France — Defence: The outcome of the Franco-British summit

At the clo­sure of the Fran­co-British sum­mit held at the Élysée Palace on 17 Feb­ru­ary, French Pres­i­dent Nico­las Sarkozy and British Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron made a joint state­ment on issues of secu­ri­ty and Defence. Below are some extracts from this state­ment.

In Feb­ru­ary, French Paras from the 8th Reg­i­ment in Cas­tres spent five days train­ing with British troops from the 5th Scots Reg­i­ment, in Otter­burn Camp in the north of Eng­land — SIRPA Terre/ SCH D. Blanchet — SIRPA Terre/ SCH D. Blanchet

Dec­o­ra­tion of a British offi­cer — Air Force — Armée de l’air

Lessons learned from the Libyan con­flict

“Our coop­er­a­tion in Libya has been a defin­ing moment – and one on which we will con­tin­ue to build in the future. […] Fol­low­ing an analy­sis of lessons iden­ti­fied, we have decid­ed to pri­ori­tise our joint work in the key areas of: com­mand and con­trol; infor­ma­tion sys­tems; intel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance, tar­get­ing and recon­nais­sance; and pre­ci­sion munitions. » 

Com­bined Joint Expe­di­tionary force

“France and the UK agreed in Novem­ber 2010 to set up a com­bined Joint expe­di­tionary Force (CJEF). […] We agreed the Lev­el of Ambi­tion for the CJEF: an ear­ly entry force capa­ble of fac­ing mul­ti­ple threats. A five-year exer­cise frame­work is in place to achieve full oper­at­ing capa­bil­i­ty in 2016. […]We will con­duct this year a major French-UK exer­cise, Cor­si­can Lion, to accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of the CJEF. It will take place in the Mediter­ranean Sea with par­tic­i­pa­tion by sea, land and air forces. 

On drones

“ We have agreed today to take for­ward our planned coop­er­a­tion on UAS with­in a long term strate­gic part­ner­ship frame­work aimed at build­ing a sov­er­eign capa­bil­i­ty shared by our two coun­tries. This frame­work will encom­pass the dif­fer­ent lev­els from tac­ti­cal to MALE in the mid term and UCAS in the long term: 

— Medi­um Alti­tude Longue Endurance (MALE) Drone: The Joint Pro­gram Office was launched in 2011. We will short­ly place with BAES and Das­sault a joint­ly fund­ed con­tract to study the tech­ni­cal risks asso­ci­at­ed with the MALE UAV. We look for­ward to tak­ing fur­ther deci­sions joint­ly in the light of the out­comes of this risk reduc­tion phase to ensure that our respec­tive sov­er­eign require­ments will be met in a cost effec­tive manner. 

— Watch­keep­er drone: France con­firms its inter­est for the Watch­keep­er sys­tem recog­nis­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties this would cre­ate for coop­er­a­tion. An eval­u­a­tion of the sys­tem by France will begin in 2012, in the frame­work of its nation­al pro­cure­ment process, and con­clude in 2013. » Defence Nuclear Cooperation 

“Build­ing on last year’s suc­cess­ful coop­er­a­tion on a joint facil­i­ty at Val­duc that will assist both coun­tries in under­writ­ing the safe­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty of our respec­tive nuclear weapons stock­piles, we have decid­ed to explore oppor­tu­ni­ties for fur­ther col­lab­o­ra­tion in the nuclear field. » Olympics security 

“The UK and France are work­ing close­ly togeth­er to ensure a safe and secure Olympic Games. The UK author­i­ties are work­ing with the French Olympic Secu­ri­ty Coor­di­na­tor to ensure that prepa­ra­tions and oper­a­tional respons­es – aimed at the safe, secure and flu­id move­ment of par­tic­i­pants and vis­i­tors – are close­ly co-ordi­nat­ed. In March 2012 we will con­duct a joint exer­cise to test our response to a ter­ror­ist inci­dent affect­ing both our inter­ests. We will build on this through close bilat­er­al co-oper­a­tion on wider Olympics secu­ri­ty plan­ning and execution. » 

Source:
Min­istry of Defense, France 

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