France's 2027 Defence Budget Assigns EUR 1.5 Billion of Commitments to a Ground-Launched Ballistic Missile
Paris, 2 October 2026
Key points
- The 2027 performance annex (PAP) for the Défense mission of the draft finance law assigns EUR 1.5 billion of commitment authorisations to the Missile Balistique Terrestre (MBT), France's planned ground-launched ballistic missile, under programme 146, Équipement des forces
- Of that, EUR 79.34 million is to be engaged in 2027, for "preparatory work" and price adjustments, and EUR 65.2 million paid; EUR 88.24 million assigned earlier was still unengaged at the end of 2026
- Quantity, industrial organisation and the order-and-delivery schedule will all be "defined at the launch into realisation", which the annex dates to 2028; the 2027 assignment is for the preparation phase
- The Défense mission rises by EUR 6.5 billion over 2026 under the programming-law update voted on 16 August 2026
France has written a ballistic-missile programme into its 2027 budget at full size before deciding how many, by whom or when: EUR 1.5 billion is set aside, and about EUR 80 million of it is to be committed next year.
The update to the 2024–2030 military programming law, presented in April with studies for a conventional ballistic missile of up to 2,500 kilometres, was voted in August. The budget annex gives the MBT no range, no target and no prime contractor. ArianeGroup, maker of the M51 sea-launched missile, said in April it was studying conventional ballistic-missile production; the annex names no company.
Its neighbours in the same budget line are further on. The future cruise missile (FMC), developed with the United Kingdom, is assigned EUR 1.82 billion with EUR 310.7 million of payments in 2027, and its first increment, under MBDA, entered realisation in July 2026. The successor to the LRU rocket launcher, extending range from 80 to 150 kilometres, moves to realisation this year, and CHORUS, a mass-produced very long-range one-way drone, was launched in December 2025.
Assigning the whole EUR 1.5 billion now is a commitment of budget authority, not of money: it lets the ministry sign a large multi-year contract the moment the programme launches, and EUR 65 million of payments shows how little moves before then. Every decision that would make the MBT a weapon, from range and numbers to the prime and any partner, falls in 2028, after France's presidential election in the spring of 2027. The envelope is a marker the next government inherits, and it can be re-scoped without cancelling anything. Signal No. 159 carried the trade-press account of the same line; the annex confirms its 2027 figures.
Related · France's conventional ballistic missile
