The head of the French Navy, Admiral Nicolas Vaujour, has given a rare, wide-ranging assessment of sea power, Russia and China, and why Paris is betting billions on a new nuclear aircraft carrier as tensions rise from Ukraine to the Taiwan Strait.
‘Eyeball to eyeball’ with Russia at sea
For Vaujour, Russia is not some distant threat confined to the trenches of eastern Ukraine. It is a constant presence offshore, often alarmingly close.
“On average, a Russian warship sails past our coasts in the Channel once a week. We are eyeball to eyeball with the Russians in the Baltic and the North Atlantic,” he warns.
French naval radars and sonar operators track Russian vessels and submarines almost continuously. Moscow’s submarine fleet, he stresses, has emerged “almost intact” from the Ukraine war, and has kept modernising while other parts of the Russian military take heavy losses.
At the same time, the Kremlin’s room to manoeuvre has narrowed. Ukraine’s strikes in the Black Sea have pushed Russian units further east. The fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria has closed off access to Tartus. Finland and Sweden joining NATO has turned the Baltic into what French officers now describe as a “NATO lake”, complicating access from Saint Petersburg, a vital Russian commercial port.
That mix of resilience and constraint makes Russian behaviour at sea unpredictable, in Vaujour’s eyes. Hybrid actions against undersea cables, energy infrastructure or commercial shipping are a constant worry. French and allied forces now treat such incidents as part of a broader campaign, not isolated episodes.
The Arctic: melting ice, rising stakes
The admiral is blunt about the strategic value of the North Atlantic and the Arctic gateway. Russian submarines leaving Murmansk must pass through vast stretches of ocean that NATO states, including France, are determined to monitor closely.
Climate change is accelerating this contest. Thinning ice and longer ice-free seasons could eventually ease commercial transits through Arctic waters.
For Vaujour, the Arctic is not a far-off fantasy trade route but a slowly opening front where major powers intend to stay present “for the long term”.
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France has quietly upgraded its ability to operate in this environment. Modernised frigates, new helicopters and overhauled Atlantique 2 maritime patrol aircraft are tailored for cold, rough waters, long flights and anti-submarine warfare.
Paris has also intensified cooperation with Nordic partners such as Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Port visits, joint exercises and NATO operations in northern waters have multiplied since 2022, aligning with a broader European effort to keep Russian submarines under close watch.
China’s navy and a crowded Indo-Pacific
Asked if China’s fleet is the most worrying, Vaujour chooses his words carefully. He concedes that the growth in Chinese naval numbers is “impressive”, but sees the bigger concern in how and where those ships are deployed.
Chinese vessels now patrol far from home, with regular presence near Taiwan and an assertive posture in the South China Sea. Artificial islands, territorial claims and frictions with neighbours have turned the region into a potential flashpoint, and a crucial test of freedom of navigation.
France is not a passive observer. With territories from New Caledonia to French Polynesia, it sees itself as a resident Indo-Pacific power. Carrier group deployments—like the latest Clemenceau mission—have pushed French jets, frigates and logistics ships deeper into East and Southeast Asian waters.
Regional partners such as the Philippines and Indonesia, Vaujour notes, treat the French presence as “credible and reliable”, a useful counterweight in an increasingly crowded maritime arena.
The traffic picture in the South China Sea alone illustrates the stakes. Commercial tankers, container vessels, fishing fleets, coast guards and navies all jostle in waterways critical to global trade. Miscalculation here would not just hit local states; it could disrupt supply chains from Europe to the US in days.
Return of high-end naval combat
For a generation, many European governments treated large-scale naval battles as a fading Cold War concern. The French Navy’s leadership has moved on from that assumption.
Vaujour says outright that naval combat is a “credible” scenario and the core mission of his service. Training has hardened significantly. Large-scale exercises such as Polaris, Wildfire and Orion aim to replicate high-intensity conflict, incorporating lessons from Ukraine and recent missile and drone attacks on shipping.
In the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, French frigates participating in the EU’s Aspides mission have already engaged high-end threats, including missiles and drones targeting merchant vessels.
The admiral underlines that very few navies on the planet are both willing and technically able to fire in anger against advanced threats at sea.
To keep that edge, French warships are being fitted with new fire-control systems, jammers and defensive suites specifically tuned to the drone and missile era. Exercises increasingly simulate swarming attacks and complex electronic warfare, not just traditional ship-on-ship duels.
Why Paris is building a new aircraft carrier
A tool of power in the 2040s
France’s decision to build a new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to replace the Charles de Gaulle has sparked debate at home. The price tag will run into the tens of billions, at a time when budgets are under pressure.
Vaujour frames the project in one question: what is the most effective way to project air power at sea in 2040 and beyond?
