Rethink its military plans

How the wars in Ukraine and Iran made France rethink its military plans

France is looking at cheaper options to take down Iranian drones, the country’s deputy air force chief tells POLITICO.

By Laura Kayali

France is rewriting its war playbook using lessons from Ukraine and the Middle East, as it prepares for a possible confrontation with Russia later this decade.

Both conflicts are shaping imminent decisions on what weapons Paris will develop, buy and deploy, as the French government prepares to present an updated military planning law on April 8.

"We are applying everything we can learn from Ukraine, particularly in terms of capability development — whether in connection with what is currently happening in the Middle East, or tomorrow on the eastern flank," Gen. Dominique Tardif, the French air force's deputy chief, told POLITICO.

France isn't just observing from a distance — it's learning in real time. French warplanes and air defense systems are currently deployed in countries such as the United Arab Emirates to fend off Iranian drone counterattacks. A French soldier stationed in Iraq was also killed by an Iranian drone in the early days of the war.

High-intensity warfare in Ukraine, and now in the Middle East, has exposed the gaps in Western arsenals. NATO's armed forces are not yet fully equipped to fight against cheap threats in a cost-effective manner — as missiles are significantly more expensive than the unmanned aerial vehicles they're intercepting.

"We're working across a whole range of projects to try to bring down costs of taking out Shahed drones," Tardif explained, referring to the mass-produced Iranian drones being used both by Russia in Ukraine and by Tehran in the Gulf. Cheaper options include firing at drones from Fennec helicopters, which the French military has already tested, and equipping Rafale fighter jets with less expensive laser-guided rockets.

Paris is also actively working with French companies Alta Ares and Harmattan AI on cheaper interceptor drones, the general said, confirming previous POLITICO reports. While not yet fully operational, Alta Ares' program is "ramping up," he added, and equipment is already on the ground in the Middle East.

Last week, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said several French companies are capable of producing thousands of interceptor drones a month, adding he will inaugurate a new factory soon. He also announced France would spend €8.5 billion on munitions by 2030.

"We are shifting from a world where small stockpiles were sufficient to a new one where they need to be expanded," the French general said. "This also means that production lines may need to be multiplied. If we have one, we should perhaps have two, and that requires investment."

Air superiority

The two wars are also underlining the importance of establishing air superiority — which is a core NATO war-fighting doctrine. The U.S. and Israel have done that over Iran by destroying most of its air force and pummelling its air defenses, while Russia has been unable to achieve the same in Ukraine.

That's why, Tardif argued, Moscow remains bogged down in a war of attrition. That's also allowed drones to become a dominant feature of the war.

"No air superiority means paralysis of ground-to-ground strike operations," he stressed. "Only 20 percent of deep strikes carried out by the Russians against Ukraine hit their targets. By comparison, 100 percent of American and Israeli strikes on Iran hit their targets."

The Israeli air raids that destroyed about 80 percent of Iran's ground-based air defense detection systems demonstrated that air superiority is achievable, the French general said. A strategy aimed at preventing an enemy from entering and maneuvering in a contested area, called anti-access/area denial, "is not an inevitability," Tardif said. "We know how to deal with it when we give ourselves the means to do so."

To that end, the French air force is looking at missiles to engage in suppression of enemy air defenses, meaning they knock out an opponent's ability to endanger French aircraft. Missile-maker MBDA is currently working on a program dubbed Stratus which includes that ability.

"This is fundamental and essential to air superiority, and it is how we will manage to move from a war of attrition to a war of decision," the French general explained.

Readying for Russia 'shock'

Tardif's medium-term priority is to help prepare France's air force for what French chief of defense staff Gen. Fabien Mandon called a "shock" — meaning a potential Russian attack on NATO.

"It is not impossible that Russia will test NATO between 2028 and 2029," Tardif said, echoing warnings from other military and intelligence officers.

"If there is a problem on the eastern flank — bearing in mind that the Baltic states have no fighter aviation and that Romania's is somewhat limited — aviators from Western European countries, including us, will find themselves on the front line from day one," he said.

In parallel, France is seriously looking at cheaper ways of defending its air bases, as "we all have in mind what the Ukrainians have managed to achieve deep inside Russian territory, striking air bases and neutralizing delivery platforms, aircraft and bombers on the ground," the general said, referring to Ukraine's 2025 Operation Spiderweb.

But the air force will not abandon high-tech, high-cost weaponry to avoid being stuck in an war of attrition.

"We want mass in order to saturate defenses and penetrate enemy lines despite radars and surface-to-air systems — but we also need decisive munitions. If all you have are attrition munitions, you end up in a situation like Ukraine, meaning a frozen conflict," the French general said.

He added the French air force is also looking at so-called collaborative combat aircraft: AI-powered drones weighing between two and four metric tons and designed to fly alongside manned fighter jets. One of their goals is to detect and geolocate threats more precisely.

Tardif said the air force will launch a request for information through the DGA arms procurement agency to assess what industry can offer. Collaborative combat aircraft on the market include Anduril's Fury and the Airbus-Kratos Valkyrie.

Russia, the deputy air force chief stressed, is also moving fast in terms of technology — steadily upgrading its Shahed-type drones, missiles and combat aviation sensors.

"Since they are channeling a great deal of their national wealth into the defense industry, their design bureaus are naturally able to make very significant progress," Tardif said.