Agence de l'innovation de defense - Appels a projets theses AID

What you get

You get a fully funded PhD position for 36 months, working on a research topic useful to the French defence sector. The money covers your salary and social contributions for the three years, plus travel and conference costs. It is paid to the research lab that hires you, so you get a salaried job rather than applying for cash yourself. The Agence de l'innovation de défense (AID), part of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces, funds 100 to 130 of these positions every year across three separate calls.

The three calls differ in how they are funded. The classic call fills around 100 positions a year and is mostly co-financed by the AID and a partner organisation. The IDEES call backs unusual, high-risk research ideas, with up to 65,000 EUR for a co-financed project (AID covers 50%) or up to 130,000 EUR for a fully funded one. The Cifre-Défense call is for defence companies that hire a PhD candidate to work with an outside research lab, with 42,000 EUR over three years towards the salary.

Who can apply

• Who submits: Your thesis supervisor or lab director files the application, not you. You can be named in the file or added later.
• Your nationality: You must be a national of an EU country, the United Kingdom or Switzerland. No exceptions.
• Field of study: Your topic must fit one of the AID's priority defence and dual-use themes, for example cybersecurity, robotics, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, materials, energy, health and NRBC defence, or humanities and social sciences.
• Where you work: You do the PhD in an accredited research lab under a qualified supervisor.
• Start date: Your thesis cannot begin before 1 October 2026.

How to apply

Your supervisor first discusses the research topic with an AID innovation officer, then submits the full file online through the Démarche Numérique platform, using the link for your call. Deadlines fall in spring: 16 March 2026 for the classic call and 30 March 2026 for the IDEES call. A selection committee of young defence doctors and officers ranks the files, and results for 2026 are published in June.

How realistic are your chances?

This funding is narrowly targeted. Your topic must serve defence needs, you must be a national of the EU, UK or Switzerland, and a lab and supervisor must back you before you even apply. That keeps the pool smaller than for open scholarships, and with 100 to 130 positions a year the scale is substantial. If you line up a supervisor and a defence-relevant topic early, your prospects are solid, especially since a candidate can be added to a file after submission.