A Carrier At Any Cost? Thoughts on Planned Franco-German Carrier

One of the most potent military symbols of national power and sovereignty is the aircraft carrier. Its ability to embark an airwing and sail globally with the ability to deploy strike aircraft at will is a significant statement of military power and reach.

While the days of many nations operating carrier fleets have drawn to a close, as the last of the WW2 vintage Royal Navy designed ‘COLLOSUS and MAJESTIC’ class that served across so many nations for nearly 70 years in one form or another have paid off, there are still a number of carrier operating nations out there.

France is the operator of the sole nuclear powered aircraft carrier in the world outside of the USA, and while the Charles De Gaulle (CDG) represents in many ways a compromised and slightly uncomfortable design (due in part to the insistence on nuclear power), she has given the French Navy many years of valuable service. As she enters middle age, discussions are now afoot as to whether the successor could enter service as a Franco-German carrier as a visible symbol of the deepening relationship between the two nations.

The Royal Navy has a long history of defending CHARLES DE GAULLE

- Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

Work is already underway to develop a Franco-German fighter jet to enter service in the 2040 timeframe, presumably to replace Rafale and legacy German aircraft. This timeline works well with developing a carrier enabled successor to the Rafale jet, and also fits into the tentative plans to replace the CDG too. The logical evolution then is to look at whether both nations could jointly operate an aircraft carrier as well. 

The suggestion of a European aircraft carrier is not new, there have been occasional proposals over the years, usually involving some kind of physical split where one nation provides the ship, the other provides the airwing. But they have never really developed into a credible plan. It is interesting then to note proposals to build a carrier have now been endorsed by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Is it a viable plan though, or are multi-national carriers perhaps a step too far for most nations? In theory the plan would probably involve building a ship and then either jointly crewing it, or providing a squadron for the airwing. But even working through this basic idea raises a number of issues that may prove insurmountable.

For starters, even the manner of the propulsion is likely to prove controversial, with Germany being unlikely to want to participate in any nuclear-powered carrier programme. The French though may well wish to see this held out as an option in order to safeguard the domestic French nuclear industry and also ensure a consistent naval construction programme maintains capacity and skills, particularly if there a pause in SSBN or SSN construction work.

While nuclear carriers do add a degree of flexibility, there are severe constraints about where they can dock, and many nations do not instinctively welcome their presence. It is hard to imagine that a nuclear-powered carrier, even if partly paid for by the German Government, would be welcome in German ports without regular environmental protests.

There are issues with how the ship would operate on a practical level – would it be a mixed crew or a purely national crew? While it would make sense for the French to perhaps crew the vessel, given their substantially longer experience of operating carriers, how do you manage the divide between the operation of the ship and the airwing and still respect national differences?

In practical terms there would probably need to be some kind of shared IT network on board which could also work with both French and German national IT systems. This may sound a trivial point, but countries are very protective of their Defence IT infrastructure for good reasons, and sharing access to it, except in very tightly controlled circumstances is unusual. Coming up with a practical solution that permits mission planning and safe ship operation, while still respecting national caveats and differences could prove immensely difficult.

The issue of permissions and willingness to employ the vessel too is also likely to prove a challenge. Launching an air strike is not as simple as just taking off and dropping a bomb on the target – there are a huge range of legal, policy and political implications that have to be considered. When you want to launch an airstrike from a foreign airbase, then the host nation usually gets a vote, or at the very least a strong voice, too.

The challenge when operating a jointly owned ship is working out the legality of an operation if one nation disagrees with it. For example, if the vessel was deployed off the coast of Africa, and the French government wanted to launch an airstrike on rebels attacking French and coalition troops, what would happen if the German Government felt it was not appropriate, or possible for some reason to support this?

If for instance there were subtly different rules of engagement, or the German Government did not want its personnel involved in the conflict – would they count as assisting the strike if German crew prepared the ship and aircraft for action, and would they be complicit if they were on watch enabling the ship to launch/recover aircraft during the attack?

