[boricj]

If France were to be at war with a nation knocking on our borders, our policy nowadays is to fire a nuclear-tipped ASMPA missile as a warning shot. We do not rely on our conventional forces or anyone else to safeguard our sovereignty should it escalate to that.

Our army and arms industry have suffered heavy cuts for thirty years after the end of the Cold War, prioritizing quality over quantity, but we've kept what we call a modèle d'armée complet, or an army with a complete set of capabilities, alongside the arms industry to sustain it. Said arms industry after spending decades surviving on frugal orders is now in the process of scaling up production substantially. It takes time, but we've already tripled production of Caesar self-propelled artillery with another doubling in sight for example.

If push comes to shove, we might take some time to wake up from our slumber, but we're French. Picking a fight with the Gallic rooster is usually a bad decision.

[ptero]

I suspect the doctrine of nuke as a warning shot is less effective today when a small group can launch, either for own purposes or as a proxy for another state, a large group of drones to strike with speed and precision the targets 1000+ km away. With that threat type nuking is not an option and we are back to traditional defense. My 2c.

[boricj]

Our nuclear deterrence policy is for safeguarding our country's sovereignty and vital interests. Unless that swarm of drones threatens our continuity of the government or our ability to conduct a nuclear strike, I doubt it is worthy of a Tête nucléaire aéroportée.

Unlike any other country with nukes, we do have a last-chance warning shot option in our policy. An ASMPA missile from us means thus far and no further. It's fired from a Rafale fighter rather than a ballistic missile submarine, which means the order can be reversed at the last minute if needed and it hopefully carries the message across before the adversary's early warning systems light up like a Christmas tree with French ballistic missiles.

We do have a problem of scale with our conventional forces, which have been cut down to the bone and are stretched thin operating at capacity. Unlike the Germans, we're using our army to conduct expeditionary forces around the world and have little on hand to spare because we refuse to compromise too deeply on our long list of capabilities to fight wars and have a bad habit of not storing up enough.

It will take a long time to bulk back up, but Ukraine has been a wake-up call that is taken seriously by our policy makers.

[nradov]

No small group has the resources to launch large groups of drones with a 1000km range. Those tend to cost >$100K per unit, and require significant support infrastructure.

[ptero]

That was true 10 years ago, but is no longer true today. All components, including body, motor and electronics are a few thousand dollars and a garage-sized machine shop is very capable.

The limiting factor is the skill to put it together, but recent action in Africa and Ukraine means the number of people who can integrate those components is rapidly growing.

[tekla]

French military doctrine: We will Nuke you as a warning. If that doesn't get the message across, we will empty our nuclear arsenal until all of your miserable cities are rubble and your farmlands are glass.

[boricj]

There's a famous quote by De Gaulle from the early 1960s which basically states that France isn't worth the price of killing 80 million people over, even if you have the means of killing over 800 million French people.

Also, we don't need American ballistic missiles to do so, unlike our friends on the other side of the English Channel.

[temporarely]

The Vietnamese plucked your bird rather well if memory serves.