By Pierre Tran
Paris – France achieved near record breaking arms export orders in 2024. France won in 2024 export arms orders worth €21.6 billion ($25.1 billion), up from €8.2 billion in 2023, the annual report of the armed forces ministry to parliament said, marking the second-highest value of foreign deals for French weapons and services in a year.
France hit its record high in weapon exports in 2022 with contracts worth €26.9 billion, buoyed by the United Arab Emirates’s €16.9 billion order for 80 Rafale and related weapons.
Indonesia and Serbia ordered the Rafale fighter jet, while the Netherlands signed for a conventional version of the Barracuda submarine, boosting the value of French exports.
The fighter deal with Jakarta was worth €3.6 billion, Belgrade’s contract was worth €2.7 billion, and Amsterdam will pay €5.9 billion for its four-strong fleet of diesel-electric boats, dubbed the Orka class of submarines based on the Blacksword Barracuda.
Besides the big ticket items, there was a growing portion of foreign sales for deals worth less than €200 million, the 139 page report said.
Moscow’s military needs in Ukraine, Western sanctions, and concern over Russia’s perceived ambitions may have underpinned the switch by Croatia, Indonesia, and Serbia away from Russian MiG and Sukhoi fighters, and their pick of a French war plane for the first time.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute ranks France as the second arms exporter in 2020-24, with 9.6 pct of the world market, while the U.S. leads with 43 pct. Russia fell to third position, with 7.8 pct market share, down 64 percent from its 21 pct in 2015-19, SIPRI said.
There have also been almost arms deals, one which were pursued but never sealed.
Interest could be seen in the French offer of the Barracuda boat to Australia with the Sept. 5 publication of Atomisé (Editions La Route de la Soie), which carried a subtitle which said “How the United States Sank Australian Sovereignty…and a Strategic Contract for France.”
The book was the French edition of Nuked, a book by Australian journalist Andrew Fowler, published last year by Melbourne University Press.
Australia ordered French military kit worth €56 million last year compared to €17.19 million in 2023, the 2025 official report said.
France Lives In Interesting Times
It remains to be seen whether domestic turmoil and fiscal distress will hurt French exports, which the official report says helps sustain the arms industry and jobs around the country.
A political choice of ally may be a factor for client nations, alongside financial, industrial, and operational terms.
Embassy staff here may have been reporting to their ministries at home how President Emmanuel Macron has rejected opposition calls to resign, and hold early elections. He has insisted on holding on to his post as head of state and commander in chief while a center-right administration led by prime minister Sebastien Lecornu seeks support from a severely split parliament. Lecornu was previously armed forces minister.
Macron appointed Sept. 9 Lecornu as prime minister, and the latter resigned after just 27 days at Matignon, unable to gain backing from the conservative party, Les Républicains.
Lecornu’s resignation pointed up an internal party dispute, sparked by the appointment of Bruno Le Maire as armed forces minister.
Le Maire was seen as having driven up the national debt when he was finance minister. He served one day at Brienne House, the office of armed forces minister, before resigning, such was the resistance to his appointment.
Lecornu agreed Oct. 10 to take up the Matignon mantle again at Macron’s request, and the prime minister survived two parliamentary motions aimed at forcing his resignation.
Lecornu appointed two days later Catherine Vautrin as armed forces minister, with Alice Rufo as the junior minister. Vautrin was labor minister in the administration led by the previous prime minister, François Bayrou.
French media have reported Rufo as a safe pair of hands. She was head of the Direction Générale des Relations Internationales et de la Stratégie, a high-level government think tank, and previously worked as diplomatic adviser at the Elysée president’s office.
In the troubled times, Lecornu said Oct. 13 in his farewell letter to the services Macron had said in his July 13 speech there was a fresh effort to relaunch a French rearmament.
“This is indispensable,” Lecornu said, adding he would ensure the pledge was respected.
Macron had said €3.5 billion would be added to 2026 military spending, on top of a planned rise of €3.2 billion. Those increases would boost the 2026 defense budget to €57.2 billion, up 13.2 pct from the 2025 budget of €50.5 billion.
Meanwhile, Lecornu seeks to cut the 2026 national deficit to 4.7 pct from 5.4 pct of gross domestic product this year, to bring the gap down to less than three pct, as set by the European Union.
But there is little political agreement on how to slash public spending and raise income to meet that fiscal imperative.
Deals In The Pipeline
India ordered this year a naval version of the Rafale for its two-strong carrier fleet for the first time. That order for 26 French fighters was worth some 630 billion rupees (€6.2 billion, $7.2 billion), the Indian government said in an April 29 statement.
New Delhi is looking to order a further 114 fighters to update its air force fleet, and DW, the German news agency, has reported that deal might be split between French and Russian jets.
