413 billion euros over seven years, including 13 of extra-budgetary income to partly finance military aid to Ukraine. The military programming bill (LPM) 2024-2030 presented this morning in the Council of Ministers is “unpublished”, admits the entourage of the Ministry of the Armed Forces.
The army’s budget will increase by 3.1 billion euros in 2024 and then by 3 billion per year from 2025 to 2027, before “steps” of 4.3 billion per year from 2028. A “ground trajectory” to which “finally supplements will have to be provided” depending on the threat, stresses the ministry, which expects Parliament to approve the LPM before July 14.
No waiver, but with time revisions
These arbitrations are explained by a situation as unprecedented as this budget.
The war in Ukraine and the risks of a major conflict in Europe push us to produce more, to modernize equipment, to hire specialists, to make up for accumulated delays, especially in terms of drones, while maintaining the equipment in operational condition and pursuing or launch large weapons projects such as the Scaf or the next generation aircraft carrier.
To all this are added the effects of inflation that could reach an amount of 30,000 million euros. To cope with it, but also to deal with “operational emergencies”, in particular in terms of drones and anti-drone warfare, Sébastien Lecornu, Minister of the Armed Forces, already wants to request an additional spending of 1.5 billion euros in 2023 . , complementing an annual budget of 43,900 million.
In fact, not all projected needs will be met by 2030.
Scorpion, Rafale, A400M and new frigates
If the big programs are preserved, among them the Scaf, the Franco-German MGCS tank, the aircraft carrier that will succeed the Charles de Gaulle, nuclear deterrence and the reinforcement of human resources for intelligence, others will be less ambitious than expected.
The Scorpion program for the renewal of the armored component of the Army by connected machines, Jaguar, Griffon, Serval, for example, will bear the worst part. The minister’s entourage evokes “a hundred Jaguars less” than the 300 planned and “a few hundred” Griffons and Servals postponed after 2030. To deal with these discrepancies, VAB and AMX-10RC will be modernized to “be scorpionized” .
The passage of the air forces to “all Rafale will be accelerated, but it will not materialize in the LPM”. Deliveries of 42 combat aircraft scheduled between 2027 and 2030 are extended to 2032. In 2030, the Air Force will have 137 Rafales against an initial target of 185. 2030 than in three of the five defense and intervention frigates (IDF ).
Deliveries of A400M transport aircraft, needed to project resources to the Pacific area, will be accelerated from 20 aircraft currently to 35 by 2030, but the final target of 50 aircraft remains under discussion.
And the space…
In the space field, Paris will fund studies for the next generation of Celeste intelligence satellites of electromagnetic origin and the successor to the Yoda patrol satellite program, aimed at keeping too-nosy spacecraft away from French satellites. On the other hand, the third communications satellite Syracuse IV has been abandoned in favor of a constellation whose contours remain to be defined.
Finally, the increase in the production of ammunition and artillery systems such as the Caesar is not questioned, but the replacement in 2027 of unitary rocket launchers (LRU) is being considered. Paris could opt for “American Himars or a European solution.” “This issue is not settled,” says the ministry.
Source: BFM TV
