Defense Technology International – France is deploying the nuclear attack submarine SNA LíAmethyste on a two month deployment to the U.S. east coast and Caribbean. It will operate there as part of the USS Roosevelt aircraft carrier battle group.
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Defense Technology International – Where do French naval pilots practice taking-off and landing on an aircraft carrier while theirs is in the shipyard? Answer: borrow others’ at every available opportunity???or land on one sketched out on a landing strip. So, before the USS Harry S. Truman sails out of French waters after docking in the Mediterranean port of Marseilles, since last Thursday two Rafales and one Hawkeye had some practice runs landing and taking off from its flight deck yesterday.
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Bangkok Post – The Burmese military junta showed signs of paranoia on Friday, denouncing a French naval ship packed with 1,500 tonnes of food aid, with aircraft capable of delivering it, as a “warship” standing off its coast. France said a demand to deliver the aid through Rangoon airport was nonsense.
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Defense Technology International – The state of France’s naval air fleet.
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Reuters – French commandos seized six pirates in Somalia on Friday during a daring helicopter raid launched shortly after the bandits had released the 30-strong crew of a luxury yacht hijacked last week.
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Defense Technology International – The French navy has to recruit 4,000 men and women annually??? and it’s becoming tough.
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Angola Press – The French coastal frigate Le Commandant Bouan had been sent to monitor the luxury yacht seized, with its crew, on Friday by Somali pirates.

Associated Press – Pirates Dock French Boat in Somali Port.
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Defense Technology International – The French navy’s last Le Redoutable class submarine has set sail for the final time
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BBC – President Nicolas Sarkozy has gone beyond France’s traditional policy of selling arms to Gulf states by signing a deal with Abu Dhabi for a permanent French naval base.
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Defense Technology International – From 29 November to 4 December a virtual frigate (which looks remarkably like the yet-to-be-built Franco-Italian FREMM) called in on Second Life which could be visited 24 hours a day and where youngsters could meet virtual sailors who would answer questions about the jobs and careers they might have if they joined the French Navy.
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Defense Technology International – Another look at life aboard Tonnerre, France’s new b‚timents de protection et de commandement.
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Defense Technology International – NATO’s Noble Midas major naval exercise in the Adriatic sea ended on 16th October and, according to Commodore Alain Hinden of the French navy who commanded the 9,400 people and 50 ships (of which just one, the submarine USS Annapolis, was from the US Navy) which took part, it all ìwent remarkably well,î and was proof that a large naval HQ can function from aboard a ship.

The exercise was commanded from aboard the French Navy’s Tonnerre landing helicopter dock — the new-born sister ship of the Mistral having been delivered to the navy on 1st August ñ the first time such a large HQ (240 computer terminals) has been assembled aboard a ship.
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Aviation Week and Space Technology – Another look at France’s new ship the Mistral, a landing helicopter dock ship.
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Defense Technology International – A cruise aboard the French Navy’s landing helicopter dock ship Mistral.
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Agence France Presse – A French aircraft-carrier Clemenceau, insulated with asbestos, at the centre of a court battle with environmental groups, resumed its final journey to an Indian breaker’s yard yesterday
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Daily Telegraph – France is set to use Britain’s design for the Royal Navy’s two new aircraft carriers to build its own carrier, paving the way for industrial co–operation between the two nations.
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Virginian Pilot – Nearly 3,000 French sailors and marines will arrive in Norfolk on Friday aboard the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to prepare for a multinational exercise that is the harbinger of NATOís first rapid-response force.
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Associated Press – Aboard the helicopter carrier Jeanne D’Arc off of Indonesia.
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French Navy – Two French warships, the helicopter carrier Jeanne d’Arc and the frigate George Leygues, are scheduled to arrive on Friday in Aceh province to delivery humanitarian aid to the tsunami-battered town of Meulaboh, the French Embassy in Jakarta said on Thursday.
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