New Delhi: On May 20, 2026, Thales successfully conducted live firings from the X-Fire launcher, confirming the maturity of this land-based long-range strike system.
Developed in partnership with Soframe, X-Fire features a versatile architecture enabling it to engage deep-strike targets (150 km and beyond), using a wide range of munitions, whether sovereign or allied.
This flexibility complements the solution offered by Thales and its partners to the French forces, in the context of the replacement of the LRU (Unitary Rocket Launcher) system, by addressing two key requirements:
- Providing sovereign munitions for deep-strike operations: together with ArianeGroup, Thales conducted demonstration firings on May 5 of its FLP-T 150 (Long Range Land Strike) ballistic ammunition, which is expected to be available before the end of the decade;
- Ensuring capability continuity as the current LRU system reaches end of life: the X-Fire launcher can operate foreign munitions on a transitional basis, bridging the gap until the French sovereign munition becomes available.
The X-Fire launcher also stands out for:
- An agile 8×8 mobile platform compatible with the French Army’s logistics fleet, ensuring a high level of operational synergies.
- Resilient navigation solutions from Thales, including the TopStar Smart Receiver GNSS anti-jamming receiver and the TopAxyz inertial measurement unit. These systems ensure continuous positioning, navigation and timing, as well as high-precision targeting and firing, in contested electromagnetic environments.
The firings carried out on 20 May 2026 from the X-Fire launcher also used the Thales 68mm X-Fum training rocket, which has already been tested on platforms such as the Tiger combat helicopter. Thales is the only manufacturer to offer this training rocket enabling armed forces to take immediate ownership of the system as part of a transition phase.
“With Soframe, Thales is proud to offer the versatile sovereign X-Fire launcher, which completes the deep-strike ground solution developed with our partner ArianeGroup. The versatility of the X-Fire allows us to reconcile, for the benefit of the armed forces, the need for a sovereign ballistic munition (FLP-t 150) by the end of the decade with the requirement capacity continuity as current Unitary Rocket Launcher systems reach the end of life. This successful firing demonstrates the system’s performance, and we are already preparing for the ramp-up of production,” said Julien Assoun, Vice-President Vehicles and Tactical Systems, Thales.