For him, the answer is a “sovereign, mobile, heavily protected platform” able to launch both crewed fighters and drones, and to evolve through its digital architecture.
The future carrier is designed to be modular and deeply networked, allowing continuous upgrades to sensors, weapons and command systems. Its group of escort ships, aircraft and unmanned systems will form what the admiral calls an “evolving aero-maritime superiority platform”.
Industrial muscle and political signalling
The project is about more than military capability. Around 800 French companies, the vast majority small and medium-sized firms, are expected to work on the carrier and its ecosystem. Naval bases, particularly in Toulon, are already undergoing extensive infrastructure works to accommodate the larger ship.
In strategic terms, a carrier able to cruise thousands of miles from French shores sends a message to allies and adversaries alike: Paris intends to remain a first-tier naval power, not just a regional coastguard with missiles.
US ties, budgets and the limits of comparison
On paper, Washington’s planned defence budget of around $1.5 trillion in 2027 towers above anything Europe could match. Vaujour, though, says he sees little value in direct comparison with the US colossus.
The French Navy aims instead for coherence and resilience “at its own scale”: enough munitions, robust logistics, and credible offensive and defensive punch. That includes boosting what military planners now call “lethality” across the fleet—more effective weapons, better protection and faster decision-making.
He describes his goal as a navy “respected by partners and feared by adversaries”, not one that tries to copy the US model ship for ship.
Operationally, relations between the Marine nationale and the US Navy remain strong despite periodic political flare-ups between Paris and Washington. Exercises span the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, Indo-Pacific and North Atlantic, with interoperability improving at every turn.
A global navy stretched across vast seas
France’s maritime domain is huge. Thanks to its overseas territories, it has the second-largest exclusive economic zone on the planet, touching almost every ocean. Patrolling that space with finite ships and aircraft is a constant headache.
Vaujour concedes that more hulls and airframes would always be useful, but says the answer cannot be just “more of everything”. Space-based surveillance, better data fusion and smarter deployment patterns are helping to offset the limited number of platforms.
The strain is real, though. From the Caribbean’s drug routes to the Indian Ocean’s piracy risks, demands on ships and crews keep growing. France’s navy has been seizing record quantities of narcotics at sea—some 87 tonnes in 2025 alone—highlighting how crime and security overlap on the oceans.
- North Atlantic and Arctic: tracking Russian submarines and protecting undersea infrastructure
- Mediterranean and Red Sea: missile and drone threats, migration, energy routes
- Indian Ocean: piracy, terrorism, and strategic chokepoints like Bab el-Mandeb
- Indo-Pacific: Chinese naval rise, Taiwan tensions, dense commercial traffic
- Caribbean and Atlantic approaches: drug trafficking and organised crime
Training, technology and the human factor
Behind the hardware, the admiral keeps coming back to people. Realistic training is how he plans to knit together new technologies—drones, advanced sensors, AI-assisted command systems—with old-fashioned seamanship.
Exercises such as Orion 26 in the Atlantic are designed to stress-test entire task groups, integrating allied units and simulating high-pressure combat over weeks. The idea is to push crews, expose weak spots and then iterate quickly.
The new Barracuda-class nuclear attack submarines illustrate the direction of travel. Vaujour calls them a “beast of war”, signalling a major leap in stealth, endurance and firepower over previous generations. Their real value, though, lies in how they plug into a wider network of surface ships, aircraft and intelligence sources.
Key notions shaping tomorrow’s seas
Several strategic concepts sit under the admiral’s comments and are reshaping naval thinking more broadly.
First, “hybrid warfare at sea” covers actions that fall below open conflict: tampering with undersea cables, shadowing tankers, jamming GPS or staging ambiguous drone incidents. These moves are designed to unsettle and weaken rivals without crossing clear red lines.
Second, “freedom of navigation operations” (FONOPs) are becoming routine flashpoints. When Western navies sail through contested waters such as the South China Sea or near Crimea, they are asserting an interpretation of international law that others, particularly China and Russia, dispute.
Looking ahead, naval planners expect more unmanned systems, both above and below the surface. One plausible scenario is mixed swarms: cheap drones launched by state or non-state actors to saturate defences, forcing expensive warships to expend precious missiles. Navies like France’s are already testing combinations of lasers, jammers and decoy tactics as counters.
For traders, insurers and ordinary consumers, these debates might feel abstract. Yet a brief closure of the Red Sea in recent months has sent shipping costs higher and re-routed cargoes around Africa. A serious clash in the Taiwan Strait or the North Atlantic would ripple through fuel prices, supermarket shelves and manufacturing supply chains.
This is why Vaujour insists that “our defence starts far offshore”. In his view, the frontline of European security now runs through cold, deep waters and crowded straits, where French sailors shadow Russian submarines and watch Chinese patrols, often with nobody watching—until the day something goes wrong.