Defence policy is, or should be, the product of a strategic community of politicians, military leaders and industry players working together, each in their role. This type of strategic community, continually sharing information to achieve a consistent overall vision, is what makes the strength of any nation or coalition. Politicians lay down the major objectives, which the military leaders translate into capabilities and operational requirements. Defence analysts track major trends, detect changes and propose doctrines for the deployment of defence equipment and systems. Industry players are suppliers, it is true, tasked with meeting the requirements of the politicians and military leaders, but they also need to think ahead in geopolitical or geostrategic terms so that they can make the right industrial choices to meet their customers’ operational requirements as they emerge. In this way they can propose comprehensive solutions, projects, equipment and systems that incorporate the latest technological advances and match the requirements and resources of those who will use them.

The degree of interaction between the various actors depends largely on the maturity of the government/defence/industry relationship and the extent of industry presence in the public debate. However, the ‘upstream’ side of strategy has taken on increasing importance in the last 20 years as a result of both the phenomenal acceleration in technical progress, which is leading to an unprecedented transformation within the armed forces, and the long-term reduction in defence budgets in all developed countries. Just 25 years ago, France spent 3.8 per cent of commercial GDP on defence, compared with 1.9 per cent today—which some observers think is still too high and should be reduced further. Large-scale military programmes are therefore of central importance to future defence capabilities. Industry must adapt to these developments and support them whenever they can by proposing suitable responses to both the new requirements and the new constraints.

Naval Forces

Naval forces are in the forefront of this transformation. Their raison d’être during the Cold War—to fight for control of the seas—suddenly lost much of its relevance with the collapse of the Soviet Union, which put an end to the blue-water threat posed for so many years by the Voenno-Morskoi Flot. But history did not come to an end, and nor did navies’ missions. It did not take long for new threats to emerge, usually described as asymmetric.