Jean-Luc Boujon, correspondent, in Mont-Verdun (Rhône) / Photo credit: JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK / AFP
For his first official trip to the armed forces, Gabriel Attal went to the Mont-Verdun air base, near Lyon, where soldiers monitor French airspace. A strategic location, because it is here that airspace security operations will largely be piloted during the Olympics.
Gabriel Attal on all fronts. This Friday morning, the Prime Minister made his very first official trip to the armed forces since his appointment to Matignon. He chose to visit the Mont-Verdun military air base, near Lyon, the nerve center of French air defense.
The head of government descended 120 meters underground to visit the command center, buried under the hill. This is where soldiers monitor French airspace. A place that is all the more strategic, in the current context, as it is there that airspace security operations will largely be piloted during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
2,400 airmen mobilized during the Olympics
The Prime Minister was briefed on this subject and was presented with a jamming rifle used in the fight against drones. “We turn it on and there, we have several buttons which correspond to several jamming frequencies. And then, depending on what we want to jam, we are the ones who choose the frequency,” explains this soldier, specifying that this system can today be embedded in the Fennec helicopter.
In all, 2,400 aviators are mobilized for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games and a 150km airspace around Paris will be entirely closed and monitored for the occasion, partly from Lyon. Gabriel Attal was also able to see the Fennec helicopter which equips the French forces and will return to Paris in the afternoon aboard the Air Force’s Phoenix tanker plane. The head of government therefore had a small overview, material and human, of the French military capacity and strike force.