General Thierry Burkhard had not spoken in public since the autumn of 2021. The chief of the French armed forces spoke on Friday, July 11, during a very rare press conference, broadcast live on television before a room full of journalists, to present what he described as an "overview of threats" facing France since the start of the war in Ukraine.

This unprecedented exercise was explicitly requested by French President Emmanuel Macron during his visit to London, where Burkhard accompanied him. The aim was to prepare the ground for the president's upcoming announcements regarding the military budget, scheduled for the Sunday evening, on the eve of the Bastille Day parade, and described as "major" by the Elysée.

While the military programming law, passed in 2023, provides for some €400 billion for defense between now and 2030 – a record amount – this budget is already proving too small to meet the needs of the armed forces. This increasingly criticized budgetary drift is causing concern within the institution, compounded at the end of June by the Trump administration's injunction to NATO allies to devote at least 3.5% of their GDP to their respective defense budgets by 2035. This target could mean an additional expenditure of tens of billions of euros for France, whose military spending is currently capped at 2% of GDP.

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