On a more practical level, what happens during a joint task group deployment of French and German vessels if Germany provides a replenishment ship, but due to different national policy positions, is unable to provide stores or support to the carrier if it is going to engage in French led military action?

This may sound somewhat theoretical, but it highlights the challenge of joint ownership of military assets. It is fine when everyone agrees, but the moment national policies differ, or caveats are put in place to cover specific situations, the things get very complicated. One of the biggest challenges in Afghanistan was arguably being able to successfully prosecute operations with multi-national contributors when each nation had subtly different permission and caveats on what their troops could do.

There is also a wider issue of how would the thorny problem of tactical nuclear weapons being embarked be handled? The Rafale is a nuclear capable aircraft and the CDG can store French nuclear weapons. It is likely that any successor carrier would need to have similar capabilities too. Would the French Government be content operating such a capability on a joint platform, which is a very different proposition to the ‘dual key’ arrangements that German Air Force tactical nuclear forces work under?

Likewise would German politicians and protest groups want to see the German military pay for, own and embarked on a vessel capable of launching a nuclear strike, and would this present serious legal or constitutional issues for both countries? It is possible that this sort of issue could pose real questions and challenges for both nations.

The final area where issues may arise is ‘who decides what to do with the carrier’? working out a programme that meets the needs of both nations is likely to be a challenge – what happens if the French proposed a global deployment, which the Germans felt they could not commit their military for political or financial reasons? Would the ship sail as a purely French vessel, and how would this work if Berlin decided to call on its services in the event of a crisis closer to home? Who decides what happens if both nations have different demands on the ship and its capabilities?

The reality is jointly owning a vessel is a difficult balancing act of trying to take into account different national policies and approaches and trying to develop a compromise that probably suits no one.

A more practical outcome is probably to adopt the approach used by the US and UK with operating onboard the QUEEN ELIZABETH. Here there are plans afoot to integrate a squadron of USMC F35s and personnel onboard on a very regular basis, in order to both increase the effectiveness of the vessel, but also ensure the presence of US and UK forces in the same operational theatre.

The reason the US and UK systems work is that arguably not only are both militaries closely integrated and work in the same language (albeit with minor corruptions from the former Colonials), but they benefit from the economy of scale. In the event of a genuine difference of opinion, it would be relatively easy to discretely offload a US squadron from a UK vessel to prevent any policy challenges, and instead host it elsewhere. In these circumstances additional UK airframes could embark to make up the capability gap.

By contrast the Franco-German initiative suffers from a lack of resources to do this – there is likely to only be one carrier available, so if there is a disagreement it could have a serious impact on the ability of the carrier to deploy or do its job.

Given these challenges it is perhaps worth reflecting on just how difficult it is to operate a joint carrier, and how many challenges need to be overcome to do so. It perhaps makes you want to pause and reflect too on just how successful the UK/US relationship is that on so many levels and across so many capability areas, there is a near genuine level of interoperability between their military assets, and the means to work together as one team. This has only been achieved by over 75 years of joint operations that began in WW2 and continues to this day.

Other nations have tried limited mergers of their naval forces – for example there is significant integration between the Netherlands and Belgian navies, but they have not gone down the road of jointly operating the same vessel.

It may be a good policy call to decide to support the building of a joint aircraft carrier project, but the reality is the challenge of doing so is considerable, and there is no guarantee of success. When coupled with the increased reluctance of Germany to fund defence in line with wider NATO obligations, it is hard to see this project gaining much traction.

The challenge then for the French is working out how their future maritime aviation capability develops. There is unlikely to be much global call for a carrier borne aircraft like Rafale in the next 20 years, and the costs of bearing the programme for a carrier capable variant alone, particularly if development coincides with replacements for the SSBN/ICBM capability too, could be unbearable.

There is a real medium-term risk for the French that to stay as a relevant carrier navy will mean having to make some extremely difficult decisions about where to prioritise funding, and what has to be sacrificed elsewhere to pay to keep carrier aviation alive. Will the next 10-15 years see the French decide they will maintain a carrier at any cost – even if it means hollowing out their wider military to do so, or will they say ‘au revoir’ to long term carrier plans?