2027: France's True Reckoning on Rearmament

By Jean-Louis Thiériot, Member of Parliament for Seine-et-Marne, former Minister Delegate for the Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs

The uninhibited resort to force, a symptom of the return of power politics, overturns three decades of illusions: those of the peace dividend and of a conflict confined to the margins of History. Faced with this turning point, the tempo of our rearmament effort must absolutely accelerate, grounded in a clear-eyed assessment of the new security challenges.

The most existential threat lies to the east. Already at the stage of open war in Ukraine, it persists in hybrid forms at the very heart of our Western democracies. In this context, an attempt to destabilise the Atlantic Alliance in the Baltic States by 2030 can no longer be ruled out. Europe also faces a 360-degree threat, extending from instability in the Eastern Mediterranean and Africa to terrorism, an ever-resurgent jihadism, and the risk of its maritime routes being severed.

This prospect is all the more worrying given that NATO's cohesion is today being severely tested. This is a structural trend, independent of President Trump's unpredictability, as Washington began its pivot to the Indo-Pacific back in the Obama years. Europe "may be on its own," as Chancellor Merz aptly noted in Munich in February.

A complex planning challenge

Beyond the factors observed everywhere — the transparency of the battlefield, the widening of the "kill zone," the difficulty of manoeuvre, the massive role of drones and counter-drone warfare, the place of artificial intelligence — the war between Iran and the United States demonstrates the equalising power of new low-cost technologies. The mass-versus-technology mix must evolve. It is impossible to sustain a prolonged confrontation when a €1 million missile is used to shoot down a €50,000 drone. The mix of low-cost attrition weapons and high-technology decisive weapons must be rethought across all segments. More than ever before, the foremost army is the laboratory and the factory.

Four major budgetary blocks

Concretely, with the credibility of deterrence funded as a priority, the requirements fall into four blocks. The development of strategic enablers is necessary to strengthen the European pillar of the Alliance. Without sovereign C2, without command of space and without deep-strike capability, Europe could neither wage nor sustain a high-intensity war. France must play its part.

The Navy must be able to project our power, and must be equipped with at least eighteen first-rate vessels and a safeguarded aircraft carrier. The replacement of surveillance frigates must also be planned.

As for the Army, the objective is to meet our framework-nation goals, at corps level, in line with NATO's Defence Planning (NDP).

As for the Air and Space Force, the target of 250 Rafale jets — especially since the development of the "forward deterrence" doctrine — is the minimum threshold to carry out its missions within the Strategic Air Forces (FAS) and to retain freedom of manoeuvre for deep strike. Naturally, every capability development must take into account the planning ratios, human resources, infrastructure, level of training, and maintenance in operational condition (MCO).

The 2027 milestone

The update of the 2024-2030 military programming law only partially meets the requirements we have just set out. It is a law of coherence, not of force structure. It addresses the most urgent needs: munitions, ground-to-air defence, drones, counter-drone warfare. The expansion of the fighter fleet, the surface fleet, and the organic corps-level assets (around ten regiments) remain merely stated objectives. The goal of allocating 3.5% of GDP to defence by 2035, enshrined in the law, points in the right direction. A reflection on force structure will have to take place within the framework of a new white paper in 2027 and a future military programming law. The ambition to reach, as soon as possible, a "fighting weight" of €100 billion — absent from this update — will in particular need to be examined.

The true milestone will be 2027. It will fall to the candidates, whoever they may be, to give defence the place it deserves. This is the demand of our times. The sword has once again become the axis of the world.