A CSG provides capacity to both shape and respond to developments in contemporary strategic trends and events, General Thierry Burkhard told the Paris Naval Conference, co-hosted by the French Navy and IFRI (the French international relations institute) on 25 January.
France’s CSG capability is based around the aircraft carrier FS Charles de Gaulle. France plans to replace the ship one-for-one, with the porte-avions de nouvelle generation (PANG) programme delivering a new carrier by around 2038.
Gen Burkhard detailed a modern world and contemporary operating environment characterised by competition – particularly at sea, where free movement of trade and freedom of navigation are under threat.
“All spaces can be contested or challenged today,” said Gen Burkhard. Recalling a visit onboard Charles de Gaullein the Mediterranean in March 2022, he observed that the crew was focused on the Russian presence, as Russian naval activity in the region was impacting the CSG. “Everything operating in a space can challenge the safety of that space,” said Gen Burkhard.
Power is being used to settle differences, with some actors using force to prevail over the rule of law, the general said. He added that the world is in an era of imposed wars rather than interventions of choice. “Today, our engagements and commitments can be imposed. All this leads to the end of operational comfort,” he continued. “This means you cannot obtain full superiority, which was how we operated in the past.”
Set against this context, a CSG can have several uses, Gen Burkhard explained.
First, in an era of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategies and operations, a CSG provides access – the ability to find a way round. A carrier can “re-design the geometry of the battlefield with regard to access”, the general said.
Second, given the intense competition at sea, a navy’s role is not simply to occupy the sea but to be able to use it. That is why a CSG is important, Gen Burkhard explained.
Third, in this maritime battlespace, the issue is not whether a CSG is relevant, but how technology can be harnessed to ensure the CSG stays relevant. Here, a CSG must show capacity to adapt to new threats, including A2/AD and the use of hypersonic missiles, uncrewed vehicles (UVs), and cyber attacks. A CSG must provide protection against new threats, including capacity to pre-empt them, said Gen Burkhard.
In the ongoing Red Sea shipping crisis, where Yemen-based Ansar Allah (Houthi) rebels have been targeting commercial and naval ships in the Red Sea/Bal-al-Mandeb/Gulf of Aden corridor, the US Navy’s USS Dwight D Eisenhower CSG has been demonstrating defensive and offensive roles, with the carrier’s air wing and CSG surface ships defending sea lanes against incoming ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and UVs, and striking Houthi targets ashore.
The Eisenhower CSG’s actions illustrated Gen Burkhard’s fourth point: namely, a navy’s utility in sending signals in a space like the sea, where sending signals is both possible and important in an era of communications.
With current Euro-Atlantic instability ranging from lower-level maritime security challenges up to high-end conventional conflict, navies are required to operate across the task spectrum. As the Israel/Hamas conflict unfolded in October, the Eisenhower CSG – arriving in the Eastern Mediterranean to show presence, sailing through Suez to the Gulf to send deterrence messages, before sailing back to the Gulf of Aden to conduct defensive and offensive operations – demonstrated the CSG’s capacity to provide full-spectrum capability.
Referring to a CSG as ‘power tool par excellence’, including in how it connects various naval outputs, Gen Burkhard said a CSG offers another dimension of power, even compared to a nuclear-powered attack submarine.
France’s aim is to win the war before the war, said Gen Burkhard, pointing to a CSG’s relevance here including in conducting high-end combat operations. Previous conflicts – like Kosovo, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq – have seen CSGs project power from the sea and control sea areas, he said.
Finally, Gen Burkhard argued, Western forces can no longer guarantee achieving technological superiority and should not build equipment designed to achieve this, because adversaries are aiming for this too. Instead, navies need equipment – like a CSG – that provides the ability to exert superiority, through presence and power, at the place and time of choosing, he said. For the future, Gen Burkhard concluded that navies need improved sustainability in capability. While a CSG provides this already, he added that CSG capability can be further augmented by better harnessing the integrated effect of its outputs, and by enhancing a CSG’s capacity to deal with disruptive technologies. For France, he concluded, long-term planning is needed to assess how to best equip its future carrier and how to use that capability.
