Response to the article ‘Unfit for purpose: reassessing the development and deployment of French nuclear weapons (1956–74)’ by Mongin and Vaïsse

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Notes

¹ Cf. the article by General François Maurin: ‘La mise en place opérationnelle de la Triade stratégique (Mirage IV, SSBS Albion, SNLE) et des chaînes de contrôle’, in Université de Franche-Comté, Institut Charles de Gaulle, L’aventure de la Bombe – De Gaulle et la dissuasion nucléaire (1958–1969) (Paris: Plon, 1985), 224.

² Ibid., 226 and 227.

³ Marcel Duval and Yves Le Baut, L’arme nucléaire française – Pourquoi et comment (Paris: SPM, 1992), 41.

⁴ Maurice Vaïsse and Jean Doise, Diplomatie et outil militaire – Politique étrangère de la France (1871–1969) (Paris, [Imprimerie nationale, 1987]; Seuil, 2015), 617; Jean-Damien Pô, Les moyens de la puissance – Les activités militaires du CEA (1945–2000) (Paris: Ellipse, 2001), 108; Serge Gadal, Forces Aériennes Stratégiques (Paris: Economica, 2009), 73.

⁵ Cf. Dominique Mongin, ‘Specificities and Evolution of Airborne Weapons’, Journée FAS, Paris, Ecole militaire, October 3, 2019 (publication forthcoming).

⁶ See Marcel Duval and Dominique Mongin, Histoire des forces nucléaires françaises depuis 1945 (Paris: PUF, 1993), 74.

⁷ Thus the statements reported by Alain Peyrefitte in C’était de Gaulle, vol. 1, 290 and 344–5, and vol. 2, 112–15, which date from 1962 and 1963, respectively, are transformed by the authors of the article; in any case, the French nuclear forces would only start to become operational from 1964 onwards!

⁸ Marcel Duval and Yves Le Baut, L’arme nucléaire française – Pourquoi et comment, 38.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ Ibid., 53.

¹¹ See in particular Bruno Tertrais, ‘La coopération militaire depuis 1969: la France, l’OTAN et la question nucléaire’, in La France et l’OTAN (1949–1996), ed. Maurice Vaïsse, Pierre Mélandri and Frédéric Bozo (Brussels: Complexes, 1996), 623.

¹² See Céline Jurgensen and Dominique Mongin, eds., France and Nuclear Deterrence – A Spirit of Resistance (Paris, 2020), book in open access in the following link, https://www.frstrategie.org/en/publications/recherches-et-documents/france-and-nuclear-deterrence-spirit-resistance-2020 (accessed 12 May 2023).

¹³ See Maurice Vaïsse, La grandeur – Politique étrangère du général de Gaulle (Paris, [Fayard, 1998], CNRS éditions, 2013), 371.

¹⁴ Charles de Gaulle, Discours et messages, volume 4, Paris, Plon, 1970, page 233.

¹⁵ The French Study Group on the History of Nuclear Armaments (GREFHAN), created in 1986, brought together, in a highly innovative manner for the time, university professors, young researchers and personal testimonies, with the aim of contributing to writing the history of nuclear deterrence thanks to these overlapping viewpoints.