Electric propulsion is patient and efficient; chemical propulsion is fast and forceful. Most spacecraft pick one personality. US10532833B2, granted to Snecma (now part of ArianeGroup) on January 14, 2020, claims a module that refuses to choose: a "space propulsion module having both electric and solid fuel chemical propulsion."
The CPC is compact and revealing: B64G 1/404 (spacecraft propulsion using combinations of different propulsion types) and F02K 9/76 (solid-propellant rocket construction). Two classifications, two propulsion philosophies, one claimed assembly.
The engineering logic is a division of labor. The solid motor delivers a large, one-shot impulse — useful for a rapid orbit change or an escape maneuver where time matters. The electric system then takes over for the slow, fuel-stingy work of station-keeping or final orbit trimming. Integrating both into one module saves the structural and interface overhead of bolting two separate propulsion subsystems onto the bus.
The dependent structure is where the value hides — how the two systems share plumbing, structure, and control without one compromising the other. A solid motor's thermal and vibration environment is hostile to the delicate electronics of an electric thruster, so the integration is not trivial.
For portfolio readers, this is a European prime hedging its propulsion bets at the architecture level rather than the component level. It does not claim a better Hall thruster or a better solid grain; it claims the system that holds both. A publication is not a grant and a grant is not a flown system, but the filing signals where Snecma saw integration value years before the all-electric-versus-chemical debate fully matured.