In 2025, intrusions represented 24% of physical attacks or attempted attacks, compared to barely 18% last year.
Attempts at physical intrusion into companies or laboratories in the defense sector in France have increased significantly in 2025, according to the DRSD, the intelligence service responsible for protecting them, which also warns of the explosion of drone overflights.
“The year 2025 was marked by an increase in attacks or attempted “physical” attacks on entities monitored by the DRSD” which represented 24% of the total attacks in 2025, compared to 18% in 2024 and 2023, wrote the Directorate of Intelligence and Security. defense security, in a public note.
“The entities of the BITD (defense industrial and technological base, editor’s note) or of defense interest research have thus been the targets of numerous attempted intrusions within their industrial footprints or their laboratories. These intrusions have sometimes resulted in theft of equipment (computers, machine tools, etc.) and raw materials essential to production,” adds the intelligence service.
It also warns of “a considerable increase in the shooting of sensitive installations for tracking purposes. The end of 2025 was marked by a very clear increase in drone overflights reported near areas linked to the defense sphere”.
Unknown sources
Overflights of prohibited sites or critical infrastructure are a growing threat and reports have increased across Europe, sometimes leading to major disruptions such as suspensions of commercial flights in European airports in 2025.
In France, the DRSD considers that their “attribution to foreign powers” is “complex”, while many observers note that they may be part of the hybrid war strategy attributed to Russia, including actions of sabotage or interference on European territory.
On the other hand, Defense entities were confronted with “sabotage actions and damage (fires of energy infrastructures and production lines, tags, spraying of paint, etc.) mainly committed around the sites”.
This type of action continued in 2026, with again recently a series of coordinated fires in the Cher targeting electrical installations supplying arms factories.
Part of these actions may be linked to the Middle East, since “the service notes the continuation of protest actions carried out by certain ultra-left movements (UG) against BITD companies, in connection with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”.
