Macron speeds up Rafale warplane orders as France invests in nuclear deterrence

(This March 18 story has been corrected to fix the model name to F5, not S5, in paragraph 8)

By Michel Rose

LUXEUIL-LES-BAINS, France (Reuters) - President Emmanuel Macron said France would order additional Rafale warplanes in the coming years and invest nearly 1.5 billion euros ($1.6 billion) into one of its air bases to equip its squadrons with the latest nuclear missile technology.

Jolted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and U.S. President Donald Trump's more confrontational stance towards traditional Western allies, European countries are hiking defence spending and seeking to reduce dependence on the United States.

Macron, who has initiated a doubling of the French defence budget over the course of his two mandates, has recently set an even higher target, saying the country should increase defence spending to 3-3.5% of economic output from the current 2%.

He has also offered to extend the protection of France's nuclear weapons, the so-called nuclear umbrella, to other European countries.

"We haven't waited for 2022 or the turning point we're seeing right now to discover that the world we live in is ever more dangerous, ever more uncertain, and that it implies to innovate, to bulk up and to become more autonomous," he said.

"I will announce in the coming weeks new investments to go further than what was done over the past seven years," he told soldiers at one of the country's historical air bases in Luxeuil, eastern France.

Macron said he had decided to turn the base, famed in military circles as the home of American volunteer pilots during World War One, into one of its most advanced bases in its nuclear deterrence programme.

The base will host the latest Rafale F5 fighter jets, which will carry France's next-generation ASN4G hypersonic nuclear-armed cruise missiles, which are intended to be operational from 2035 onwards, French officials said.

The French air force will also receive additional Dassault-made Rafale warplanes, in part to replace the Mirage jets France has transferred to Ukraine, Macron said.

"We are going to increase and accelerate our orders for Rafales," he said.

French officials said the 1.5 billion euros were part of the already approved multi-year military spending plan. It remained unclear how France would finance a massive hike in military spending at a time it is trying to reduce its budget deficit.

Macron's speech comes on the day the German parliament approved a massive increase in military spending.

($1 = 0.9165 euros)

(Reporting by Benoit Van Overstraeten and Michel Rose; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Alex Richardson)