The most recent conflicts show increased willingness to resort to violence and the multiplication of actors and forms of confrontation involving states. With Russia’s Black Sea Fleet undergoing slow but real attrition, and the world’s shipping giants shunning the Red Sea at times because of Iran’s growing threat from armed Houthi rebels, the naval dimension of these conflicts is in the spotlight. Naval rearmament, rapid development and proliferation of anti-ship weapons, at a time of rising tensions between the major powers, pose a growing threat to the world’s seas.
In this context, the “Marine 2040” observatory led by the Mediterranean Foundation for Strategic Studies (FMES) questioned the return of high-intensity combat at sea and the risk that the French Navy will face it in the next 20 years. This risk is real.
Characteristics of the maritime environment favorable to high intensity combat
The risk of high-intensity combat for naval forces is of course associated with the characteristics of the maritime environment and the missions they conduct there.
The sea and oceans are inherently complex spaces, where the threat can emerge from all directions and all three dimensions, above the surface or from the depths. As soon as it leaves port, a naval force must therefore deal with various levels and forms of aggression that could impede the accomplishment of its many missions: protection of sea routes, resources, projection and support of land operations, disruption of strategic supplies of adversaries… Its missions can quickly place our ships in a situation of confrontation in increasingly accessible and coveted spaces, therefore increasingly contested.
Moreover, strikes at sea are politically less risky and therefore tempting: the opponent is not hit at home and the risk of escalation is better controlled there, especially as the media and social networks are absent or very controlled at sea; in spite of the violence, the casualties are more modest than a land strike and the risks of collateral damage are less severe. The context thus favors the attacking party even though technological change gives the sword over the armor the advantage now and for a while.
Naval Rearmament Witnesses Heightened State-to-State Competition
In geopolitical terms, France’s main strategic competitors are continuing an already-begun shift toward maritime power politics. Russia and China have already been joined by other credible challengers, such as Turkey and India. The list of potential competitors is expected to grow as the proliferation of disruptive weapons and the rise of second-tier navies in a global naval re-armament movement.
As such, the war in Ukraine is instructive and a harbinger of future naval conflicts. Russian naval forces have been called upon in every field of service provided by a modern navy: deploying 6 SNLEs, threatening Ukrainian exports, or using naval platforms to fire cruise missiles. However, they have suffered setbacks at the Ukrainian side, which has used denial-of-access weapons, armed drones and mines. This lesson is likely to have been learned by Russia, which is waking up to its weaknesses. Over time, and within its means, it will likely prioritize nuclear deterrence, disruptive technologies, robotization, and the equipping of its ships with long-range cruise missiles.
China’s focus on controlling global maritime trade routes and the Belt and Road Initiative has led to a push by the People’s Liberation Army-Marine (PLA-M) to modernize China’s armed forces. China’s new maritime strategy calls for it to be able to intervene globally by 2050. Originally a coastal force in 1950, the PLA-M now has more ships than the United States Navy.
But it is not just the world’s major powers that can implement maritime strategies that will bring conflict in the future. Turkey, for example, has undergone a major strategic shift, moving from its former “sea-based” doctrine to the “land-based” and “Asia-Minor” pan-Turkism.” The exponential growth of such navies, the increasing capability to act anti-ships from land, and a technological race to the benefit not only of industrially less advanced states, but also of non-state actors (the Houthis in the Red Sea are a case in point), will progressively reduce the capability superiority of the major Western navies.
Technological innovations that promote the use of lethal weapons
Indeed, this quantitative rearmament, which is easy to see, will also be qualitative.
By the end of 20 years, most countries will have improved the capabilities of their navies with multi-purpose units incorporating new technologies and increased their activities at sea. The risk to ocean navies will not come solely from the sea, with denial of access to ever-larger maritime spaces operable from land. Complex weapons will have proliferated, and many technologically advanced countries, if threatened or ideologically driven, may pose a serious threat far from their shores. Recent events in the Red Sea are already a case in point. Increasing arms autonomy will make it possible to carry out unjustifiable actions more widely than in the past, in all the seas of the Globe. This reduces the risk of retaliation and thus encourages the use of violence. The absence of a crew will also lower the level of risk and therefore the threshold of engagement: reduced risk of loss of life for the attacker using a drone; high risk of escalation for the attacked vessel having to consider retaliatory strikes on land that present a risk of uncontrolled escalation.
But many other technology-driven factors will also drive the use of weapons: the low financial and logistical cost of directed-energy weapons, which will emerge and then spread to the naval sector; easier identification of potential targets, with long-range surveillance systems or, possibly, quantum sensors that can more easily detect submarines; and high velocity, which poses a real challenge to defense systems or swarms of drones that could saturate them.
The increase in conflict will also come from the technological conquest of new areas: the seabed is a new area of confrontation between states, of which the Baltic Sea provides many examples. The proliferation of submarine systems, combined with developments in artificial intelligence, sensor performance, and endurance of vectors able to operate from or on the seabed, is a growing threat to naval forces and underwater infrastructure and resources.
