Speaking on 4 February at the Paris Naval Conference 2025 – an event hosted jointly by the French navy and IFRI (the French institute for international relations) – Adm Vaujour said the navy is using dual-crewing on many of these ships to increase operational output through adding more sea days, as well as improving in-service ship support processes to increase platform availability.
“Availability is one of my motivations because I have by law – [France’s] military planning law – 15 destroyers and frigates in the French Navy. So, the way to have more ships is not to build another one, because it has been politically decided that I have 15,”
Admiral Vaujour, French Navy’s Chief of Staff
“The question for me is to increase the level of availability of the ships.”
The navy has done this firstly through a significant refresh of its in-service maintenance support activity. “We are achieving right now more or less 80% availability for these ships, which is really high in terms of maintenance,” said Adm Vaujour.
Second, the navy has taken steps to exploit this greater availability through generating more sea days. “How we used that 80% in the best way was to ‘double crew’ some ships to not only increase the minimum number of days at sea, but to double the days at sea.”
The overall effect of these actions is generating an output similar to having more than 15 ships, the admiral explained.
“I have more than 15 because of ‘dual crewing’ with maximum ship availability. That’s how we try to respond to needing more ships at sea, with less ships ashore.”
France’s 15 ‘first rank’ surface ships include: two Horizon/Forbin-class destroyers; eight Aquitaine-class multi-mission FREMM frigates; and five La Fayette frigates.
In due course, the La Fayettes will be replaced by five much more capable FDI (Frégate de Défense et d’Intervention) frigates. Lead ship Amiral Ronarc’h is in the water, currently conducting sea trials. All five are set for delivery by around 2030.
Improving availability across existing platforms is central for many NATO navies in building deterrence through defence capacity to counter the increasing Euro-Atlantic insecurity that has developed around the Russo-Ukraine war and wider Russian activities across the theatre. Naval chiefs recognise that force levels take time to build up, even in the face of extreme crisis, so the most straightforward way to build presence at sea to underpin deterrence is to increase the availability, readiness, and sea time of in-service ships.
In terms of increasing availability through reducing maintenance requirements, Adm Vaujour cited the incoming FDI ships as an example of how the navy is working increasingly closely with the commercial sector to improve reliability and support processes. For example, the medium, auxiliary diesel generator sets (gensets) installed on the FDI frigates, starting with Amiral Ronarc’h, are already in use on commercial trucks. “This means that, in terms of spare parts, we will be sure in the future that we will have the spare parts [we need] because the engine on the trucks is exactly the same engine as the [auxiliary genset] of my ship,” said Adm Vaujour. “Like this, you gain availability very easily.”
