France rolls out fifth new nuclear attack submarine

Naval Group has rolled out Rubis, the fifth of six Barracuda nuclear-powered attack submarines it is building for the French Navy, moving the boat out of its construction hall at the company’s shipyard in Cherbourg on Oct. 16, 2026. The submarine was transferred onto the yard’s floating shiplift platform in the presence of Catherine Vautrin, France’s minister for the armed forces and veterans. Naval Group will now finish outfitting the boat and run a series of trials alongside the quay and then at sea before handing it over to the French Navy. “It is with great pride and a deep sense of responsibility that we today transferred the Rubis, the fifth Suffren-class nuclear attack submarine, to its launch platform. This crucial milestone comes just 17 months after that of the nuclear attack submarine De Grasse, a symbol of our commitment to our customers,” said Pierre Éric Pommellet, chairman and CEO of Naval Group. The program is known as Barracuda, and the boats themselves are called the Suffren class after the first submarine in the series. It is replacing the six Rubis-class attack submarines France put into service from the 1980s, and the new Rubis takes the name of the boat that led that older class. France’s defense procurement agency, the DGA, runs the program with the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, which handles the nuclear reactors, and the plan calls for all six submarines to be delivered by 2030. Four are already in service or delivered. Suffren was handed over in November 2020, followed by Duguay-Trouin and Tourville, and De Grasse was delivered in June 2026, about 13 months after its own rollout in May 2025 and four months after it first went to sea. If Rubis follows a similar path, it will spend the coming months on quayside testing, reactor startup and sea trials. The sixth and final boat, Casabianca, is also under construction. The Suffren-class boats are about 99 meters (325 feet) long and displace roughly 5,300 tonnes submerged. They carry F21 heavyweight torpedoes, Exocet SM39 anti-ship missiles and MBDA’s naval cruise missiles, which give the French Navy the ability to strike targets on land from a submerged submarine, and they can carry and deploy special forces. Naval Group designs and builds the submarines and produces the main components of their nuclear propulsion plants with TechnicAtome. It also provides logistical support and maintenance for the boats in Toulon, the home port of France’s attack submarine force on the Mediterranean. About 3,000 people are working on the design and construction of the submarines, including around 800 from Naval Group subcontractors, up from the 2,500 the company cited when De Grasse rolled out last year.