The French Army buys its cartridges in Israel. A parliamentary report establishes that no national factory can replace them.
The French army buys its cartridges in Israel. A 157-page parliamentary report, signed by two deputies from opposite sides, establishes that the closure of the last French ammunition factory in 1999 has made the country unable to produce what its soldiers need on a daily basis. The Jerusalem Post has recently mentioned the possibility that Israel will suspend its deliveries to France. There is no national substitute available.
Elbit Systems provides bullets for HK416
For its HK416 assault rifles, the French army sources 5.56mm cartridges from the Israeli group Elbit Systems. The choice is based on a technical reason: Israeli cartridges are considered less abrasive for the weapon barrels. The Jerusalem Post has also mentioned the possibility that Israel will suspend its deliveries to France, including these common ammunitions. Aurélien Saintoul, LFI deputy and co-rapporteur, stated that “a diplomatic tension with Tel Aviv would be enough to immediately interrupt the supply of common ammunition to the army“. No national producer can take over.
The diagnosis that nobody wanted to write
The report was made public by François Cormier-Bouligeon, Renaissance deputy, and Aurélien Saintoul, LFI deputy. Two formations that almost oppose everything on the economy, foreign policy, the role of the state. Their common diagnosis can be summed up in one sentence: decades of budget rationalization have gradually destroyed France’s military industrial autonomy. The document is 157 pages long. It does not qualify past choices as mistakes, but evaluates the consequences.
1999, 2001, 2018: three closures, a broken chain
GIAT Le Mans, the last French ammunition production factory, closed in 1999. Two years later, the arms factory in Saint-Étienne also closed. The FAMAS, made in France for decades, disappeared from the army without the question of its industrial replacement ever being raised. The German Heckler & Koch’s HK416 replaced it. In 2018, Manurhin, the French specialist in machines for making cartridges, was sold to a foreign group.
These three decisions span twenty years. They follow the same logic: in each decision, immediate operating costs were prioritized over future dependency issues. The cost difference between producing in France and importing was real, measurable, and defensible in an ordinary budget management logic. This is what the report hints at: this decision had a price, and that price is being paid today in real military capability.
From Washington to Tel Aviv, high-level dependencies
The 5.56mm cartridges are not the only point of fragility. The steam catapults on the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier are supplied by the American General Atomics. Those on the future aircraft carrier, named La France Libre, will be electromagnetic and also supplied by the same American contractor. Two generations of aircraft carriers, one foreign supplier for the aircraft launch system.
France has decided to replace its fleet of AWACS, Boeing 707s adapted for service since 1991, with Swedish aircraft. The American supplier is excluded. No national capacity is being rebuilt. The report also identifies dependencies on rocket launcher systems and certain onboard equipment. These high-level technological dependencies almost all converge towards Washington.
Buy sovereign, maintain under supervision
Purchasing a foreign weapon system creates a dependency that does not stop at delivery. To maintain equipment in operational condition, three conditions are necessary: access to spare parts, access to proprietary technical data, availability of local industrial skills. In many cases, one or more of these elements remain under the control of the supplying country.
The service life of a modern military system often exceeds thirty years. The rapporteurs put it this way: a country can buy sovereign and maintain it under foreign supervision. Each technical revision, software update, component replacement extends and deepens the initial dependency. This is what they refer to as the blind spot in public debate.
24.5 billion, but no shortcut on time
When he was Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu announced 8.5 billion euros additionally dedicated to rebuilding a national ammunition industry, in addition to the 16 billion already included in the military programming law. The “France Munitions” project aims to relocate the production of bullets, powders, and primers to the national territory.
Cormier-Bouligeon and Saintoul do not contest the effort. Training operators, rebuilding production lines, qualifying powders: each of these steps takes years. If a conflict demanded a rapid escalation of French forces today, the national production of ammunition would not be able to meet the demand.
