Charles de Gaulle - Frenchman with an atomic heart 

Yep. France is, as usual, looking only to its own interests. Not least i.a.w. its ongoing post-imperial delusion of still being a great power and its dishonest "strategic autonomy" agenda, which arises primarily from anti-Anglosphere resentment. First and foremost of the USA.

The Hawkeye AEW aircraft is built by Grumman in the USA.

@@achannel8142 So this is the exception to the rule. It happen also that recently the pressure over the french political leadership to abandon is national preference for military equipement is very strong. It was a major element for a man like De Gaule who was truly a soveraignist for his country. This is not that true for Macron. The european leadership want more of an european militaro industrial complex. And the americans unsurprisingly want everybody to buy very expensive military system.

Also benefit saving of scale thus limits was not as expensive for capabilities

Spare us the one-upsmanship.

GIAT F2

Only beer, limited to one a day

what do you mean it has always been a power projection military for like the last few centuries?

@@guillaumefigarella1704 To really project power you have to own the sky. Infantry clears ground but if the enemy has air superiority they are basically hamburger. Carriers allow that to happen.

@@clifflong7944 hum very long post sorry, so while the french military is not at all on the level of the us military, its just not comparable we can't afford the scale to power project hundreds of thousands of troops, immense cargo airplane fleet, immense lhd fleet, just immense amount of everything, id still argue that france has the best power projection of europe, take the de gaulle its escort one or two attack subs the mistral lhd, the large cargo airplane and refuelling fleet, and you have what the american would probably call the bare minimum of power projection, remove an enemy fleet with extreme prejudice with the nuclear subs, deploy fixed wing aircraft at sea, drop a few thousands troops and equipment, those are pretty uncommon capability in general so in a 300 000 personnel military with an average military spending for 2000-2020 of around 40 billions euros its pretty good

@@guillaumefigarella1704 In truth, France is likely still NOT the most capable European state re maritime or limited amphibious power projection. Though as I told you above, in point of fact it shouldn't be nearly so capable in those roles even as it currently is.

Cause we are stupid and our people are fearing mongering morons, even tho 70% of our population can barely survive and earn the bare minimum and yet we vote ( I don't ) for people who choose to fund this bloated military and Pentagon can't even pass an audit, they dump and waste things just so their budget isn't cut and people are okay with, we don't have access to healthcare, education is merely ok, our infrastructure is breaking in front of our eyes, the rich keeps getting tax break while not paying for anything but hey at least we have cool death machines.

We have 20 but only 12 super carriers. The others are more amphibious carriers. You typically only have 50% of them available at anytime but if it was war time conditions I’m sure that could be raised significantly. As to the why. I love the fact we have a large and imposing military that’s peace thru strength but I hate we are the worlds police. We need to worry about ourselves more. A homeless guy sleeping on the street doesn’t give a f about how big your aircraft carrier is. Sad but true

It's called trade.

@@davidporter7051 every country trades.

@@gcarter1973 and if you can't put two and two together you shouldn't ask the question. Because America doesn't produce anything near the quantity it did to become the World's most powerful economy it must use its military to dictate the most favorable agreements. If the United States did produce more it would need the same military to ensure it's goods are traded once again with the most favorable agreements. The allies are allies with the United States and part of this agreement is they will fall under the umbrella of the United States and this includes protection from the United States.

wrong, France has territories in all corners of the world, it's the country with the largest sea domain in the world (or maybe 2nd after the US, it depends). 1 is not enough... she is working on a new boat.

How would France operate air sorties in a far away land with no friendly airfields?

Les Mistral suffisent 🙄... On devrait aussi supprimer les Leclerc et penser que les VAB suffisent !

