Space

France and Military Space Projects

The treaty aimed at regulating the activities of States in the fields of exploration and use of extra-atmospheric space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, opened to signing on January 27th, 1967, constitutes the general framework of space law. Indeed, space has gone through a phase of passive militarization, playing a stabilizing role, contributing among other things to the verification of treaties on armament control. Since the 1980s, space systems have become an integral part of the capacity arsenal of nuclear and space powers.

In the event of a major crisis, the use of space to limit and control the ability to implement adverse C3ISR systems will be a decisive factor. is mastery will entail both the destruction or neutralization of space segments and the intrusion in communications.

The aerospace environment will remain a crucial power issue (technological, industrial, economic, defence, etc.). A major political tool that enables reaching simultaneously or successively, with appropriate effects, the essential components of a State or organization, and bringing forces the necessary scope and a global strategic coverage, aerospace power will continue to play a stabilizing role.

The development of permanent aerial vehicles (in-flight refuelling, autonomy, long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicles, etc.) leads to a reconsideration of the concepts of aerial presence, which should be seen as an element of diplomacy. This offer of permanence will meet a growing need for surveillance (security demands, prevention, complexity of situations, accelerating pace of engagements) for which the aerospace environment, thanks to its privileged location, may provide global answers (drones, satellites, ISTAR platforms).

A necessary prior condition to all inter-army operations, mastery of the third dimension is crucial to have the freedom of action required for maintaining national sovereignty and engaging forces from all three components.

The aerospace environment will also become, in the context of a growing need for global security, a major protection issue. Securing a naturally interstitial environment will require means in sufficient quality and quantity: vehicles, means of detection and control and command chains updated to accommodate new challenges.

From this perspective, proliferation of ballistic vehicles or cruise missiles, potentially bearing weapons of mass destruction, will need to be specifically taken into account, leading to consider in priority the need for advanced alert systems (surveillance, alert, aggressor identification).

The possibilities and problems presented by aerial and space environments are largely similar. The modes of action and the architecture of systems of the former also apply to the latter, notably in the fields of surveillance, detection and alert.

Space activities will be increasingly risky: problems with debris, vulnerability of space segments, freedom of circulation of information flows, growing economic interests, development of activities to potentially unfriendly - even hostile - ends. Protection of the interests of space powers in this field is a fundamental trend which primarily involves the preservation of freedom of access and action, in turn requiring surveillance of space activities.

Arsenalization of space would deeply alter the approach to this environment and the capacities required to maintain the necessary freedom of action.