While French military expenditures have remained relatively constant over the last ten years, equipment production tended to decrease, resulting in capability gaps. This situation highlights the increasing costs of both acquiring and maintaining highly complex modern military equipment. 

Military helicopters have evolved into technologically sophisticated weapon systems. Originally designed to counter Soviet armor, attack helicopters now have to cope with a wide spectrum of threats, some of them bringing choppers back to their counterinsurgency roots.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the threat of cruise missile proliferation is as equally challenging to NATO as the threat of ballistic missiles. Over the last two decades, the emergence of cruise missiles and UAVs as a threat has been slow, and governments, particularly the United States, have invested much less in cruise missile defenses than in ballistic missile defenses.

Airborne operations draw their strategic importance from the scale and magnitude they provide to air-land operations. Yet, their concept of employment, shaped by their historical legacy may seem unfit to contemporary requirements - especially regarding their vulnerability during dropping and penetration phases when troops are isolated and highly dependent on external support.