The French-US interaction would be in the context of the recently signed “
Strategic Interoperability Framework” (SIF). The inking of this SIF started a disclosure process where the U.S. administration and Navy can now share high level information with the French Navy on a number of issues including communication (as well as encrypted communication), seabed warfare, interoperability between F-35 and 4th generation aircraft as well as US strategy in the Pacific region. Our source added:
“10 months after AUKUS, the relationship on the military level is maintained at a very high level, the Americans are willing to share as much as possible with us […] We think that the Americans have understood the differentiated nature of the French position on the political level, which is not a position of pure alignment with the American position. There are different interests, but on the strategic level, there is a common concern about preventing escalation, preventing miscalculations and containing the growing military ambitions in the whole Indo-Pacific region”.
Prior to 2025, the US Navy has already invited the French Navy to take a look at the tactics currently being evaluated between F-18s (which are 4th generation aircraft) and F-35s. This is currently being done aboard aircraft carrier USS
Carl Vinson (CVN-70). The French Navy was also invited to an upcoming Red Flag exercise which will focusing on 4th gen / 5th gen aircraft teaming and tactics.
How far East in the Pacific Ocean the French Carrier Strike Group (CSG) will sail in 2025 ? It is much too early to know.
Naval News understands that, ultimately, it will be a political decision, because this deployment will be a “high-level strategic posturing”.
That being said, it would not be a first for the
Charles de Gaulle, our source recalled: The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, flagship of the French Navy, already sailed at least twice
“a few hundred miles East of Singapore”. This was in 2002 and, more recently in 2019 during the Shangri-la Dialogue, during which one of the escorts of the French CSG sailed all the way to the South China Sea.
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