Chemistry lies at the heart of land-based armaments. Behind every round of ammunition is a pyrotechnic chain — explosives, propellant powders, priming compositions — built on energetic materials whose formulations have been inherited and qualified over many years. Over the course of a decade, the regulatory framework governing these substances has become a structural factor for the sector. Long treated as a peripheral compliance matter, the chemical dossier has today emerged

Ukraine has turned drones, sensors and battlefield software into an industrial-scale war machine. Yet the lesson is not simply that more technology wins. It is that advanced systems can also produce too many pictures of the same war. By Hubert Raymond and Jean Langlois In October 2024, Russia launched more than 2,000 attack drones against Ukraine in a single month. Ukrainian forces said they intercepted 1,185 of them, while 738 were “lost” after electronic warfare or navigati

Maxim resonates more than ever in a world reshaped by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, turmoil in the Middle East, and the deepening Sino-American rivalry. These converging pressures are forcing the European Union to define what kind of collective military power it intends to embody. What operations is it currently conducting? What defence architecture is taking shape? A look back at one of the defining strategic challenges of the 21st century. By Hugo Champion EU military power

What if the next great battle for sovereignty were no longer waged on Earth, but in deep space? Red Team Défense — the foresight initiative of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces — has imagined, for its Season 3, a scenario set on the horizon of 2075: two rival mega-consortiums vie for control of the strategic minerals of the Moon and the Asteroid Belt. Fiction? Only on the surface. This scenario in fact reveals a more immediate truth: sovereignty is no longer a fixed att

With a probable clash with Russia four years away, the Armed Forces are preparing. The Army, whose role is and will be central, has embarked on a genuine transformation: a change in scale, model and operating methods. Between capability priorities, funding and public-private partnerships, France is collectively preparing for high-intensity conflict. One watchword: be ready, move fast. AN INTERVIEW WITH MAJOR GENERAL JUSTEL, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE FRENCH ARMY BY MÉLANIE

For a long time structured around major programs developed over several decades, defence innovation is now entering a new phase. The war in Ukraine has highlighted the importance of shorter innovation cycles capable of integrating drones, artificial intelligence, cognitive warfare, and autonomous systems. Without calling into question the need for major strategic programs, armed forces are now seeking to combine industrial power with agile innovation. Amid technological sover

War has returned to the European continent. This is not a metaphor, nor a working hypothesis for military planners: it is a reality that our intelligence services now translate into concrete aggression scenarios against EU and NATO member states. The question is no longer whether Europe must rearm. It is whether Europe is still capable of doing so — and how fast. MEETING WITH ANDRIUS KUBILIUS, EUROPEAN COMMISSIONER FOR DEFENCE AND SPACE. INTERVIEW BY MÉLANIE BÉNARD-CROZAT AND

The war in Ukraine has reminded Europe of a reality that several decades of peace had at times pushed to the margins of our collective imagination: the defence of a nation is not the business of its armed forces alone. It calls for a broader mobilization, a shared understanding of the threats, a capacity to accept the effort required, and a common will to preserve our freedom of action. In an environment marked by the return of high-intensity warfare, the hybridization of con

By General Didier Tisseyre, French Air Force Corps General (Ret.) Senior Consultant in Cybersecurity and Digital StrategiesFormer Commander of French Cyber DefenceFormer Director of Infrastructure Networks and Information Systems at the French Ministry for the Armed Forces. One hundred and seventeen thousand-dollar drones destroy forty strategic bombers deep inside Siberia. A robotic assault captures a position without a single infantryman setting foot on it. In just a few ye

By Lieutenant General (Ret.) Jean-Philippe LECOUFFE, Deputy Executive Director of EUROPOL, in charge of Operations Threats are converging. Our responses must converge too. In my role at Europol, I see every day just how porous the traditional boundaries between internal and external security have become. The phenomenon is not new, but in these times of international tension, its acceleration and amplification are clearly perceptible. Yet our institutions remain organised arou

The war in Ukraine has profoundly transformed Europe’s security environment. It has served as a reminder that the defence of the continent can no longer be conceived solely within the long timeframe of capability programmes, nor through a fragmented logic. Faced with the return of high-intensity conflict and lasting geopolitical unpredictability, Europe must strengthen its capacity to anticipate, produce, protect, and respond to crises. By Thomas Regnier, European Commission

By Guy-Philippe Goldstein, lecturer at the École de Guerre Économique, essayist and novelist Thinking about the future of war means understanding whether the coming technological decade will arm the sword or the shield, the offense or the defense. On that question hinges the future price of aggression and that of the stability of borders. Who is going to win? Today, advantage to the defense? Seen from mid-2026, the shield prevails. Three years after its "special military oper