On March 2, French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a long-anticipated speech outlining the republic’s nuclear strategy. The setting was carefully chosen to reinforce the theme: Macron stood before the ballistic missile submarine Le Téméraire, currently undergoing repairs and modernization.
Expectations surrounding the address were high. For months, Paris and its Western European partners had discussed the idea of a “pan-European nuclear deterrent,” and many observers assumed the president would announce concrete steps toward such a project.
While Macron did address cooperation with those allies, the most striking announcement concerned France itself. The president declared that Paris intends to increase the size of its nuclear arsenal. At the same time, however, France will no longer disclose the exact size of that arsenal. As a result, the scale of the proposed expansion remains unclear.
The official explanation for this new secrecy is a desire to “prevent speculation.” This reasoning is somewhat paradoxical. When official information disappears, speculation inevitably becomes the only basis for public discussion. A more plausible explanation is that Paris wants to conceal the limited scale of any expansion in the coming years. The reality is that France currently has no practical means of significantly increasing the number of deployed delivery systems.
France’s nuclear deterrent rests on two components. The first consists of four Triomphant-class ballistic missile submarines, each capable of carrying 16 M51 intercontinental ballistic missiles. The second is the airborne component: Rafale fighter jets equipped to carry ASMPA supersonic nuclear cruise missiles.
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