially around conflict zones the Baltic Sea. Since then, several thousand such cases have been reported by airlines, with one to two thousand cases every day.

Safran’s approach for resilient PNT is based on two technological pillars. Inertial technologies for Position and Navigation, and atomic clock technologies for Timing. Not jammable, not spoofable, fully resilient technologies.

PMV: How do you see the evolution of high-end inertial sensors demand with the current geopolitical situation?

AL: The current geopolitical situation is driving the technologies towards more resilience. From a pure technical standpoint, this means technologies that are immune to GNSS jamming and spoofing, and fully autonomous. Ring laser gyros (RLG) and hemispherical resonator gyros (HRG) have demonstrated their capabilities to provide accurate pointing and navigation performance, even in the absence of GNSS, and are fully resilient to GNSS interference.

The high-end inertial sensor demand is increasing in the space domain, thanks to the number of satellites launches every year.

PMV: Can you give us an overview of Safran’s market position in this segment?

AL: Safran is present in the space navigation domain, for two kinds of applications:

For launchers, Safran has developed Spacenaute. Competitive, accurate, and compact, SpaceNaute is the most advanced inertial measurement unit for space applications in the world. Selected and qualified for the Ariane 6 European launcher, it offers excellent performance and very high reliability under harsh conditions and was part of the successful first flight of this launcher in July 2024. SpaceNaute provides unparalleled performance thanks to HRG Crystal™ cutting-edge technology for foolproof reliability, insensitiveness to space radiation and vibration, and low size, weight, and power consumption.

For satellites, as you mentioned, the number of satellite launches grows every year. Most of those new systems are small satellites for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) missions. For those applications, Safran Sensing Technologies Norway (ex Sensonor, now part of Safran Electronics & Defense) designs and manufactures high-accuracy gyro and IMU solutions. With NASA’s support in identifying leading-edge components for space applications, companies ventured into space with the Sensonor Gyro modules due to their SWaP and reliability. With several successful missions, the Safran Sensing Technologies Norway STIM products became a standard for LEO satellites.

Safran is involved in the inertial domain with MEMS technology with organic development and the acquisition of Colibrys and Sensonor, making MEMS one of the most important technologies in Safran’s portfolio.

PMV: Why did Safran choose to focus on this technology? What are the main challenges to winning market share in this domain?

AL: For more than 70 years, Safran has dedicated its resources and expertise to the design, development, manufacturing, and support of inertial sensors and associated navigation, stabilization, and guidance systems.

Today, this range of inertial sensors allows Safran to offer a wide range of navigation, stabilization, and guidance systems for various applications. A large number of defense & aerospace prime contractors trust Safran solutions, among them BAe Systems, Airbus, Airbus Helicopter, Ariane Group, MBDA, Dassault Aviation… As a result, Safran manufactures more than 10,000 products based on inertial technology every year.

Thanks to the Hemispherical Resonator Gyroscope, Safran Electronics & Defense has already demonstrated navigation-grade performance and high reliability, in addition to disruptive size, weight, and power consumption. Previous presentations at Inertial Sensors and Systems conferences have shown the superior performance achieved by various types of inertial navigation equipment based on HRG technology for all applications, from accurate man-portable North finding to pointing and land navigation thanks to the Geonyx™ family, from the depth of the sea with Argonyx™ and Black Onyx™ product families to outer space with the Spacenaute, the inertial measurement unit of the Ariane6 launcher.

Since the introduction in 2005 of its HRG technology on the AASM “Hammer” guided munition (Highly Agile Modular Munition – Extended Range), Safran Electronics & Defense has been manufacturing HRG-based products, with tens of thousands of sensors delivered to various customers all around the world, for all kinds of applications: land, marine, space and aeronautical applications.

With a fully mature HRG technology and product portfolio, Safran addresses a broad market from commercial navigation to high-grade military missions. Through these products, Safran’s Hemispherical Resonator Gyroscope has now cumulated more than 40 million combined operating hours.

MEMS technology for inertial sensors is becoming more and more performant and is interesting thanks to its low SWaP, but it cannot cover all applications due to its limited performance. In contrast, RLG technology can cover higher-performance applications but is bulkier.

PMV: How do you see the evolution of these two technologies in the future? Do you think some of the mainstream technologies can disappear?

AL: Indeed, MEMS technologies are becoming more and more performant, thanks to the evolution of electronics, algorithms, and precision silicon micro-machining. However, the scientific and industrial community seems to agree on the fact that there is a limit to what is achievable by MEMS technologies without losing the features of MEMS in the first place (in particular, its capability to use mass-production techniques inherited from the world of micro-electronics, and very desirable SWaP characteristics).

Higher-end applications, covering the spectrum of “autonomous navigation” with the ability to find North autonomously without external aid, are addressed by other kinds of technologies, such as optical gyroscopes, Ring Laser Gyros (RLG) or Fiber Optic Gyros (FOG), or Hemispherical Resonator Gyroscopes (HRG). Due to the potential technical limitations of MEMS, it is highly unlikely that this technology will replace RLG or HRG for autonomous navigation. In addition, for some platforms such as military airborne applications, the transition to new inertial technology will likely take time, in order to avoid requalification or recertification. This means that the maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) of current platforms will still generate the need for technologies such as ring laser gyros, the same way older platforms still require mechanical gyroscopes today.

We can expect, though, that MEMS technologies will come to a point, probably by the end of the current decade, where this technology can provide the same level of performance and robustness as small optical gyroscopes used for tactical-grade applications, most likely for new developments or new increments of current platforms.

Safran is also deeply involved in the time reference system with atomic clocks.

PMV: How do you see the future evolution of the miniaturized atomic clock, and what is Safran’s market position with this range of devices?

AL: In July 2022, Safran acquired Orolia to become the world leader in Resilient Position, Navigation and Timing (R-PNT) equipment. Orolia solutions include atomic clocks, time servers, and simulation and resilience equipment for GNSS signals, as well as emergency locator beacons for commercial aviation and military applications. These have made Orolia a highly complementary and synergistic part of Safran Electronics & Defense’s activities as it meets the challenges of positioning, navigation, and synchronization in contested and vulnerable environments.

Safran is now a world leader in rubidium atomic clocks and oscillators, rubidium standards, masers, testing instrument technologies, and more that rely on accurate atomic time. Whether you need short- or long-term stability, our decades of experience designing and manufacturing products is trusted by companies ranging from global enterprises to space initiatives.

There are multiple market trends based on atomic clock technologies, depending on the application that is targeted:

And more

Source: www.safran.com