PA-NG "France libre" 🇫🇷 — What if France Developed Its Own Electromagnetic Catapult for Its Future Aircraft Carrier?

The PA-NG represents 80,000 tonnes of innovation, industry, and sovereignty.

Behind this strategic programme, there are not only large prime contractors. There are also nearly 800 companies involved — the majority of them SMEs and mid-sized enterprises — that design, manufacture, innovate, and sustain our defence technological and industrial base every day.

Building an aircraft carrier also represents a concrete economic shock: more than 14,000 jobs over 10 years, across Pays de la Loire, Brittany, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, and beyond.

In Brest, those who watched the Charles de Gaulle being built still remember: the city lived to the rhythm of the programme. Hotels full, engineers, technicians, skilled workers arriving from all over France… An aircraft carrier is not just a military vessel. It is an industrial and territorial engine.

In this context, the electromagnetic catapult is not a mere subsystem. It is a critical building block.

It determines:

• the range of embarked aircraft,
• their payload capacity,
• the operational performance of the carrier strike group,
• and interoperability with our allies.

In other words: to compete in the top tier of carrier-capable navies, this is a central issue.

But the stakes are even broader.

Behind an electromagnetic catapult lies an entire technological and industrial ecosystem that France already possesses — at least in part

This is an opportunity to further structure the following capabilities:

• power electronics,
• energy conversion and storage,
• critical automation and control systems,
• real-time software and cybersecurity,
• advanced materials and complex industrial sub-assemblies.

Launching studies on a national solution — even with a long-term horizon — would have an immediate effect:

• structuring still-fragmented industrial sectors,
• providing visibility to strategic SMEs and mid-sized enterprises,
• accelerating technological upskilling,
• generating dual-use spillovers in energy, mobility, and civil naval industries.

In reality, this debate is not simply a matter of equipment procurement.

It is an industrial policy decision.

In a context of heightened strategic competition, the question is straightforward:

Do we want to be mere integrators? Or do we also want to become designers of critical building blocks once again?

At Odysseus Defense Partners, we are convinced that European sovereignty will also depend on the ability to develop and structure a powerful ecosystem of SMEs and mid-sized enterprises around these key technologies.

The electromagnetic catapult could be one of its great catalysts.