As Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky visited Paris last Monday, France’s prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, promised deeper military integration between the two countries — including an agreement by Kyiv to buy one hundred combat planes from flagship French defense company Dassault Aviation.
France is the world’s second-largest weapons exporter. In March, its then–economy minister Éric Lombard called for a war economy. He wasn’t the only one. “If our country isn’t ready to accept to lose its children” in a war against Russia, it “will falter,” France’s chief of defense staff Fabien Mandon said in a speech last Thursday. As France’s war mobilization ramps up, more companies and their workers are being drawn into arms production — like it or not.
Lecornu, who as Emmanuel Macron’s armed forces minister from 2022 to 2025 helped shepherd a stock-market boom for French weapons companies, used the meeting with Zelensky to show off France’s capacity for drone production. The visit was an opportunity to send a clear signal that France aims to ramp up its offensive-drone capabilities.
“By 2029, 2030 we won’t have caught up, but [our goal] is to make a generational technological leap so we’re at the cutting edge and will be able to conquer a number of markets,” Lecornu said earlier this year when he was still armed forces minister.
Crucial to his plan is leaning on France’s homegrown technological capabilities, industrial capacity, and highly educated technical workforce.
Even companies not traditionally known for involvement in weapons production are being drafted into this effort. Over the summer, Lecornu ordered an accounting of France’s entire stock of 3D printers, ready to be requisitioned at a moment’s notice if needed for national defense.
After Lecornu’s announcement in June that a French company would be building drones in Ukraine, Franceinfo reported that Renault was the firm concerned.
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Auteur: Marlon Ettinger
