By Sangeeta Saxena
Paris . 13 June 2022. With Ukraine war clouds having replaced Corona clouds , the French defence and security exhibition Eurosatory 2022 was inaugurated amidst expectation and fervour by President Emmanuel Macron.
While inaugurating he stated, “adjust the means to the threats. I have asked the Minister for the Armed Forces and the Chief of Defense Staff to be able to carry out a reassessment of the military programming law in the light of the geopolitical context in the coming weeks”. For the President of the French Republic, the hardening of the strategic context implies decisions commensurate with the challenges, “France has entered a war economy in which, I believe, we are going to have to organize ourselves for the long term.
“Because Eurosatory is much more than a military innovation laboratory, an industrial high mass or a showcase for technological advances: it is a symbol of our strategic ambition. It is a condition of our national sovereignty. It is a concept of our European sovereignty, and being before you today is first and foremost a sign of confidence in our armies, and I know how much, in particular for our army of land in these days, and for all of our armies, our industrialists are fully mobilized. Confidence also with regard to our internal security forces which massively use many of the technologies and innovations which are yours; trust in the industrialists, innovators and researchers that you are,” he added.
Interestingly the President reiterated that there is no national security, no strategic autonomy, therefore no peace, without land weapons and an appropriate treasury. “It is up to us collectively to physically arm our soldiers and also to arm them with confidence: they must be able to rely for life and death on their equipment. This is the case, I know, because this equipment is the result of close collaboration between the operational staff of the armies, their staff, our general directorate for armaments and our industry.”
The French leader informed that he had already instructed the Minister of Defense of the Republic and the Chief of Staff of the French Armed Forces to review the law on military programming in the light of ongoing geopolitical events. According to Macron, he expects the results in the coming weeks.
This law provides in particular to allocate an envelope of 50 billion euros to the Ministry of the Armed Forces by 2025, or 2% of GDP. Led by the Directorate General for Armaments, the DGA, the project is inspired by an American law, the Defense Priorities and Allocations System Program. With this legislation, the French State could thus require that the production capacities of civilian companies enter, temporarily, into the service of Defence.
While waiting to reassess the hierarchy of current investments to cope with the return of war in Europe, the official delegation has already seen the materialization of a policy of acquisition and renovation of equipment, framed by the military programming law (LPM) 2019-2025. Both the President of the Republic and the Minister for the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, observed the renewed capability spectrum of the Army, which allows it to enter the era of info valued collaborative combat. The wide range of modern and innovative equipment, exhibited by the Ministry of the Armed Forces, was organized into five thematic areas: Scorpion program, air combat, fire support, combatant, DGA expertise.
