The French government plans to increase its defense budget by 3 billion euros for 2023 (or to 43.9 billion euros overall). The average annual budget for the French army in 2025-2031 will be between 54 and 57 billion euros. For comparison, for the period 2019-2025, the annual amount of defense costs was supposed to be 42 billion euros, as Defense24 informs.
It is assumed that the additional 3 billion euros for French defense in 2023 will be distributed as follows:
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- 669 million euros for the creation of 1,500 new jobs in the defense industry,
- 550 million euros - for equipment maintenance, 455 million euros for modernization programs,
- 318 million euros on "deterrence and countermeasures".
The other 1.2 billion euros are aimed for improving the army recruiting system, protecting transport and energy infrastructure, stockpiling fuel and cyber defense.
The list of equipment and weapons that the French army is about to receive in 2023 is the following: 13 Rafale aircraft and 9 operational tactical level drones, 4 Airbus A400M transporters and 5 NH90 helicopters, 18 modernized Leclerc tanks and 264 VBL armored vehicles, Suffren multipurpose nuclear submarine and the new La Fayette type frigate.
Here is the list of orders for the defense industry that the Ministry of the Armed Forces of France plans to provide in 2023:
42 Rafale aircraft, 10 units of Syracuse IV type communication satellites and 19 satellite communication stations, 420 units of Serval armored vehicles, 22 units of heavy armored vehicles for the Special Operations Forces and 3 naval anti-UAV complexes.
If for the years 2019-2023, the planned amount of French defense costs should reach 197.8 billion euros, then in the period of 2025-2031 it should exceed 350 billion euros.
It is still unknown what exactly Paris will implemented in the "interim" year of 2024. But the President of France Emmanuel Macron has already clearly stated that his country should be ready for a possible new "big war" in Europe. And that the concept of "expeditionary troops for peripheral wars" no longer ensures the security of France.
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