We now know a little more about the French defense space strategy! Florence Parly, Minister of Armed Forces, detailed this new strategy of active defense on July 25 during a speech at the 942 airbases of Lyon-Mont Verdun.
On the agenda: an extension of the military budget of 700 million euros to renew the fleet of French defense satellites, as well as the development of active and passive space weapons to protect tricolor equipment in orbit.
New command, new strategy
The announcement of the creation of a military command dedicated to space has caused a lot of ink since the speech of Emmanuel Macron at the Brienne hotel on July 13, 2019. The President of the Republic has indeed announced that " great command of space " would take place within the Air Force from 1 September 2019, it will eventually become the Air Force and Space.
We now know a little more about French ambitions for space defense. The Minister of Armies Florence Parly spoke a few days ago to unveil the roadmap and the strategy of this command whose operational center will be based in Toulouse. You will find his speech at the 942 airbases of Lyon-Mont Verdun at the end of the article.
Speaking of space as " the last frontier to cross, the last area to invest, " the minister unveiled several major axes for the implementation of a strengthened space defense strategy.
Recalling that today, access to space is becoming more democratic and that many countries and private companies, like those of Silicon Valley, are now endowed with satellite capacity, Florence Parly pointed out the many inherent risks to this spatial densification: " the
Space debris thus represents a threat against which it is necessary to protect itself, but, in a higher propensity, the number one threat remains that of the "weaponization" of space as well as the espionage capabilities of foreign satellites. The minister also recalled the case of the Russian satellite Louch-Olymp, which has dangerously close to the French-Italian military satellite Athena Fidus in 2017 and since " left his business card to eight new satellites from different countries ."
Finally, several emerging countries have managed to develop anti-satellite weapons, this is the case, for example, of India, which has recently demonstrated this with the Shakti mission, thereby endangering the International Space Station.
"TODAY OUR ALLIES AND OUR ADVERSARIES ARE MILITARIZING THE SPACE [...] WE MUST ACT AND BE READY"
Thus, the Minister announced that the command of the space will host 220 soldiers from the 1 st of September, an ability that should be widely enhanced by 2025.
Swarms of satellites armed and ready to fire
It is clear that France is preparing to invest militarily this "last frontier" that is space. The minister has detailed the active space defense doctrine of this new command. We learn that the fleet of French military satellites should be renewed in the coming years with new means of detection in low orbit and geostationary.
The budget of the Air Force will thus be allocated an extension of 700 million euros, to add to the 3.6 billion euros already allocated to space by the law of military programming.
This budget will fund new defenses, liabilities, and assets. France plans to launch swarms of nanosatellites that will aim to "patrol" and protect tricolor equipment in orbit: " We reserve the time and means of the response; this may involve the use of power lasers deployed from our satellites or from our nano-satellites patrollers, "says Florence Parly. These satellites could be launched as early as 2023.
Nevertheless, the objective of these "laser guns" will not be to destroy foreign space equipment, but simply to "dazzle" them, so that they are unable to achieve their mission espionage, or whatever.
Allocution de la ministre des Armées, florence Parly, sur la stratégie spatiale française de défense. https://t.co/37JDLdEaVb— Ministère des Armées (@Defense_gouv) July 25, 2019
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