The 2023 balance sheet for French defense equipment exports confirms a 10-year-old rule: there are no good annual results without Dassault Aviation's Rafale fighter jet. Orders received amounted to €8.2 billion, according to the Ministry of the Armed Forces' annual report to Parliament for 2024, published by news website Mediapart. This is sharply down from 2022 (€26.9 billion) when the United Arab Emirates (UAE) placed an order for 80 Rafales (€16.9 billion) and down in 2021 (€11.7 billion).
The team around Sébastien Lecornu, the resigning Minister of the Armed Forces, announced on Wednesday, September 4 that the document will be made public "outside the current business period." In its introduction, it noted that after an exceptional year due to the Emirati contract, 2023 is "more balanced." This downturn comes at a time when military spending worldwide recorded its biggest increase in a decade in 2023. Ongoing conflicts, including that in Ukraine, and rising tensions (Middle East, Taiwan) propelled them to $2,443 billion (€2,200 billion), or +6.8% in real terms, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
The year 2023 saw Indonesia place an order for 18 Rafales (for €2.6 billion) and the signing of several contracts worth over €200 million: Caesar cannons from KNDS-Nexter for Lithuania, three corvettes from Normandy-based CMN for Angola, four Patroller tactical UAVs and their ground control center manufactured by Safran for Greece. In descending order, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, India, Angola and Ukraine were the biggest customers for the French defense industrial and technological base.
The government expects a much better 2024 performance boosted by several major contracts: Rafales, with the 12 aircraft for Serbia, announced during Emmanuel Macron's trip to Belgrade, and the 18 Marine version units destined for India, confirmation of which is expected at the end of the year; and the four Barracuda-class submarines that Naval Group will build in Cherbourg for the Netherlands if the contract is finally signed in the coming months.
In the view of the Ministry of the Armed Forces, the focus should be on export momentum. "While 2023 may seem relatively modest in terms of order intake, this does not correspond to an underlying trend," said the report. The evolution of our exports needs to be assessed over longer time scales as annual results fluctuate widely depending on the number and value of major contracts that come into force during the year." This is particularly true of the Rafale, where exports only began in 2015, 11 years after the naval version entered service.
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