“We have [recently] started a campaign at Lakehurst in the US to test the compatibility between the Rafale aircraft and the American aircraft launch and recovery equipment,” said Captain Thibault Lavernhe the programme officer of Marine Nationale.
That sentence sums up the odd situation that will befall France at sea in 2026: one nuclear-powered plane carrier with chequered engineering histories, but the one which is at the heart of how allied navies demonstrate that they can fight each other. FS Charles de Gaulle remains the thoughtful up-market aviation centre of France despite the design work to have it replaced moving between idea and contract and test programmes.
Charles de Gaulle, commissioned in 2001, provided a CATOBAR carrier capability to Europe with nuclear propulsion and a small hull, which imposed severe tradeoffs in the design and in the layout, aircraft handling, and maintenance access. Such compromises have been there quite some time. The initial experiments led to a flight deck redesign to allow the E-2C Hawkeye to safely fly and the propulsion history of the ship was marked by the 2000 failure of the port propeller and subsequent electrical malfunctions. In 2007-2008, a significant refit and nuclear refuelling reinstated design performance, such as a resumption of 27 knots, although the working availability of the ship has once again been influenced more by industrial reality than doctrine. Nevertheless, the carrier air department established a rhythm around the Rafale M and Hawkeye that was deployable without any distance effect and a sortie-generation model that allies could use.
The carrier has been sending an interoperability message. By the middle of 2025, Charles de Gaulle was the only non-American catapult-equipped carrier capable of cross-deck qualification with American Navy aircraft and procedures. There have been American type arrest landings, catapults and American type landings, and French naval aviation has proven the other way-up-up the U.S. decks-down-up the U.S. decks route-Rafales. Practically, Charles de Gaulle is a coalition “translator” common geometry of launch, recovery, common deck discipline, and common data communications after further modernization of combat systems to partnered operations.
That cooperation is now being designed in the next carrier of France. The successor system- Porte-Avions de Nouvelle Generation (PANG), also known as PA-Ng has developed into a configuration: 78,000-ton with a single integrated island and U.S.-made electromagnetic launch and recovery. The decision of France to build three catapult tracks is no longer a discussion point but a budget and integration concern and the third catapult is presented as a facility of operational versatility and backup and not a luxury.
One can already note the industrial connection with U.S. systems in the program mechanics. An American Navy contract amendment promotes electromagnetic launch and arrested recovery technologies to the French carrier, using the milestones of design reviews, which are financed by the Foreign Military Sales. On the test level, the French teams have now changed to the U.S. Navy Lakehurst to test behavior of the Rafale during a launch-and-recovery operation using the EMALS and Advanced Arresting Gear-work, which has directly addressed one of the long-standing limitations imposed on the Rafale by Charles de Gaulle: takeoff weight. Captain Lavernhe described the change as having a measurable result, he talked of “several tonnes” more maximum takeoff weight than the carrier being able to produce at the moment.
The continuity plan itself includes Rafale itself. The current ship usually carries approximately 30 Rafale M, with E-2C support and PANG is likely to come to service with Rafale M to a new standard and capacity in the concept of operations to permit unmanned aircraft to accompany manned sorties. In that regard, the message of Charles de Gaulle to the U.S. Navy is not a question of size, but a matter of technique: A European carrier is constructed to U.S. deck physics, now being upgraded to U.S. electromagnetic launch-capability but with French airships and French nuclear propulsion in the heart of it all.
