Thales Test-Fires X-Fire Launcher: France’s 150+ km Sovereign Land-Strike System
Thales has carried out the first live firings of its X-Fire long-range land-strike launcher, the system Paris expects to anchor France’s sovereign deep-strike capability into the next decade. The 8×8 mobile launcher is designed to reach 150 km and beyond once the FLP-t 150 munition enters service.
Defence Industry Europe reported on 26 May 2026 that the first firings took place on 20 May 2026. The test rounds employed the 68 mm X-Fum training rocket, with the operational payload — the FLP-t 150 sovereign ballistic munition — scheduled to mature before the end of the decade.
Platform: agile 8×8, GNSS-resilient, multi-calibre
X-Fire rides an 8×8 chassis purpose-built to integrate with the French Army’s existing logistics fleet. Thales has equipped the launcher with the TopStar Smart GNSS anti-jam receiver and the TopAxyz inertial measurement unit, both engineered for contested electromagnetic environments. The combination is meant to preserve targeting accuracy under GPS jamming and spoofing.
Thales Vice-President Assoun said X-Fire’s versatility “reconciles the need for a sovereign ballistic munition by the end of the decade with operational continuity in the meantime.” Production ramp-up preparations are described as already under way.
The European long-range artillery race
X-Fire’s arrival reflects an intensifying European race in long-range artillery and tactical ballistic launchers. Germany and Israel-partnered KNDS’s PULS, Lockheed Martin’s M270 and HIMARS families, and the Rheinmetall-Elbit cooperative launchers are all contesting multiple NATO orders. Paris emphasising “sovereignty” around X-Fire is a tangible signal of its intent to reduce supplier dependence in this segment.
Turkish industry perspective
For the Turkish defence industry, X-Fire reads as a direct peer of Roketsan’s KASIRGA-150 / KASIRGA-300 family and the TRG-300 TIGER, which operate in the same range bracket. Roketsan already fields 150 km-range GPS/INS-guided munitions in serial production. Beyond existing Turkish export customers such as Bahrain, Azerbaijan and Bangladesh, the timing of any French in-service deployment of X-Fire will shape the competition for new European orders in the late 2020s.
Next steps
No specific date was disclosed for the FLP-t 150’s qualification, but the end-of-decade target suggests first operational units could field the system between 2028 and 2030.
Sources
- Defence Industry Europe — “Thales completes first X-Fire launcher firings for long-range land strike capability”, 26 May 2026
- Thales Group — TopStar Smart GNSS / TopAxyz IMU technical data sheets
- Open-source European artillery modernisation analyses (HIMARS, PULS, MARS II)
- Roketsan open product catalogue
