10/11/2011 During a recent visit to Paris, Second Line of Defense sat down with Vice Admiral (Retired) Richard Wilmot-Roussel, now the naval advisor to the head of Dassault Aviation. The Vice Admiral has had a wide-ranging naval career, including being the first Commander of the French Aircraft carrier, the Charles De Gaulle.
SLD: As the first commander of the De Gaulle, you must have been proud of its role in the Libyan operation.
Wilmot-Roussel: I was. And De Gaulle has had a couple of important impacts.
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First, by being closer to the strike zone, you can have much shorter time and more times for an attack by the combat aircraft. My French Air Force colleagues needed 6-7 hours to reach their targets; from the De Gaulle one was doing this in one to two hours. This creates a more cost effective solution.
Second, from a psychologically point in such operations, the close proximity of the air crews and pilots on the carrier creates a difference. For the Air Force pilot, land based he can operate in a civilian-military setting. There is no such luxury on the carrier. You live, breath and eat 24/7 air operations with the team that will do the air operations.
As one French Chief of Naval Operations commented about the role of the French carrier in an earlier operation: “I was impressed by the difference of the people who were on board the aircraft carrier who were totally concerned by the mission, even when they are not flying, and