Boosted by the return of high-intensity conflicts, from Ukraine to Israel, the persistence of the terrorist threat and the resurgence of the nuclear threat, the security sector is experiencing the opposite of a crisis. The 2023 edition of the Milipol trade show, which took place from November 14 to 17 in Villepinte in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, confirmed the excellent performance of an economic sector that, in a sign of the times, is set to grow by 4.5% in 2022, in a market estimated to be worth €669 billion that same year.

Among the most promising markets, according to the show's organizers, the drone market is recording "extremely rapid growth (...) up to 40% in some countries, with average growth of around 25%." In France, according to the specialist publication En Toute Sécurité, the surveillance drone market has seen its sales rise from €42 million in 2016 to €106 million in 2022.

"We're going through a phase of hypergrowth, of the order of 30% from one year to the next," said Emmanuel Nabet, sales director of Cerbair, a company specializing in malicious drone detection, which won one of the contracts launched to secure the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Even Axon, the American taser maker, diversified its business by acquiring Belgian tactical drone specialist Sky-Hero in July – for an undisclosed sum. "We want to offer a complete ecosystem to our customers, who are asking for more video, including in the third dimension," said Cathy Robin, the firm's managing director for Europe.

From intelligent textiles to cybersecurity solutions, even the least expected sectors are benefiting from the boom. Skills Meducation's animated mannequin, with its life-like simulations of gunshot wounds and hemorrhaging, is no longer just designed to train civilian medical staff. According to Antoine Briotet, the company's account manager, "We think it's safe to say that the military and security sectors will drive business."

Growth is so rapid that "we need to adapt production to meet demand," explained Marc Guérin, business development manager at Mirion Technologies, which designs and markets radioactivity detection and measurement equipment. The company is recruiting "at all levels of the chain, from fitters to engineers," and is even planning a "Mirion University," in partnership with higher education establishments to "recruit from the ground up" among students.

In this highly competitive market, "not being present at Milipol is to be invisible," said Dao N'Guyen and Didier Munos, from the American-Canadian company Autoclear, one of the few to offer a detector for fentanyl, a powerful analgesic responsible for 100,000 deaths in the United States between 2020 and 2021. Hiring a stand at the show enabled the company's two representatives to make "easier contacts in a French market where it is still difficult to get into the right network or find the right contact in certain government departments."

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