Ally Upgrades: France Plots Long-Term Army Modernization Plans.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: GLOBAL MILITARY

PARIS--While still in the throes of its biggest modernization push since World War II, the French army is already looking at what comes afterward.

The NATO member's army is in the middle of a 20-year modernization program called "Scorpion" that takes it through 2040.

Col. Arnaud Goujon, chief of plans at the French army headquarters, said the service is already jumpstarting plans for a second step of upgrades it calls "Titan."

Scorpion is seeking to upgrade the army's light and medium tanks and improve their connectivity. Similar to U.S. forces' push to connect sensors and shooters known as joint all domain command and control, France calls its effort "combined collaborative combat," he said.

The roots of Scorpion took hold 20 years ago. Equipment from that program is now being delivered to the force and is already being used in operations in Sub-Saharan Africa, he said.

The army received its first batch of Jaguar armored reconnaissance and combat vehicles in February and since then has ordered more. They are manufactured by a consortium comprising French contractors Nexter, Arquus and Thales.

They will replace three existing vehicle platforms: the AMX-10RC tank destroyer, the ERC-90 Sagaie armored reconnaissance vehicle and the VAB HOT Mephisto armored personnel carrier.

The same consortium is building the Griffon multi-role armored vehicle as part of the Scorpion program. They will replace 4x4 armored personnel carriers, which have been in the inventory since the 1970s.

"In light of this success with the realization of Scorpion--and without waiting for it to come to fruition--the army must already think about the next phase," he said during a talk at the Eurosatory defense trade show in Paris.

Titan will start in 2030--a few years before Scorpion wraps up--and will run through 2045 with a concentration on modernizing heavy tanks, artillery and combat helicopters, Goujon said.

Titan will start off as a series of studies that "will identify the best technological solutions," he said.

The reason for the two-phased approach is that French military thinkers see the battlefields of 2030 and 2040 as being different, he said.

The trends that the army will see two decades from now are beginning to emerge today, and will only grow more prominent by 2040, he said.

Warzones will be more heavily contested with anti-access, area denial capabilities in all domains--land, air, sea, cyber and electro-magnetic, he said.

"We must also develop forces that...