Wildfires near Bordeaux threaten Dassault Rafale assembly line, nuclear deterrent sites

PARIS — Wildfires raging west of the French city of Bordeaux are threatening several of France's key defense-industrial sites, including:

• An ArianeGroup facility that produces propulsion components for the M51 submarine-launched ballistic missile
• Dassault Aviation's final assembly line for the Rafale fighter jet
• One of Roxel's main manufacturing sites for solid rocket motors used in MBDA missiles

Evacuations and Equipment Relocations

Dassault Aviation said it was moving sensitive equipment from a site closest to the wildfires to one nearer Bordeaux, with most workers staying home in line with instructions issued by authorities. The company had to move "a certain number of sensitive equipment" from its site in Martignas and a logistics center in Cestas to its site in Mérignac and the local Air Base 106, working in close cooperation with France's Directorate General for Armament (DGA) and local authorities, the aircraft maker said in an emailed statement late Monday.

Employees at the Mérignac and Martignas plants are staying home unless they have been evacuated, Dassault said. Those still working are teams necessary for equipment transfer and personnel responsible for site protection and fire-fighting efforts.

ArianeGroup evacuated its affected sites, and the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) closed its military nuclear research site near Bordeaux as the wildfires approached.

ArianeGroup said its sites west of Bordeaux "have been evacuated, and all necessary measures have been taken to secure them." The company declined to comment on security measures around its sites.

Fire Status and Proximity to Strategic Sites

The Gironde department of southwest France has been battling one of the country's largest wildfires on record, with over 100,000 acres burned — an area roughly four times the size of Paris. The fires in recent days approached the cluster of defense and aerospace sites west of Bordeaux that represents one of France's most important concentrations of missile, propulsion, combat aircraft, and military electronics production.

Satellite data on Tuesday morning showed wildfires remained active less than 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) west of Dassault's Martignas site, which is the wing assembly plant for the Rafale jet, before final assembly in Mérignac.

Satellite data also showed active wildfires approximately:

• 12 kilometers west of ArianeGroup's Candale site, where propulsion units of the M51 missile stages are integrated and assembled
• 13 kilometers from the Saint-Médard-en-Jalles site, where the missile is fueled
• 16 kilometers from the Le Haillan site, which produces solid-propulsion systems

NASA's Fire Information for Resource Management System showed fires and hot spots west of Bordeaux were significantly reduced as of 9:00 a.m. local time Tuesday. However, authorities warned that a new wave of hot weather peaking on Wednesday, combined with near-record drought conditions, could cause fire activity to pick up again.

Strategic Importance and Response

"Whilst the unprecedented forest fires in Gironde are above all an environmental and humanitarian disaster, they also threaten sites that are of vital strategic importance to our nuclear deterrent," said Etienne Marcuz, an associate fellow at the Foundation pour la Recherche Stratégique, in a post on the social media network X on Sunday.

Emergency services, aided by local construction companies, worked during the night of Friday to Saturday and throughout the day to clear vegetation and create firebreaks around a number of sensitive sites, Gironde department Prefect Sophie Brocas said in a press conference on Saturday.

Marc Vermeulen, head of the Gironde department fire and emergency service, said that after protecting lives, the next priority is protecting at-risk strategic sites. The DGA has a missile testing site just west of Saint-Médard.

Thales said its site at Mérignac has been c