PARIS — France is moving closer to a decision on its future rocket artillery system, with the country testing domestically developed weapons this month that will allow for a comparison with foreign systems in a few weeks’ time, the head of the country’s armaments agency said.
The first tests of a French-developed rocket artillery system “went well” on Tuesday, with more testing planned for next week, Patrick Pailloux, the head of the Directorate General for Armament, said in a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday.
Safran and MBDA are one of the teams working on a French-made rocket artillery system, with Thales and ArianeGroup developing a competing offer. Foreign alternatives already in active service with other European forces include Hanwha Aerospace’s Chunmoo, the PULS system from Israel’s Elbit Systems and Lockheed Martin’s HIMARS.
“There is significant pressure from the Army, which considers this to be its absolute priority requirement in the event of a major engagement, because they’ll need to hold out during the first few days,” Pailloux said. “It is a capability they absolutely must have. So the question is, how much will it cost, what is the timeline, when will they be able to deliver?”
The French goal is to buy 26 systems with 300 munitions, and gradually equip a rocket artillery battalion by 2030, according to Pailloux. France is in a hurry to replace its nine remaining units of the Lance-Roquettes Unitaire, a modified version of the M270 multiple launch rocket system, set to reach the end of their service life in 2027.
“We’ll face a trade-off between sovereignty and speed, costs, timelines, and so on. We’ll have to make the best choice, or the least bad choice, given our needs.”
France is also working on a land-based ballistic missile with a range of 2,500 kilometers, with €1 billion ($1.2 billion) budgeted to start work on the system this year. The plan is for a ballistic missile tipped with a maneuverable hypersonic glide vehicle, with the DGA’s math showing “this is likely to offer the best cost-military performance ratio,” according to Pailloux.
While the published goal is for a ballistic missile in 2035, and France will have “no difficulty” to obtain a capability by then, “that is late, I admit,” Pailloux said. The DGA plans to accelerate the work to bring forward the date “as close as possible to 2030,” for example by having an initial version without anti-jamming measures, and those capabilities added later, according to the director.
The DGA aims to order more than €6 billion worth of munitions this year, with plans to buy SCALP cruise missiles, AASM guided bombs, Exocet anti-ship missiles, MICA and Mistral air-defense missiles and Meteor air-to-air missiles. The budget also includes €320 million to finance an industrial ramp-up where “necessary and useful,” according to Pailloux.
“We need to prepare for a major conflict by 2030, with the new understanding that we may find ourselves facing a war of attrition,” Pailloux said. “To put it very simply, a war of attrition is one where in the end, the side that still has ammunition left wins.”
Work on the future F5 standard of the Rafale fighter jet will start this year. With a budget of €3.4 billion for combat aviation, projects include a new Safran engine dubbed T-REX with a thrust of 9 tons, compared to the current M88 engine with 7 tons of thrust, and changing all the sensors, particularly the radar, according to Pailloux.
To upgrade the armament package of the Dassault Aviation fighter jet, the DGA is looking to accelerate work on MBDA’s Stratus RS high supersonic air-to-ground missile, and develop an air-to-air missile called Comet with longer range than the existing Meteor by 2030.
“It’s a new way of working, to develop a new air-to-air missile by 2030,” Pailloux said, describing the target date as “very ambitious.” He said the design brief fits on half a page, and basically boils down to “that the missile works and has a long range.”
This year’s projects also include the Chorus one-way drone, with a range of 3,000 kilometers and a 500 kilogram payload, with the goal to have the drone flying by the end of the year. The drones will be manufactured by carmaker Renault, with a unit costs of €120,000, which Pailloux called “expensive, but compared to other munitions, a lot less expensive.”
Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.
