"Sovereignty is not declared — it is produced." Around this line revolved one of the most strategic panels of Tech For Industry Show 2026 (Paris Expo Porte de Versailles), bringing together the State and the industry's key players: Benoît Laroche de Roussane (DGA), Laurent Mozer (Naval Group), Rock Carmona (Thales) and Éric Viriot (Saft). The subject: the leap from budgetary ambition to industrial action, as high-intensity warfare returns to Europe.

Three figures frame the stakes. The French defense budget reaches €57 billion in 2026, up €6.7 billion year on year. The 2024-2030 military programming law foresees €413 billion, €118 billion more than the previous one — and its update, under parliamentary discussion, could add €36 billion, almost exclusively for weapons systems acquisition. At continental scale, the European Commission's "Rearm Europe" plan mobilizes €800 billion.

Yet a paradox remains: Europe still depends on non-European suppliers for nearly 80% of its defense orders. And the central question stands: can the industrial fabric keep up?

The French Defense Technological and Industrial Base (DTIB) represents 220,000 direct and indirect jobs, structured around nine major groups and a network of over 4,000 SMEs and startups. France remains one of only two or three countries worldwide to master the full capability spectrum, "from nuclear deterrence to drones."

For the DGA, two shocks reshaped its role: Covid, which revealed dependencies buried deep in supply chains, and the growth of rearmament budgets since 2022. The result: priority shifts from design to production — producing, producing fast, and designing "producible" objects. A strong cultural change that also applies to the armed forces ministry, making production capacity a "strategic asset" and a form of deterrence.

Asked about their top difficulty, company leaders answer unanimously: recruitment. Not out of reluctance toward defense, but from unfamiliarity with industrial trades. Naval Group illustrates the scale: 17,000 employees, 4,500 hires in three years, 373 identified trades — some extremely rare, like submarine architect or nuclear propulsion specialist. The response: massive investment in internal training, beyond apprenticeships and internships. An engineer, the conclusion notes, "takes ten years" — a horizon hard to reconcile with urgency.

For years, financing defense was frowned upon, the sector ranked in ESG criteria "between pornography and gambling," sometimes labeled "controversial weapons." Over the past 18 months, work with the finance ministry has lifted some barriers: the term "controversial weapons" is no longer supposed to exist, and many institutions now invest. The remaining challenge is getting that money down to the real economy and to SMEs — a point on which Thales is "more nuanced": the issue isn't attracting investors, but financing tiers 2, 3 and 4 fast enough.

The third front is making the value chain work end to end. The PEPS plan (for mid-caps, SMEs and startups) formalizes agreements with prime contractors to cascade visibility from tier 1 down to tier 3, better distribute value, and help SMEs structure themselves and expand internationally.

Rock Carmona (Thales) sums up the daily contradiction of the procurement function — €10 billion in purchases, 17,000 suppliers across 35 countries: resilience requires diversifying (at least two sources in two different regions), while sovereignty requires centralizing and controlling. "On one side I diversify, on the other I centralize: we're not schizophrenic, we do both." Two caveats: sovereignty is increasingly conceived at European scale, and it must not become an isolation that causes "three or four phases" of technological lag.

For Saft — a century-old battery maker with no European equivalent — the most critical issue remains raw material supply. Whether extracted or refined, almost all pass through China. The risk: export licenses, through which a supplier can decide who its customer may sell to. "If our product isn't manufactured, my customers here can't manufacture theirs — it's dramatic for sovereignty." Hence a massive dual-sourcing effort, state-supported, not to sideline Asian suppliers but to secure credible alternatives. The France 2030 "dual industry" plan (€300 million) includes a pillar dedicated to sovereign access to raw materials, covering extraction, refining and recycling.

After the Barracuda program's digital twin, now a reference, Naval Group puts technology at the service of operational performance along three axes: product digital continuity (data from design through in-service support, over timescales reaching 2080 for the third-generation ballistic-missile submarine), delivering up-to-date information close to the operator, and controlled use of AI. Handling almost exclusively sensitive data, the group launched a sovereign private cloud in 2023 with internal inference capabilities — public cloud is out of the question.

Thales — a leader in trusted AI for critical systems (Cortex factory, 800 engineers), global top 5 in cybersecurity, number one in sonars and radars — has built a digital twin of nearly all its products with a partner. The goal: shifting from a reactive to a predictive posture, cross-referencing external data (finance, weather, crises) to simulate supply chain robustness and anticipate risks. Agentic AI, he notes, disrupts not only tools but the governance and operating model of procurement.

Saft protects the data generated by its batteries through firewalls, screening and non-Chinese component choices, and develops predictive maintenance software (estimating a battery's remaining usable life in operation). Another avenue: for small production runs using critical materials — a losing combination for competitiveness — automation, AI and humanoid robots could help close part of the gap with low-cost production.

The DGA's industrial orientation notes (drones, additive manufacturing, nanosatellites) are not calls for tender: they share directions to steer industry and spark alliances — sometimes surprising, like Renault producing flying drones under the drone pact. State investment priorities set the course: quantum plan, dual-industry plan (€300M), and breakthrough technology building blocks useful across many weapons systems (communication cards, motors without rare earths or permanent magnets, batteries) — which must be producible in Europe and at scale.

The closing consensus is clear. For the DGA, France, the world's second-largest arms exporter, has built a defense industrial base it could lose quickly: "all the ingredients are there; it's a question of timing to accelerate and scale." Thales drives the point home: "we're too slow," compared with faster-moving neighbors, and the smaller tiers of the chain must be financed strongly enough. Saft adds a warning: Europe takes years to equip itself with protective tools (negotiations ongoing at European level), and "if we use the same methods as for the automotive market, we'll get the same consequences." Hence a call to better protect defense markets. And a shared conviction: sovereignty is not a retreat but an architecture — a cooperating France where the largest players are responsible for helping the smallest, down to the weakest link in the chain.

What is a defense industrial and technological base? It brings together all industrial players contributing to defense. In France: 220,000 direct and indirect jobs, nine major groups and over 4,000 SMEs and startups across the country.

Why does defense sovereignty depend on raw materials? Because most critical raw materials (such as those for batteries) are extracted or refined in China. Through export licenses, a foreign supplier can restrict its customer's markets — hence the importance of dual sourcing and sovereign supply chains covering extraction, refining and recycling.

What are the main barriers to ramping up the defense industry? Three barriers emerged from the panel: recruiting and training talent, financing (despite the lifting of ESG barriers), and structuring the subcontracting chain down to the smallest suppliers.

Are sovereignty and competitiveness compatible? According to the panelists, a sovereign but uncompetitive industry that no longer exports would be problematic. Sovereignty is an obligation for certain industries, but it must not become a retreat that widens the technological gap.

This panel was recorded at Tech For Industry Show 2026, the B2B trade show for industrial transformation (Smart Manufacturing, AI, Supply Chain) at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles. Watch the full discussion above, and join us on May 19–20, 2027, Hall 7, for the next edition.