As FREMM Frigate Bretagne returned recently from a seven-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific, the French Navy is about to send several more vessels to the area. The deployment is still “just a plan”, but the French nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and its escort are expected to embark soon on a months-long journey that will take them to the eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and possibly the far reaches of the Pacific Ocean. Naval News understands the CSG could make historic calls to Japan and the Philippines which would mark firsts.
“The aircraft carrier happens to have a window of opportunity this year, so the preparation work [for the deployment] is starting to come together,” a senior officer said under condition of anonymity during a conference of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI). The Charles de Gaulle can sail for the next two years before a mandatory stop: Its third major technical overhaul and refueling (dubbed “ATM3” in French). The departure is expected for November but is surrounded by a “certain probability” and remains conditional on various factors including world events.
The exact composition of the CSG is not known but, apart from the Charles de Gaulle, the escort presented to the IFRI was based on an Horizon-type air defense destroyer, an Aquitaine-class frigate (ASW FREMM), an air defense FREMM (FREMM DA, which, Naval News understands is likely to be Alsace), a nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN), a logistics support ship (the Jacques Chevallier) and a metropolitan support and a Loire-class metropolitan offshore support and assistance vessel (bâtiments de soutien et d’assistance métropolitains or BSAM in French). The air wing is set to include two E-2C Hawkeye AEW aircraft, 24 Rafale Marine and four helicopters. That is, approximately 3,000 sailors and naval aviators bringing together all the capabilities of the spectrum.
Several exercises that will take place during the Clemenceau 25 mission are under study, the common thread being the development of interoperability with France’s partners. Thus, the French Navy plans to train with the Indian Navy, a partnership demonstrated by the annual Varuna exercise. According to a military source, one of the sequences envisaged could bring together local and less local partners (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, India, Canada, Japan, UK, etc.) around an exercise “that could focus on the theme of maritime security in the Indonesian straits”.
“We could seek to go higher in the spectrum” with more restricted partners. By bringing together, why not, several carrier strike groups present in the region in a free space outside the contested areas. In any case, the French Navy does not set “any limits to its imagination” and maintains its “willingness to train as far and realistically as possible in all of our effects”. “The fact of investing in the area with first-rate assets over time shows that we are becoming credible in the area and that we are becoming, as a Pacific nation, a contributing nation”, points out another officer of the French Navy.
The Clemenceau 25 mission is not without challenges. First, it will involve crossing several hot spots. The crossing of the East Mediterranean and the Red Sea, for example, two hot spots among many others in which the French Navy is present but “in which the CSG could provide support to go a little further in these effects”. The CSG will have to face the complexity of the environment, maritime spaces and actors and the multiplication and increasing intensity of these hot spots.
It is also a question of compiling with the duration and distances inherent in such a deployment. This is what some call “the tyranny of distances”, the one that underlies a real logistical effort. The FREMM frigate Bretagne has just taken up this challenge after seven months of deployment through the Tanskorn mission. The “first rank vessel” participated in RIMPAC among several other exercises. Keeping a frigate at sea for months is no longer a complexity but a challenge in terms of carrying and managing spare parts stocks, technical level of intervention and autonomy at sea. Sailing from Guam to Honolulu means 12 days at sea without meeting anyone, explains a French officer.
The complexity will be increased tenfold for the CSG in view of the volumes involved. It will nevertheless benefit from the new Jacques Chevallier, a supply ship that recently joined the French fleet and constitutes an asset in terms of “operational logistics”. The vessel is much larger compared to the class of supply vessels it is replacing, and brings new capability as demonstrated earlier this year: The ability to reload missiles while underway or berthed, and the ability to resupply submarines in ammunitions. This asset will allow the CSG to change scale through a capacity practically doubled compared to the previous generation.
France will also be able to count on its many logistics support points, whether national or resulting from an agreement with the host country. The context requires rediscovering the notion of access strategy, this approach which consists of consolidating the support points, knowing the mandatory access points and re-accustoming partners to working with France. “The Tanskorn mission in logistical point of view is a real full-scale test of our access strategy in this area with a major asset”. Behind the usual partners, the recent opening of a diplomatic defense mission in the Philippines constitutes the first milestone towards the creation of a new permanent support point in a fiercely contested area.
Finally, there remain the central questions of the robustness and resilience of communications and the ability to command at sea. So many challenges for which the French Navy is seeking technical answers in particular. Clemenceau 25 will therefore also act as a laboratory and demonstrate the ability of the French Navy to integrate new technologies “which allow us to envisage what naval combat will be like tomorrow”. “Across the areas and the different oceans that will be cross, several interesting experiments will be conducted”, a military member added.
Thus, the French Navy is equipping itself with data centers, tools that will strengthen the processing and sharing of data on the scale of a naval force. The CSG will be able to rely on the Marine Data Support Center created several years ago, a hub of skills and computing capacity directly linked to the data centers via satellites. The process will take time, but the goal is to set up an internal means for a naval force that can be used over time. The ultimate test will be to extend sharing with allies, raising the question of the future of tactical data links.
Recent engagements also encourage progress in both lethal and non-lethal weapons such as jamming and electromagnetic interception. “All these innovations will most certainly be implemented quickly on the vessels composing the CSG,” says a French Navy officer, while recalling that “all of these remain plans, and everyone knows that the plan is the first victim of the conflict.”
