According to senior French officers, the submarines and cruise missiles acquired by Algeria give it a significant advantage in controlling access to the Mediterranean.
The military calls this a denial of access bubble. Clearly, it is a question of preventing access to a place thanks to its military capabilities. According to General Philippe Moralès, the commander of French air defense and air operations, quoted by the specialized site Opex 360 , Algeria now has the possibility of prohibiting access to the Strait of Gibraltar.
Submarines and cruise missiles
Admiral Pierre Vandier, Chief of Staff of the National Navy, believes that the Algerian Navy has means that France does not have yet, or recently. “Algeria has had Kilo-type submarines equipped with Kalibr cruise missiles since 2016, five years before us,” explains the admiral. These Russian cruise missiles can be fired under the surface. The Algerian Navy has six Russian submarines, all capable of firing these Kalibr missiles. France had to wait for the development of the nationally designed naval cruise missile to have this capability. Its first firing took place in 2020.
Algeria has greatly increased its military capacity by multiplying acquisitions from Russia, and by devoting an annual budget of 2.3 billion euros to it for fifteen years. Result: the face of the Algerian army has changed profoundly. Submarines, surface ships, airplanes; in 2014, Algeria even had the Italian shipyards Fincantieri build the Kalaat Beni-Abbes, a landing and support building.
Means on which the French deputies Jean-Jacques Ferrara and Philippe Michel-Kleisbauer returned in their report on “the challenges of defense in the Mediterranean”. According to them, Algeria now has “access denial and area denial capabilities in the western Mediterranean, through an anti-aircraft defense system composed of S-300 and soon S-400 and advanced systems of radars”.
Deterrent
“If the extent of this rearmament, despite the severe economic crisis, raises questions about the objectives pursued by the Algerian army, several French intelligence officers interviewed in the context of this parliamentary report considered that Algeria does not have to this stage of desire for power projection”, writes Algérie Part Plus.
“The massive rearmament carried out by the ANP ( National People’s Army, editor’s note ) would obey mainly dissuasive intentions, in particular with regard to the Moroccan rival to whom it is necessary to send a strategic signal”, continues the website. Algeria would therefore not intend to engage in a naval battle.