Hybrid modes of action will precede or complement violent action: in the cyber space, where data becomes essential as a factor of operational effectiveness every year; by engaging third parties, including proxies whose nature and scale of actions are as uncertain as they are unpredictable.
New Geopolitical Risks from Climate Change Consequences
Global warming causes sea temperatures to rise, causing ice to melt and, more important, causing sea levels to rise by expansion. Their physico-chemical characteristics also change, with salinity and acidity increasing. These four phenomena will, in the coming decades, bring about major strategic changes and changes in the conditions of use of naval systems.
The melting ice is already opening up the Arctic space linking the Atlantic to Asia by providing a much shorter alternative to the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean straits. China, which calls itself a “near-Arctic state” and has observer status in the Arctic Council, is expanding its activities in the region. The “Polar Silk Road” connects China to Europe. It is strengthening its maritime capabilities in the region, including building new icebreakers to service Arctic shipping routes. Russia, meanwhile, is investing more heavily in the Far North, taking advantage of climate change. It considers this region to be vital for its security and economic development. It has established a new Joint Strategic Command of the North, modernized and expanded its military capabilities in the Arctic, invested in equipment capable of withstanding extreme temperatures, and expanded its military activities in the region. This makes it easier for China to shift its hydrocarbon exports to Asia.
The rise in sea levels, estimated in some scenarios to be 30 cm by 2050, will lead to more frequent and sometimes permanent submersions, with the result that migratory phenomena will increase and the baselines used to delimit maritime areas will be called into question. Migratory phenomena will also be favored by the disappearance of drinking water on many islands, and by the migration of fish species essential to the life of coastal populations. The struggle for these resources will be heightened.
Extreme weather events will lead to an increase in the number of people-assistance operations carried out by maritime forces, which will mechanically mobilize more resources.
The French Navy on the Front Line
These global perspectives are of course of interest to all navies. But France’s unique position means that its navy will likely be particularly exposed to high-intensity risk, probably more so than its EU partner navies.
A proactive foreign policy and numerous international commitments
First, France has an active foreign policy. Claiming to act on international crises while seeking to promote peace and stability, it sometimes alienates stakeholders at the risk of becoming a high-profile target. France faces resentment in some former colonies, fueled by major competitor countries, and by a growing global North-South divide.
France is also involved in numerous international agreements and alliances, which can drag it into conflict. As a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU), it may have to provide assistance to another member country if it is attacked. So it will be involved in any direct confrontation with Russia; it is already in contact with Russian forces in the Mediterranean, as it was during the Cold War over many seas and oceans. It also maintains military and strategic partnerships with other countries, which can put it on the front lines to defend the interests of its allies, especially vis-à-vis China and Turkey. In naval operations, the strategic partnership with Greece, or the defense arrangement with the United Arab Emirates, would probably entail significant naval commitments were they to be activated.
Attrition worsened by evolving terrorism and hybrid threats
In addition to the “historic” terrorist threat that will remain and grow more dangerous with access to higher-tech weapons, shifts in global conflict have increased the risk of proxies, criminal gangs, and failed states being used in hybrid strategies. But these hybrid strategies do not mean the absence of violent confrontations, such as the threat posed by the Iran-backed Houthis to parts of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Several theaters of operation in which the Navy is present or will have to engage are subject to this risk, against which defensive arrangements will be necessary. These are of the same order as those required to deal with high intensity military actions.
A French singularity: DROM-COM: French overseas departments and territories
Lastly, French territory covers five ‘overseas departments and regions’ (Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Réunion and Mayotte), five ‘overseas communities’ (Wallis and Futuna, French Polynesia, Saint-Martin, Saint Barthélemy and Saint-Pierre and Miquelon), plus two specific communities (New Caledonia and the French Southern and Antarctic Lands) and finally the island of Clipperton administered directly by the government. France is therefore present on all oceans except the Arctic Ocean. Much of the world’s current and future conflict can affect sovereignty and cause it, beyond its international responsibilities, to become involved in pursuing its own interests. Poor in fossil-fuel resources, limited in their food-production capacity, and dependent on (now fragile and limited) connectivity to global data via submarine cables, DROM-COM’s common feature is a heavy strategic dependence on supplies by sea. This dependency requires the continued flow of supplies. In the event of tension, these areas, as well as their immense maritime spaces and the roads linking them to the metropolis, which are up to 16,000 kilometers long, will have to be protected from threats that can lead to high-intensity fighting. It will be tempting for an adversary to force France to blackmail, retaliate, blockade, appropriate EEZ resources, or to pledge territory to it. Moreover, the means to protect the 10 million square kilometers are so far woefully inadequate.
Conclusion
There is an old saying that history is unpredictable, but the French Navy should be preparing for several types of realistic scenarios for future interventions, in addition to standing missions that include, not least, nuclear deterrence. Faced with major competitors, it must be prepared to fight alongside its main allies in its priority areas of action and interest, some of which are very far from the mainland. But, to advance its own national interests, it will also have to be able to confront foes on its own, and none of them should be neglected.
