Claims that the French government is planning to scrap one
of its four nuclear submarines and make other swingeing cuts to its military
capabilities, have been dismissed as "fanciful" by defence officials.
The country's Le Parisien newspaper claims the threat to axe a nuclear sub – leaving France without the ability to maintain a continuous nuclear presence at sea – is among a series of shock proposals in the French defence white paper for 2015-19, due for publication in January next year.
The newspaper claims one proposal is to save an estimated 2.6bn euros (£1.6bn) by no longer carrying airborne nuclear warheads on Mirage 2000 and Rafale jets.
And on the plans to the French nuclear submarine fleet from four to three vessels Le Parisien said: "Given maintenance needs, France would no longer be able to be present at sea 365 days a year."
Other cost-cutting proposals cited by the newspaper include cutting the number of military bases in France from 60 to 20, and radically reducing the number of new recruits to the French Army.
But a French defence ministry spokesman slammed the reported proposals as "fanciful".
"These appear to come from very partial military sources discussing working scenarios for the future rather than documents from the defence ministry, and have nothing to do with the white paper," he told The Daily Telegraph.
"The paper outlines political and military strategy for the coming years, not military restructuring. Questions about allocating means will only come afterwards in a military programmatic law sometime next June," he said.
The spokesman also insisted that the two pillars of France's nuclear deterrent – seaborne and airborne – were non-negotiable and would be "maintained during President François Hollande's entire (five-year) mandate."
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