France to increase defense spending by $42 billion, mulls new tank effort

MILAN — France today announced a €36 billion ($42 billion) boost to its defense budget for the next four years as part of an updated military planning law, while also mulling the development of a new, stopgap, main battle tank. 

The revised bill, presented on April 8 by the French Armed Forces Minister Catherine Vautrin, earmarks €63.3 billion ($74 billion) for defense in 2027, a figure that has doubled over the last ten years. It also projects that the country’s total defense spending will reach €76.3 billion ($89.1 billion) by the end of the decade. 

This increase, although significant, will only amount to roughly 2.6 percent of France’s GDP — below the pledge made last year by member-states at the NATO summit to allocate at least 3.5 percent annually by 2035. The amounts will also be subject to annual approval by the French Parliament.

Among the priorities listed by Vautrin is the possible development of a new “intermediate” tank to fill a capability gap, as current Leclerc tanks are aging and the Franco-German Main Ground Combat System (MGCS) project remains years away.

“Our current Leclerc tanks will last until 2040 — the MGCS project will take about a decade…We need an interim tank, that is likely going to be a KNDS Germany or KNDS France platform, which hasn’t yet been decided at this time, with a French-designed turret,” Vautrin said during the press conference today. KNDS is a joint venture between Germany’s Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and France’s Nexter.

Identification of the firm as a potential contractor followed rival Rheinmetall’s display of a “Concept Unmanned Turret” (CUT) for its Panther KF51 main battle tank in 2024. At the time, the German firm framed the rollout as an “additional medium-term solution” should MGCS drag out too long.

Paris will further spend €3.9 billion to bolster its surveillance and communication capabilities in the space sector during this period. 

While personnel targets are not a core focus of the updated military bill, Vautrin said the country envisions having 50,000 reservists by 2030, bringing the total to 330,000 trained forces by the end of the decade, including the current 275,000 active and civilian military personnel.

Vautrin stated that other modernization efforts will focus on expanding France’s drone fleet across multiple types and on deep-strike capability, which she qualified as the ability to reach targets over 2,500 kilometres away. 

The updated military planning law will allocate €8.5 billion for the procurement of drones and missiles over the 2026-2030 period. Vautrin explained that the drones of interest range from basic first-person-view models — of which France previously ordered 10,000, with half expected to be delivered by 2026 — to larger, more advanced systems. 

In parallel, the country also plans to dedicate an additional €1.6 billion for anti-drone systems, including “jamming rifles to truck-mounted cannons with laser-guided rockets,” according to Vautrin. 

In a separate but related development, the French procurement agency launched today a new tender inviting companies to test their drone interceptors. The notice, published by the Tenders Electronic Daily, the European Union’s portal for procurement listings, highlighted that current counter-drone technologies are insufficient, too expensive, and not adapted to future threats. The class of targets to be intercepted is drones weighing over 100 kilograms and flying at speeds of up to 600 km/h.