Contemporary naval combat means Western forces like the French Navy (Marine Nationale) must expand the operational scope of their outputs while ensuring key assets are increasingly ready for operations, the French Navy’s Chief of Staff said at the Paris Naval Conference.
The impact of new technology and the reality of combat operations are expanding the domains in which navies must operate, but are also reinforcing the simple need to maintain effective presence at sea, Admiral Nicolas Vaujour told the annual event (which took place in early February, co-hosted by the navy and IFRI, France’s international relations institute).
“The threat is diversifying. It is not only on the surface or underwater: it is from seabed to space,”
“This means navies must be able to operate from the seabed to space, which was not the case 10 years ago. So, the threat landscape is growing.”
The ‘seabed to space’ bracket in naval operations encompasses traditional naval activities in the underwater, surface, and air domains. However, the seabed and space domains are now becoming part of routine naval activities: for example, commercial surface vessels operating on behalf of rogue actors and dragging anchors or deploying uncrewed underwater vehicles to threaten seabed critical underwater infrastructure can be surveilled from space.
Alongside navies’ expanded operating domains, French Navy chief said that other new developments in naval warfare include the impact of new technology on operations in these domains, for example Ukraine’s use of uncrewed systems in the Russo-Ukraine war to push Russian presence back across the Black Sea; and non-traditional, non-state actors now impacting maritime matters, for example the Yemen-based Houthi rebels using ballistic and cruise missiles and uncrewed systems to target commercial and naval ships in the Red Sea.
“For all that, one key word at the end of the day for navies is to be adaptable. Ukraine’s key success is agility,” said Adm Vaujour. Crucial for navies in responding to this new threat landscape is building a navy “adaptable by design”, he added.
However, while the French Navy is already re-capitalising its force structure to build an adaptable future fleet able to embrace new technology and tackle new threats, Adm Vaujour recognised the need to offset these threats in today’s operating environment through enhancing readiness across the navy’s current fleet.
Here, he explained, resilience and readiness are crucial.
“When we speak of war, we have to speak about resilience – and resilience when you have only 15 frigates, which is not that many,” said Adm Vaujour. “It means you must have dockyards, you must have naval bases able to repair [your frigate], able to put your frigate back on the line, to launch your frigate on operations.”
“So, the readiness of your fleet is something which is critical in the path of war we are on right now,” Adm Vaujour continued. “It means improving our resilience and improving our coherence, [such as] more ammunition available … and more capability in terms of industry [and] drydocks process in order to be able to repair a ship very quickly.”
“So, resilience and coherence are fundamental even when you are thinking of capability development,” the admiral added.
The navy is recognising that people are essential to readiness and resilience too, said Adm Vaujour – a lesson learned from deploying ships on the European Union’s ‘Aspides’ operation to counter the Houthis’ Red Sea activities.
“What I see in operations right now is that, [learning from] ‘Aspides’ in the Red Sea, we need to reinforce our crews, because we were too short in terms of human resource onboard,” said Adm Vaujour. “So, we are reinforcing our crews on both frigates and submarines.”
The admiral added that, going forward, the navy must balance the introduction of new technology against having the right number of people onboard, and the need to introduce such technology quickly against the fact that traditional core naval platforms still take time to build.
Naval News comments:
The current geopolitical situation in the Middle East combined with previous commitments marks one of the highest periods of availability in the French Navy and a record high operational tempo. As highlighted by French daily newspaper Le Figaro, over 80% of the major surface vessels are currently deployed at sea. This includes all three Mistral-class LHDs (one LHD is participating to NATO exercise COLD RESPONSE, one is currently in the Indian Ocean and the final one deployed last week to the East Mediterranean), the Charles de Gaulle carrier strike group (which was on a North Atlantic deployment but was retasked to the East Mediterranean) and most first rank surface combatants. For example, both Forbin-class air defence destroyers are currently deployed (one with the CSG, the other other participating in the ASPIDES mission in the Red Sea).
As witnessed on Monday, the main French Navy base at Toulon is almost completely barren with just one Lafayette-class frigate present among otherwise empty piers.
I was in Toulon today.
All I saw was a Lafayette-class frigate, a RHIB and a few tug boats 🙃
More seriously, in my nearly 15 years of visiting the naval base, I've never seen the piers so empty. (The two Durance class AORs are decommissioned). On the one hand, this highlights… pic.twitter.com/4lK47wVNjJ
