From May 12 to June 15, 2025, the French Navy conducts a major high-intensity operational readiness exercise: POLARIS 25.
French Minstry of Armed Forces press release
- This joint, combined, multi-domain exercise will involve over 3,000 French and foreign military personnel, more than 20 surface ships and over 40 aircraft in the Atlantic and the Channel.
- This major activity will bring together complementary resources from the French Army, Navy and Air Force, plus naval resources from allied and partner navies.
- POLARIS 25 is a large-scale, structuring and federating exercise for the French Navy, based on a combat approach from naval bases to the high seas, under real-life conditions.
From hybrid threats to amphibious action in a contested environment, not forgetting combat support, the POLARIS 25 operational readiness exercise offers a rare density of training for all military personnel, units and staff involved. The realistic scenario enables preparation for the specificities of modern combat, combining land, sea, air, cyber, seabed, cyberspace, space, electronic warfare and the information field, while stimulating the inventiveness and combativeness of military personnel.
POLARIS 25 also aims at strengthening interoperability with participating allies and partners: Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom and United States, including a NATO task group.
This edition of POLARIS will also stand out for its duration and complexity. This ambitious training program is designed to increase the resilience of our crews, by hardening their preparation for today’s challenges
The POLARIS concept, launched in 2021, reflects the French Armed Forces Chief of Staff’s strategic vision of “winning the war before the war, and being ready to engage in high-intensity combat”. It is also in line with the French Chief of the Naval Staff’s “Marins de combats” strategic plan, which aims at hardening the French Navy, strengthening its immediate combat capability and enables it to maintain its superiority in the air-sea space.
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About the exercise
POLARIS is the French Navy’s largest exercise which first edition started in 2021 before the war in Ukraine. Naval News wrote about it extensively as it was a first in decades the Navy had performed such intense exercise. Feedback of the first edition can be found here.
For the second edition, the French Navy is involving more allies and partners’ navies and more extensively hybrid warfare as well as domains like space and cyber within the scenario. The exercise is also unprecedented by its duration, lasting a full month.
The MoD splited the exercises in two parts. The first one will take place from May 12th until May 26th off the coast of Brittany and Normandy and is dedicated to cyber and space-related as well as “hybrid” offensives against defense infrastructures and facilities including naval bases. In the region, Brest and Cherbourg will be probably the main targets as well as Navy’s airwings located in this region. Every time, a blue and red force will act as the opponents.
The second phase will start on May 26th until the end of the exercise on June 15th and will mainly consist in amphibious operations with air, land and naval combats taking place in a downgraded environment – probably with jamming, communication shutdown etc. This long phase will be divided as follow: first the formation of the international force led by France in the West Atlantic, then amphibious operations off and on UK’s shores around Bristol strait. The exercise will continue with a period of combat at sea between an amphibious strike force composed of 5 LHDs and their escorts (Blue force- TF471) and a ‘first-rank’ opposing force (red force- TF472) – understand here composed of frigates and destroyers. Finally, the exercise will end by amphibious operations off and on France’s Atlantic coast.
POLARIS 25: participating units
French naval assets :
- 2 Mistral-class LHDs
- 3 Aquitaine-class FREMMs
- 1 Lafayette-class frigate
- 1 d’Estienne d’Orves-class OPV
- 2 support vessels
- 1 Tripartite-class MCMV
- 1 SSN
French aircrafts:
- Hawkeye
- Rafale Marine (Navy)
- Rafale
- Mirage 2000
- Alphajets
- Atlantique 2 MPA
- NH90 helicopters
- SA365 helicopters
- AWACS
- A330 MRTT
- Reaper UAV
Land forces will complete these assets with troops, helicopters, logistics support, joint staff and ground air missile system. Marine Fusiliers and special forces from the Navy will also be involved.
UK assets:
- 2 Bay-class landing ships (RFA Lyme Bay and RFA Argus)
- 4 Archer-class P2000 patrol vessels
- 3 Merlin helicopters
- 2 Wildcats helicopets
- Commandos from the Royal Marines
Spain:
- 1 Galicia-class LPD
- 1 Alvaro de Bazan-class frigate (F-105 Cristobal Colon)
- 1 Marine batallion
Other Navies’ assets:
- 1 Thaon di Revel-class ship from Italy
- 1 Karel Doorman-class frigate from the Netherlands
- 1 De Ruyter-class frigate from the Netherlands
- 1 Karel Doorman-class frigate from Portugal
- 1 Rhön-class replenishment tanker from Germany
- 1 P8 from the US
Marines troops from Italy, Brazil and the US will be present as well.
