The high school must even refuse students at the beginning of the year to register: in Alsace, students are preparing for the first time a professional baccalaureate drone option and their skills are of great interest to the army.

At the Louise-Weiss high school in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, Alsace, a vocational baccalaureate with a drone option brings together about ten students. This unique school program in France has formed a partnership with the Air and Space Force.

In a buzzing sound, the quadcopter takes off from the ground before weaving between posts. At the controls is Quentin, a student in the vocational baccalaureate with a drone option, a unique school program in France that interests the military. Eleven students from the Louise-Weiss high school in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, an Alsatian town of 5,000 inhabitants nestled in the Vosges mountains, are the first to inaugurate this specialty as part of their professional baccalaureate in Cybersécurité, IT and networks, and electronics.

In the electronics laboratory, teenagers are absorbed in various activities. Two of them are working on a test bench to study lift. “The goal is to turn the engines in steps, faster and faster, to determine at what speed the drone is likely to take off,” explains teacher Jean-Marc Bour.

Damien, 18, faces an S500 V2 kit: “I have to assemble it from A to Z, to understand how we should build a drone, what material we use, what motor, what battery, etc.,” he recounts. The objective: to learn “to create it ourselves,” explains the student. The only girl in the class, Charlotte is interested in a reconstructed tower model in ruins, made in 3D from images captured by a drone. During the training, the young girl learned a number of rules related to the use of these devices, such as the fact that there are “certain areas where flying is not allowed and you need permission.”

“In including a drone option in this vocational baccalaureate, the idea was to create an innovative program that does not currently exist elsewhere using drones as a tool,” explains the high school principal, François Ginoux.

“We need drones”

The school has formed a partnership with the Air and Space Force. Instructors from the military have taught drone piloting classes to the students and have shown them around air bases in the region. These are skills that “interest” the military, explains Pascal Fischer, who heads the Regional Recruitment Center of the Air Force. “We need drones” for surveillance and security of military sites, and trained personnel capable of “implementing countermeasures” against hostile drones, he continues. The Army had 3,000 drones at the beginning of the year; they will have 15,000 by the end of 2026.

“Our effort is to stay up to date with technology and for every soldier to be a drone operator,” emphasized General Philippe de Montenon, commanding the land operational force, at the end of the vast military exercise Orion 26 in late April.

Among the Louise-Weiss students, Nolan, 17, is aiming for a military career and hopes his knowledge in drones will be “an advantage that others may not necessarily have.” While using a drone as a weapon is “not the goal,” the teenager imagines using it for “reconnaissance” or “surveillance” operations.

Aside from the military, “other sectors are quite promising,” points out principal François Ginoux, citing “companies that do thermal loss detection on their installations” and the agricultural sector. Alban, 20, sees drone technology more as a hobby. “But through the partnership with the military, I also learned that it has applications in the field. And I found it quite interesting,” testifies the young man.

François Ginoux asserts that the drone option has “generated a real renewal of interest” in the Sky professional baccalaureate, noting that he even had to “reject students at the beginning of the year due to enrollment demand.” His goal is to sustain this program, which could expand. “It would be interesting for the national education system to take up this experience to extend it to several high schools in France,” says the principal, emphasizing that to date, there is “no equivalent program.”