French Aircraft Carrier Charles De Gaulle Deploying For Four Months of Pacific Ops: What Are Its Targets?

<p >French sources have revealed that the country’s sole aircraft carrier capable of accommodating fixed wing aviation assets, the Charles de Gaulle, is set to depart from Toulon for a four month deployment to the Pacific. The warship is set to first deploy to the Eastern Mediterranean, where it is speculated to be intended to provide support for ongoing Western efforts to bolster Israel’s position in its ongoing conflict in Lebanon. As a former French colony, Lebanon has remained a key area of interest for Paris in the Middle East, with French objectives closely aligning with those of Israel regarding the need to undermine and eventually eliminate the <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/how-powerful-hezbollah-trained-nkorea-hardened" target="_blank">Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah</a>. Hezbollah has maintained close ties with Western Bloc adversaries including Iran, North Korea and Russia, and has proven to be a highly effective fighting force that has opposed Western Bloc and Israeli objectives across multiple fronts in the Middle East. The Charles de Gaulle and its strike group could provide reconnaissance and other support, while also staging shows of force near Hezbollah’s position. The strike group will comprised of several frigates, a replenishment tanker, and one of the country’s three Suffren Class nuclear powered attack submarines. After deploying to the Eastern Mediterranean, the strike group is expected to sail to the South China Sea, where Western Bloc states have in recent years prioritised <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/italy-f35-japan-experience-carrier" target="_blank">strengthening their presence</a> to confront Chinese challenges to their formerly undisputed dominance over the region. </p><p ><img src="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/m/articles/2024/11/29/article_674927f2454543_84316897.jpg" title="French Aircraft Carrier Charles De Gaulle"></p><p >France is one of just three countries to field aircraft carriers with catapult launch systems, which allow fighter aircraft to take off with significantly greater payloads of fuel and munitions. Its aircraft carrier is also the only one in Europe capable of accommodating conventional carrier based aircraft, with British, Italian and Spanish carriers all having been built for fighters with specialised vertical landing capabilities which take a significant toll on overall performance. The Charles de Gaulle nevertheless suffers from severe limitations, with the ship’s 42,000 ton displacement placing it at only half the size of the Chinese supercarrier Fujian, which uses more modern electromagnetic catapult systems, and less than half the size of America’s Nimitz Class and Gerald Ford Class supercarriers. The warship’s air wing is also considered increasingly out of date, and unlike China, the United States, Britain, Italy and Japan, no efforts have been made by France to procure modern fifth generation fighter aircraft for its navy. The French Rafale fourth generation fighter suffers from severe limitations, including a small radar size, relatively short range, and the weakest engines currently in production for any fighter in the world. The aircraft is considered inferior not only to new fifth generation fighters, but also to China and the United States’ larger carrier based fourth generation fighters the<a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/chinese-carrier-operational-j15b-j15d" target="_blank"> J-15B</a> and <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/aim174-f18s-missile-gap-chinese-russian" target="_blank">F-18E/F Block 3</a>. Both Chinese and American carriers deploy dedicated electronic warfare plans to support their fighters, namely the J-15D and E/A-18G, while France’s carrier air wing deploys no such aircraft.</p><p ><img src="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/m/articles/2024/11/29/article_674929988fcec0_39609547.jpeg" title="Chinese Supercarrier Fujian"></p><p >Despite its small size, the Charles de Gaulle has been a highly problematic ship particularly in its early years in service. Soon after its construction the carrier’s radiation shielding proved to be inadequate, leading inspectors to find unsafe levels of radiation onboard which required costly modernisation to meet minimum safety standards. The carrier's propulsion systems have also proven to be severely flawed and caused intense vibrations onboard, which in one case caused the ship's propellers to shatter at sea. The cause of this was poor manufacturing techniques which had left air pockets in the metal alloys. The blueprints for the De Gaulle’s propellers were also lost in a fire leading to their replacement by inferior ones, which necessitated reducing the ship's maximum speed by 11 percent. Flaws in the French carrier continued to emerge in the years after its commissioning, including an electronic failure in 2010 just a day into its deployment which forced the ship to return to dock for repairs. The warship’s ability to significantly influence the balance of power in the Pacific theatre is considered to be highly limited, with the frigates in its strike group also carrying only fractions of the firepower of the more advanced destroyers deployed by China, the United States, Japan and South Korea.</p>

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