Boeing, Dassault Aviation, Eurofighter, Lockheed Martin, Saab, and United Aircraft Corporation – the Russian builder of the Sukhoi – are in close pursuit of that order, Reuters reported. President Donald Trump has said the U.S. would one day offer the F-35 stealth fighter to New Delhi.
Washington’s 50 pct tariff on Indian goods have strained relations with New Delhi, with half that tax linked to India’s import of Russian oil, which helps sustain the Russian economy.
India has long flown a split fleet of Russian and French fighters, along with the aging Anglo-French Jaguar fighter, reflecting its history as a non-aligned nation in the Cold War.
Canada, Poland Seek Submarines
Canada said Aug. 26 it had placed a German company, ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, and a South Korean shipbuilder, Hanwha Ocean, on a short list in its competition for 12 conventional submarines.
Ottawa’s patrol submarine project aims to replace a four-strong fleet of Victoria class boats, and secure the Arctic waters of the High North, and the Pacific, where Russian and Chinese fleets are seen as growing threats.
Germany and Norway, which have ordered the same TKMS submarine in a joint order, teamed up to make a pooled pitch to Canada.
Canada’s selection of TKMS and Hanwha was seen as a blow for the French company Naval Group, which had offered its diesel-electric Blacksword Barracuda boat.
Saab pitched its C71 Expeditionary submarine, which was also left by the wayside.
Canada said it received 25 responses for its request for information on the submarine tender.
Meanwhile, Poland is holding a tender for three conventional submarines for its Orka project, and Warsaw has reportedly sent out requests for information to submarine builders in France, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Spain, and Sweden.
Naval Group said Sept. 3 it had signed an industrial cooperation agreement with the Polish defense group PGZ, with a focus on building submarines and other “highly specialized vessels.” That agreement marked a “significant milestone in the strategic relationship” between the two companies, the French shipbuilder said in a statement.
Fincantieri and Saab separately signed a memorandum of understanding with PGZ, also in September, seeking to win an award of the Orka project.
Warsaw is expected to place an order for the Orka boats by the end of the year.
India might drop a plan to order three more French Scorpene conventional submarines, switching to build six boats designed by German shipbuilder TKMS, Indian media reported. That project for six submarines, dubbed project-75 India, was reported to be worth $5 billion.
The three French-designed boats would add to the six-strong Scorpene fleet operated by the Indian navy, if that deal with Naval Group went ahead.
Weapons for Ukraine
France sold weapons worth a total €5.9 billion to Ukraine as “military support” between Feb. 24, 2022 to Dec. 31, 2024, the 2025 report said. Paris provided funding which should rise to €2.3 billion, or 18 pct, of the European Peace Facility, an E.U. fund to supply military kit.
Orders for aircraft, effectively the Rafale contracts, made up some 43 pct of exports last year, followed by naval deals with 33 pct, and land weapons with 15 pct, the report said. Radar and communications systems accounted for five pct, while missiles were four pct.
Sales to E.U. member states rose to some 41 pct in 2024, almost double the 21 pct in 2022, the report said. That reflected the rise in the average annual value of deals with E.U. states to 23 pct in 2015-2024, up from 10 pct in 2012-2021.
Asia accounted for some 23 pct of orders last year, compared to 42 pct in 2023, the report said, while orders from the Middle East remained stable at some 11 pct.
A Two Report Mystery
There appear to be two electronic versions of the report to parliament, with one version carrying the traditional introduction from the armed forces minister of the day. That version carries a bold notation ARMM2522716X on its cover, above pictures of a submarine, Rafale, and Caesar truck-mounted cannon.
The other electronic version has a blank page in place of the minister’s introduction.
“Since 1988, the armed forces ministry gives an account each year of French arms exports with a public report,” Lecornu, the then minister, said in his introduction.
Orders from European allies accounted for almost 60 pct of the 2024 foreign arms deals, he said in his note, which appears on page three, which bears his formal portrait.
The armed forces ministry website carries the version of the report without the ministerial comment. That version carries an unsigned summary, with the European 60 percent share tucked away in brackets – almost an afterthought – at the end of the last paragraph.
Mediapart, a website, said Sept 4 it had obtained the report, and reported the contents, highlighting an increase in sales to Israel. French arms deals to Jerusalem have stirred controversy, with non-governmental organizations calling for suspension of deliveries.
That media reporting stands in contrast to the press conferences previously held by senior press officers of the defense and foreign ministries presenting the report, with copies of the document made available to reporters.
The Disclose website has reported shipment of French equipment used by Israeli forces in Gaza, with an Oct. 17 report of a French company, Sermat, expected to send three days later electric alternators for the Hermes 900 drone, widely used by Israeli services in Gaza.
Disclose published the 2022 export report on its website, placing it in the public domain before the French authorities.
The 2025 report made the point that France exercised a specific audit of deals with Israel to ensure weapons were not shipped, but components for equipment for defensive use or re-exported to another client nation were permitted.