@@jyy9624 no friendly airfields ? France has many military bases all around the world in friendly countries + she has many overseas territories

@@johndoe-cd9vt yes but not everywhere sorties possible

why so much salt? what do you mean "still being a great power"? do you think thats what anyone think? land power too isnt that a bit of an overstatement or has france turned into poland while i wasn't looking? total 2019 estimate for the population of the british oversea territory is 272,256 people, the french oversea territory's population in 2024 is more than 2.8 millions people which i think warrant at least a single lone carrier and three amphibious assault ship without f*cking invoking allegations of "fantasy delusion of still being a great power" ? also "anti anglosphere fantasy"? de gaulle has been dead for 50+ years, or is about the anti trump sentiment? also, wonky little carriers? are we comparing size? how old are you seriously? is that what you consider a good argument compared to those two huge barren desert wasteland of a flight deck that the QE class are right now? why do you hate wheels too? Did you know that on french speaking defense stuff people say we should work with the brits more often, we share a lot more military culture compared to the germans, that we should have looked into getting QE class with catapult in the 2010s instead of waiting for the PANG, that the CTAS program was a great success, peoples wish there was more commonality on the future anti ship/future cruise missile program like we did for storm shadow/scalp instead of two different design, people saying we should have worked with the brits on the next gen fighter program instead of the germans yet every time there is a video on anything french in english, there is always an angry brit acting like france is the scourge of europe and everything bad happening to the british military is france not doing enough/doing too much/not doing what you want?

@@guillaumefigarella1704 Mere excuses for France's (as I said) continuing post-imperial great power fantasy. In essence pursued via ongoing assertion of the originally Gaullist conception, "strategic autonomy" (formulated decades ago post-Suez by, as you say, the now long dead de Gaulle. Yet which in its latest form is now being squeaked out by the rat, Macron). Typically via leveraging the loathsome EU central institution's backing and that, in turn, by continuing to play assiduously, France's role as Germany's faithful "Mini-Me". While as for your remaining specific points, surely you can't expect a history-conscious Brit, of all people (or yet more germanely for other reasons, most citizens of continental NATO allies) to be impressed by your irrelevant drivel anent France's insistence on retaining a very few pocket sized colonies with a still very small total population? Still less by you seeking to use the matter as you seemingly are, as spurious justification for maintaining France's not-very-capable-yet-STILL-bigger-than-it-should-be-navy at a size significantly too large relative to the now hugely hollowed-out French land-forces? Which should be YOUR nation's first priority as t.b.h. most Poles would very likely also tell you! On which score, the replacement of the pint-sized but still far too costly CdeG by the larger, more capable but thus yet more costly projected PANG, only adds to the problem. As does the replacement of ALL tracked French AFVs by their (for most EUROPEAN deployments) enormously less capable wheeled alternatives. Merely to facilitate low cost deployments to out-of-NATO-theatres! While re CTAS, or PAAMS, or any other defence related programme you may cite, genuine British patriots would be insane to accede again to ANY repetition of ANY such international collaboration whatsoever that again includes France. Especially not the UK/Italy/Japan FCAS project, which France should NEVER be allowed to join ... and NOT because France is "the scourge of Europe". She's no such thing! Rather, because France has been far too successful for far too long at steering... 1) -the EU states, primarily Germany, into positions that are fundamentally inimical to the global Anglosphere's interests generally. 2) -our repugnant UK Metro-trash haute-bourgeois establishment elites into repeatedly aping Euro-centric perspectives, over the whole of the preceding 120 years! All of which has been, still is and would again in future be to the gross detriment of THIS nation and People's real interests. Which as the majority of our population's basically quite shrewd geopolitical outlook testifies, are best served by first and foremost ensuring our close alignment WITH the other Anglosphere nations. The three other CANZUK powers first of all.

Lame guy....

like you in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan leaving your weapons, well done and next time you will shut your mouth

Well... usual stupid statement based on a situation more than 80 years ago. On the other hand you could remember french took Berlin in less than 19 days 2 centuries ago... Free California!!!

Did you know that France is the country with the most military victories in the world? The British are just behind, followed by the United States. Free world.