An initial tranche of €15.6 million will fund a feasibility study for the MBT project. This funding is made possible by a planned 13% increase in the defence ministry’s budget, from €50.5 billion in 2025 to €57.1 billion.
The MBT missile has been actively promoted by ArianeGroup for over a year, with discussions on its deployment beginning last autumn between the French Armed Forces General Staff (État-major des armées), the Directorate General of Armaments (Direction générale de l’armement), and the Ministry of the Armed Forces. While official details remain limited, the system is expected to be a medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) with a range exceeding 2,000 km, launched from a wheeled mobile platform.
Its warhead will reportedly perform active manoeuvres during its terminal flight phase to complicate interception. Although the warhead is to be conventional, “this does not mean that a thermonuclear warhead, for example derived from MIRV-type systems of the M51 family of submarine-launched ballistic missiles produced by ArianeGroup, will not be developed in the future.”
A future upgrade could involve a hypersonic glide vehicle, currently under development by ArianeGroup as part of the VMaX programme. The missile’s relatively simple single-warhead design is intended to “drastically reduce research and development and implementation costs, development time, and unit production cost.”
Historically, France operated land-based ballistic missiles classified as Sol-Sol Balistique Stratégique (SSBS), deployed in 18 underground silos on the Albion Plateau. These included the S1, S2, and S3 systems, the latter of which had a range of 3,500 km and was retired in 1996, ending France’s membership in the informal group of nations possessing a full nuclear triad.
According to French media, the return to developing long-range land-based ballistic missiles is intended to strengthen France’s strategic independence from the United States in critical capabilities. The MBT is expected to engage land targets across hundreds or thousands of kilometres and will complement France’s existing long-range strike assets, including the NCM and LCM cruise missiles and new air- and sea-launched systems being developed in cooperation with the United Kingdom.
