Naval Group

Naval Group traces its lineage back nearly four centuries to naval arsenals founded under Cardinal Richelieu, though the modern company took shape as DCN, then DCNS, before rebranding to Naval Group in 2017. It remains majority owned by the French state, which holds roughly 62 percent, with Thales holding 35 percent and the remainder split between the company and its employees, a structure that keeps it tightly bound to French naval strategy while giving it a major electronics partner. The company organizes its work into several connected lines rather than sharply separated divisions. Submarines are its most strategically sensitive product: it builds France's Triomphant-class ballistic missile submarines that carry the nation's sea-based nuclear deterrent, the Barracuda-class nuclear attack submarines now entering service, and the diesel-electric Scorpene, which has become one of the most successful conventional submarine exports of the last three decades, in service with or on order for Chile, Malaysia, India, and Brazil.

Surface ships cover the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier, France's sole carrier and the only nuclear-powered carrier outside the US Navy, the FREMM multipurpose frigates built jointly with Italy's Fincantieri, the Horizon-class air defense destroyers, and the smaller La Fayette-class stealth frigates that pioneered low-observable warship design in the 1990s. A dedicated systems business supplies combat management systems, mission systems, and increasingly cybersecurity integration for the vessels the company builds and for other navies' platforms. Equipment and underwater weapons form another leg, covering periscopes, sonar domes, torpedoes, and other subsystems sold both bundled into full ships and as standalone exports. A services arm handles the multi-decade maintenance and modernization work that keeps submarines and surface combatants running, including nuclear infrastructure support at French naval bases.

More recently the company has pushed into naval drones, developing autonomous underwater and surface systems for mine countermeasures and surveillance, an area every major navy is racing to build out. Naval Group's most closely watched recent chapter was Australia's 2016 selection of an Attack-class Barracuda derivative for its submarine fleet, a roughly 50 billion dollar program that Australia canceled in 2021 in favor of the AUKUS nuclear submarine pathway, a reversal that cost the company a marquee export deal but did not slow its core French and existing export programs. Headquartered in Paris with about 15,000 employees across 17 countries, Naval Group remains one of the few shipbuilders in the world capable of designing and building both nuclear submarines and surface combatants under one roof.