France enhances sea strike and anti submarine warfare capabilities with its new generation frigate.

France’s defense procurement agency (DGA) said on 15 September 2025 that Amiral Ronarc’h, the lead Defence and Intervention Frigate (FDI), has sailed from Naval Group’s yard in Lorient to her home port in Brest. It follows the start of sea trials confirmed by Naval Group in October 2024. The FDI is a compact 4,500 ton frigate which brings a digital radar suite, a modern combat system, and a familiar but sharpened armament mix. It carries Aster family of surface to air missiles loaded in vertical launch silos, Exocet anti-ship missiles on the wings, a 76 mm main gun forward, MU90 lightweight torpedoes for the undersea fight, and a pair of remotely operated 20 mm mounts to manage close-in threats. With technological innovations onboard, such as a cyberspace defense system, this frigate is one of the most modern and advanced, enabling France to deploy its presence in the most challenging and risky sea environments.
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France’s new defense frigate combines long range missiles, advanced radar and powerful sonar with the ability to track aircraft, strike surface targets and hunt submarines (Picture source: Naval Group).

The frigate overall length is about 122 meters with a CODAD propulsion plant sized for roughly 32 megawatts. Top speed reaches the high twenties in knots, enough to keep station with a carrier group or dash to a tasking. Range and endurance are set for sustained Atlantic patrols, with the navy quoting more than a month on mission without a heavy logistics tail. The standard crew sits near 125 sailors with margin for a detachment of aviation and mission specialists. The flight deck and hangar are sized for a 10 ton helicopter such as the Caïman Marine. That gives the ship a real reach in anti-submarine warfare and surface surveillance, with space and electrical margin to bring aboard unmanned systems as the fleet experiments with rotary wing drones.

The mast carries Thales Sea Fire, a four face active electronically scanned array that provides 360 degree coverage with a high update rate. Fully digital signal processing lets the radar evolve through software drops rather than hardware swaps, a practical point as threat profiles shift. Below the waterline the ship pairs a Kingklip Mk2 hull sonar with a CAPTAS 4 Compact variable depth sonar. Towing a low frequency active array from a relatively small hull is notable because it buys detection range in difficult acoustic conditions and gives the command team a choice of active and passive modes. The electronic warfare and decoy fit follows the modern French approach. It blends soft kill effectors with the CANTO torpedo countermeasure, which is designed to scramble an incoming weapon’s target.

Two eight cell A50 vertical launchers give a loadout of sixteen Aster 15 or Aster 30 for local and area air defence. Eight Exocet missiles handle the surface strike role. The 76 mm gun offers a flexible option for warning shots, fast surface contacts, and limited anti air work. Two Narwhal remote mounts cover the close arcs against small craft and low, slow drones. For the undersea fight, the ship carries MU90 torpedoes and can vector the embarked helicopter to prosecute a contact well beyond the horizon. The combat management layer is Naval Group’s SETIS, now common across the yard’s surface combatants, which matters for integration and upgrades through life.

As a carrier escort, Amiral Ronarc’h contributes long range air picture quality for the group while adding a credible anti-submarine screen, especially when the helicopter and CAPTAS 4 Compact are in a coordinated hunt. Tasked independently, the FDI can sit on a chokepoint, protect a replenishment ship, or run interdiction with enough speed and endurance to stick with the job. Procedures and sensors are tuned for small boat swarms and proliferating drones, the type of contacts French frigates have dealt with in the Red Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. The IT backbone sets the frigate apart from the others already operating. Cyber resilient architecture, redundant processing, and virtualized applications are now part of combat power because availability and fast recovery after a disruption matter as much as the missile count.

The first of class started trials in October 2024 after schedule pressure typical of sensor heavy surface combatants. Software integration and new generation radars carry risk, and France is independant in this sector. The Lorient line is building toward a steady cadence with the remaining four French FDIs behind the lead ship. Brest as a home port places Amiral Ronarc’h close to Atlantic and Channel tasking and not far from the Île Longue SSBN base, a hint at future escort roles that include direct support to strategic forces. A workup period with long duration sorties is expected before commissioning, to burn down integration risk and let crews settle into the ship.

Russian submarine patrols in the North Atlantic have become more regular. Air and missile threats in the broader European theatre are denser, and the drone and USV challenge has moved from future combat hypotesis to daily watch logs. In that environment, a frigate that can build and share a clear air picture, hold a submarine at risk at range, and defeat cheap aerial or surface threats without expending scarce interceptors is highly valuable. The Aster and Sea Fire pairing is central here because reaction time and track purity come together in real engagements.

France positioned the FDI as an exportable first rank escort, and Greece has already signed on with its own variant. Commonality across builds should help with upgrades, spares, and training pipelines, which is increasingly a selling point as European navies recapitalize under budget pressure. For Paris, the class closes the gap left by the La Fayette frigates aging out of front line duty and contributes to NATO taskings from the High North to the Mediterranean.

Written by Evan Lerouvillois, Defense Analyst, Army Recognition Group.

Evan studied International Relations, and quickly specialized in defense and security. He is particularly interested in the influence of the defense sector on global geopolitics, and analyzes how technological innovations in defense, arms export contracts, and military strategies influence the international geopolitical scene.