Air and naval defence

Brittany is home to four military air and naval bases of vital strategic importance for the French Navy. In Brest the naval and submarine bases provide crucial operational support to the Navy’s surface vessels and nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). A short distance away is the Landivisiau naval airbase, from which the Navy’s Rafale aircraft take off, and the Lanvéoc-Poulmic base which provides technical and logistical operational support from aircraft attached to the base or seconded to naval surface vessels.

These major military hubs are served by a whole ecosystem, with large companies such as Thales and Naval Group, as well as around a hundred SMEs working in the defence sector notably under the umbrella of the Pôle Mer Bretagne Atlantique. Finistère also plays a significant role in training the service personnel of tomorrow, with three prestigious educational institutions. The French Naval Academy (École Navale) teaches around 2,000 students every year, from sailors and officers to doctoral students. The Brest Naval Training Centre (Centre d’instruction navale de Brest) comprises the École des Mousses, École de Maistrance and Lycée Naval. Finally, ENSTA Bretagne engineering school trains future military engineers and is an active contributor to innovation in the field of defence.

Innovation is also supplied by the French Naval Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service (Shom), which produces new nautical charts, and the French Naval Academy Research Institute (IRENav), which has teams working on maritime data modelling and processing and mechanics and energy in the maritime environment. The Naval Academy is also home to the Humanities and Social Sciences Training Group, which researches the skills essential for future naval officers. The Chair of Naval Cyber Defence and the Chair of Resilience and Leadership are also part of the Naval Academy and develop diagnostic tools to assess organisations’ resilience. Located at the tip of Brittany, all these institutions are helping to find responses to the major air and naval defence challenges of tomorrow.

To find out more

The technical innovation centre ORION, Organisation pour la Recherche et l'Innovation Opérationnelle Navale (Organisation for Naval Research and Operational Innovation)

Discover ORION (in French only)

Photo: Stéphane Marc