At the start of this new year, and in a national, European and international context that is more complex and unpredictable than it has been for a long time, I'd like to take a few moments to look back on the successes and highlights of our community in 2024, and on the challenges we'll have to face in 2025 and beyond.
The year 2024 was marked by a large number of events that enabled us to showcase our expertise and share the values of the defense and security industry.
– Starting with Eurosatory, of course, with a record-breaking 2024 edition. which confirmed its status as a global benchmark in the sector: with over 76,000 visitors, more than 2,000 exhibitors from 61 countries and 334 official delegations. We look forward to seeing you again on June 15-19, 2026.
– The Olympic and Paralympic Games, a unique moment of national and international communion, represented for GICAT the culmination of 5 years' work. The development of a general security program was followed by technical experiments conducted with the Ministry of the Interior and security forces, highlighting technologies designed and implemented by our members. The aim was twofold: to help make the Games a secure and festive event with worldwide visibility, while at the same time strengthening the modernization of the Ministry's operational departments. The challenge was met collectively, with a view to promoting this legacy internationally in the coming months.
- Other safety highlights in 2024, such as canvassing missions for our members in Eastern Europe, our partnership in the Milipol trade show in Qatar, the organization of the 4ème edition of the "AGIR" innovation day with the Gendarmerie Nationale, our partnership in the organization of the "Paris Cyber Summit", which year after year establishes itself as a key Euro-Atlantic event dedicated to digital and cyber issues. And finally, our responsiveness in providing our companies' solutions to the Ministry of the Interior to help the people of Mauritius and contribute to the island's reconstruction.
On the defense side, GICAT is fully committed to its primary missions, which are to foster reflection on strategic sectors for our industry, and to lead and support the land and air-land BITD. Our 10 commissions and all our working groups are real forces of proposal, producing recommendations designed to inform public and state decisions, and to organize the group's strategy and actions.
In 2024, for example, GICAT finalized and circulated its reports on robotics, on-board energy management, simulation - an often overlooked French nugget - and the long-awaited report from the UAV WG. A report which, moreover, gave life to the Pacte drones (Drone Pact) called for by the Minister of the Armed Forces, a forum of over 100 industrialists, to accelerate the "dronization" of the French Army, and for which GICAT has become the coordinator and federator on behalf of the DGA.
For all these events and activities, I'd like to thank all the GICAT and COGES teams for their daily commitment, and offer them a warm round of applause.
I'd now like to take a look at 2025 from a different angle. quadruple dynamics, defined at a strategic seminar held last September on the basis of the roadmap I proposed as the new Chairman of GICAT:
- Dynamics Industrialas part of the war economy,
- Dynamics European, in the face of the EU's realization that war is returning to Europe's doorstep, and the need to draw closer to our 26 European partners,
- Dynamics InternationalThis is more than ever necessary to support our activities and meet the needs of our allies,
- Dynamics Manageras a contributor to the resilience and attractiveness of our industry.
Industrial dynamics
Strengthening our air-land DTIB and its entire supply chain is essential to French military sovereignty and the ability of our forces to intervene on the ground "where wars are won", as the Chief of Defence Staff reminded us once again in November 2024.. In the wake of the French President's Eurosatory 2022 speech, in which he called on industry to adopt a wartime economy approach, the DITB has put itself in a position to react swiftly: reducing production lead times, increasing production rates for all major prime contractors and their industrial partners, and reindustrializing and relocating with the support of the DGA to strengthen our security and supplies. This dynamic must also be applied at regional level: GICAT will be setting up a regional organization, in conjunction with the DGA, and the competitiveness clusters, to deploy its action in the field with the entire fabric of prime contractors, ETIs, SMEs, start-ups and, of course, public partners.
