Defense industrial sovereignty: ambition put to the test of production — Panel discussion at Tech For Industry Show 2026 (Paris Expo Porte de Versailles), featuring the DGA, Naval Group, Thales and Saft.
€57 billion for the French armed forces in 2026, €413 billion under the 2024-2030 military programming law, €800 billion for the "Rearm Europe" plan: the budgets are there, the political will is affirmed. But Europe still depends on non-European suppliers for nearly 80% of its defense orders, and France's defense industrial base — 220,000 jobs, 9 major groups, 4,000 SMEs — must shift from a design logic to a mass-production logic.
This panel brings together Benoît Laroche de Roussane (DGA), Laurent Mozer (Naval Group), Roque Carmona (Thales) and Éric Viriot (Saft) to explore the gap between ambition and action: HR, financing and critical raw material barriers, dependence on China, supply chain digital twins, private cloud and sovereign AI — and a shared conclusion: all the ingredients are there; what's missing is speed.
