France Had to Rely on Exports

From Paris to Al-Riyadh everything is permeated with symbolism. As soon as he returned from Saudi Arabia, where he visited for the third time, the French defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian (Jean-Yves Le Drian) October 8 was to appear before the Senate to defend the project of the State Armaments Program (Loi de programmation militaire) on the period of 2014-2019 years. This is one method to signal to the industry in France, which is now worth more than rely on exports rather than domestic customers.

These negotiations are addressed to industrial concerns, which have uzhatsya and stretch out delivery times produced weapons. The volume of purchases is reduced to fit into the framework of 179.2 billion euros in the period 2014-2019. For industry, this means a reduction in turnover and staff reductions. And even if the military budget is stabilized at the level of 2013 for the period up to 2016 (31.4 billion euros), in fact it will be a reduction in the rate of inflation.

French defense industry looks forward to the return of better times after 2017, to gain access to the military budget of $ 32.51 billion in 2019 Apart from the government's commitment to sell for export Rafale fighter jets after 2016 By this time, the government plans to stop buying fighter jets from Dassault to reallocate the budget for more than the necessary weapons systems. But to sustain such costs are necessary to obtain additional funds (from the sale of real estate, the sale of state assets or frequencies) at the level of 5.9 billion euros over the period. Further unknown is what the industry questioned the government's determination to keep the military budget intact.

Taking this LG, according to Christian Mons (Chrisitian Mons), the government's curator of military enterprises producing land vehicles, "in five years we will see a reduction of 20,000 jobs out of 160,000 people employed in this sector also suffer big losses small and medium enterprises . " But it will not be as noticeable, he says, because "it will all be distributed" among nearly 4,000 small and medium-sized businesses. "The big concerns would be easier, as they can allocate staff within the group," adds K. Mons.
The "Bad Image"
Extension of deadlines Barracuda submarine construction program and the company DCNS FREMM frigates will affect 500 jobs as part of the holding. Missile industry will face a reduction in its turnover by 30-40%. This will affect 500 jobs out of 10,000 (5%) in the company MBDA. For a group Safran LG entail loss of profit of 150 million euros ($ 14 billion of annual turnover) and a reduction of at least 500 jobs.

In SAP also no place major programs. According to Marwan Lauda (Marwan Lahoud), director of strategy and marketing at EADS, «no new programs will fall under the threat of not only production base, but also the technological level of our armed forces can not be stored at the proper level, and export capabilities of our businesses, which are a necessary counterweight to their economic model will be reduced, due to the competition. " He said this during a Sept. 10 hearing on the defense.

He believes that it is necessary to squeeze the benefits of budget expenditure on R & D, which reaches 750 million euros per year and prepare future projects. It refers to the UAV, cyber defense, heavy helicopters. "It is not the first time LG has no new programs. This is already the case in 1995-1997. While many have invested in R & D ", softens Laud. But even if the program "to some extent suffer from a bad image" associated with their complexity, "do not forget that only cooperation can share the development costs across multiple countries," emphasizes Antoine Bouvier (Antoine Bouvier), President of MBDA. "It is clear that the projects [military transport aircraft] Airbus A400M or Tigre attack helicopter could not be implemented by one country."

Also, you must have the political will on the part of the Germans or the British, which is now somewhat weakened. She also needed to restructure the industry. Because this is not happening, "a competition for tenders, as in the case of submarines from DCNS and the German TKNS», explains Jean-Pierre Lightning (Jean-Pierre Maulny), assistant director of the Institute of International and Strategic Relations .

Thus, the export market competition intensifies. Everything takes place under the slogan "Everyone wants to have" - ​​so, it is promoted by the Americans, who need to compensate for the slowdown in the United States, or the appearance of new players. September 26 was a spectacular place out of the PRC, which won the Turkish tender for the supply of air defense missile systems.

Original publication: Le Monde, 08.10.2013 - Dominique Gallois
Translated by Andrey Frolov