The war in Ukraine, which, like so many others, we have had to endure and not choose, reminds us of the need to close ranks with the State, and in particular with the DGA, and to make the simplification and acceleration of processes a priority. process This is why we need to make administrative efficiency, collective agility and permanent innovation a reality of our collective action, rather than a vain incantation. Many operational capabilities, such as air defense, fire in depth, remotely-operated munitions and the contribution of space to air-land combat, have emerged or re-emerged as essential and probably not yet fully appreciated. This is one of the reasons why we absolutely must achieve a massive simplification of regulations at both French and European level, and accelerate the reindustrialization policy (through measures in the fields of land, taxation, support for research and innovation).
The creation of the Future Combat Command (CCF) within the French Army last June highlighted the importance of innovation in our armaments policy: AI, Cyber, Quantum, etc. We now need to scale up, to borrow a fashionable term from the start-up nation. We now need to scale up, to borrow a fashionable term from the start-up nation. This is also what GENERATE, GICAT's start-up gas pedal, has been working on since 2017.
This industrial dynamic is made possible by the LPM, which is not a business plan, but gives a certain visibility to manufacturers, essential for investing, recruiting and producing. As the Minister of the Armed Forces recently reminded us, the minimum €3.3 billion step in the 2025 budget is vital and necessary to enable the French forces to face up to the multiplicity of current and future capability challenges, for the future of the land forces, the preservation of its 50,000 jobs and the maintenance of its skills.
European dynamics
Our manufacturers are already successfully participating in various EDF projects, benefiting directly or indirectly from mechanisms such as ASAP and EDIRPA. GICAT, in close cooperation with the French government and other trade associations, has a key role to play in federating a "French industrial team" for the land-based sector in its dealings with European authorities, ensuring that the various tools used are more effective and that they primarily benefit European manufacturers. For this reason, GICAT has decided to strengthen its European positioning and bilateral actions with our counterparts, notably by opening a permanent office in Brussels.
Let's make sure that the new European Commissioner for Defense's White Paper project becomes an effective catalyst both for stronger funding of the defense industry and for the allocation of EU funds to European manufacturers.
Export dynamics
It's a truism, but one that needs to be repeated regularly: as is the case for the vast majority of industrial sectors, exports are a necessity if our French economic model is to survive. National public orders are structurally insufficient to maintain a complete offer for both our armed forces and our partners, and our collective objective must be to return to a level of 50% in export sales for the air-land DTIB. This is a collective objective for both industry and the French government, and we benefit from the well-established SOUTEX system (DGA and forces), which needs to be maintained and further strengthened.
In this context, our subsidiary COGES Events is a remarkable lever and an asset that we need to maximize, thanks to trade shows like Expodefensa in Colombia and the 11 French pavilions that we will be federating by 2025. We will also be pursuing our international expansion in 2024, with the opening of offices in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and, most recently, the Ukraine, all of which are necessary to support our resolutely conquering international approach.
A dynamic approach to CSR
Corporate Social Responsibility is an important factor in the attractiveness of our sector, and is increasingly becoming an obligation for our companies. We need to attract new talent, increase the role of women, and encourage banks and funds to finance and invest more in our sovereignty industry.
Several measures in this direction are currently being developed within the group, in particular with DGA DID, and will be completed by the creation of a GICAT CSR Commission, which we recently decided to set up. Nevertheless, we need to make sure that the obligations imposed by European regulations such as CSRD / CS3D and their application in national law do not have the same impact on the competitiveness of our national industry, because we would have been, if you'll pardon the expression, more royalist than the king.
Making the world of Defense attractive is the mission of all of us. To achieve this, we need to work together to promote our actions to as many people as possible, and pass on the values that drive us. This is a major challenge. With this in mind, this year GICAT will be the exclusive partner of a very fine film recounting the fall of Kabul in 2021 and the crucial role played by our diplomatic, armed and security forces. We look forward to seeing you all at the cinema next spring.
To sum up, the geopolitical situation as we see it deteriorating every day, as the Minister of the Armed Forces reminded us in his New Year's address last week, calls for strong action on the part of the State and the industrial fabric in our country. GICAT is ready and willing to play its part.
Press contact: Delphine SAMPIC, GICAT Communications and Events Director: Delphine.sampic@gicat.fr
