The French Parliament is currently examining the finance bill by which the Ministry of Defense will formalize the request for the new aircraft carrier for the French National Navy, so the conceptual studies related to this future ship are practically complete. According to the latest details revealed by “Cols Bleus”, the official magazine of the French Navy, the new aircraft carrier will have a displacement of 80,000 tons, 5,000 more than initially planned, and 310 meters in length.
However, this additional mass should not have any impact on the power to be developed by the two K22 nuclear boiler rooms of its propulsion system. This should be enough to allow it to sail at a maximum speed of 30 knots and deploy directed energy weapons, high-power jammers and, above all, electromagnetic catapults (EMALS) associated with the AAG (Advanced Arresting Gear), that is, the device says aircraft recovery.
A priori, according to the latest images released by the General Directorate of Armaments (DGA) and the companies that will build the ship, on the occasion of the 2024 edition of the Euronaval show, the PA NG should be equipped with three EMALS catapults. This option, suggested two years ago, has not yet been formally confirmed.
In December 2021, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), responsible for exports of US military equipment, gave the green light to the sale of two EMALS and an AAG device to France for a estimated amount of 1,200 million euros.
A year later, the Pentagon announced that it had awarded General Atomics a $9 million contract to develop a “subsystem composed of two or three launch engines and an AAG device” for the French Navy’s future aircraft. Which therefore left the door open to a possible configuration with three electromagnetic catapults.
The current French aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, which will be replaced by the new ship, with its two steam catapults, theoretically has the capacity to launch a wave of up to 20 armed Rafale M in just 15 minutes and then recover and relaunch it in four hours. later. However, as “Cols Bleus” explains, The new aircraft carrier “must be capable of offering unprecedented offensive air power, thanks to a doubling of the number of air sorties and an improvement in the lethality of the weapons it will carry.”. We would be talking, therefore, about 60 air departures per day in a “high intensity scenario”. Thus, in addition to significantly increasing the pace of air operations, a third EMALS would provide more flexibility and, at the same time, could overcome a technical deficiency in one of the other two catapults.
An EMALS type catapult uses a linear electromagnetic induction motor (LIM), whose power depends on the mass of the device to be catapulted. The magnetic field generated on both sides of a catapult rail sets in motion a mobile carriage on which the aircraft to be launched is fixed. Given the large amount of energy that must be released in a few seconds, it uses flywheels that can store up to 100 megajoules and recharge in less than a minute. Compared to steam catapults, an EMALS offers several advantages: the mechanical limitations of the aircraft cells are reduced, energy efficiency is optimized and maintenance is simpler.
As for the entire aircraft carrier, it will be the great jewel in the crown: an authentic cathedral of the sea as the French leaders themselves have defined it, which will be ready to replace in 2038 the only one our neighboring country currently has, Charles de Gaulle. It will also be, like this one, a next-generation nuclear-powered ship.
How could it not be otherwise, The future ship will be much larger than the current one and will displace about 80,000 tons, more, for example, than the Chinese Shandong or any other European aircraft carrier. It will have dimensions of 310 meters in length, compared to the current 261.5 meters, and 85 meters wide at the widest point of the deck of the aircraft carrier, compared to 64.3 for Charles de Gaulle. It will, therefore, be a qualitative leap that will place France with a giant on the seas only comparable, in this case, to the large aircraft carriers of the United States or China, since Russia lacks this type of ships, while Admiral Kuznetsov still in dry dock and unable to navigate.
Just to give an example, The United Kingdom, France’s great rival in terms of military capacity in Europe beyond Russia, has two aircraft carriers and none of them are nuclear powered. They are also smaller (they are practically twins), since they displace 70,000 tons and are about 280 meters long.
Known as Porte-avions de nouvelle génération (PA-NG), it features a Catapult Assisted Take-Off Barrier Arrested Recovery (CATOBAR) system, with an angled platform and a relatively small island in the back.
It will be able to embark 32 navalized Rafale combat aircraft, also of French manufacture compared to the F-35 on which a good part of the European countries have opted, and three E-2 Advanced Hawkeyes air warning aircraft, as well as helicopters and drones. It could also incorporate the future European combat aircraft on which France is already working together with Germany and Spain. The future ship will be built in the Lorient shipyards.
The estimated cost is 7,000 million euros. In December 2020, French President Emmanuele Macron, during a visit to the French group Framatome, announced that this ship will be powered by two K22 TechnicAtome nuclear reactors, an evolution of the K15 reactors that power the “Charles de Gaulle”. . Each of these reactors will be able to generate a power of 220 MW, 70 MW more than the current K15, and will allow it to reach speeds of up to 30 knots in addition to providing all the electrical energy for the ship’s various systems. These reactors will mean that the aircraft carrier will only need to be refueled once every 10 years.
There are still many details to be adjusted, such as the defensive systems and the weapons it will incorporate, although It is likely to mount four large antennas on its island to detect aerial targets at great distances and will have cannons and missiles to ensure its survival against any attack. On its flanks you can see several structures with antenna domes that could house sophisticated electronic warfare equipment for self-defense against threats such as hypersonic missiles.
The final design will not be completed until 2025, but will be open to possible changes. “It will be designed in such a way that it can be gradually modernized and the combat system can evolve. We do not know today what type of technology will be available in 15 years, so we must allow new technology to be easily installed,” said Olivier de Saint Julien, one of those responsible for the project.
In military circles they assure that It resembles the new US Ford-class aircraft carriers. According to Breaking Defense, some design decisions were made to ensure that the US and French aircraft carriers will be interoperable. France and the United States are “the only two navies in the world that operate nuclear aircraft carriers with catapults and lightning rods,” so it is vital that they are interoperable, according to the director of the PANG program of the DGA acquisition agency cited by the military media.
The vessel will be built by the state-owned company Naval Group and Chantiers de l’Atlantique at the Chantiers de l’Atlantique shipyard in the Breton town of Saint-Nazaire, on the west coast of France. It will then be transferred to Toulon for final assembly. The first sea trials are scheduled for 2036, although it will not have full operational capacity until 2038.