All in Defence Procurement
When Julie was a child she dreamed of one day marching in the military parade down the Champs Elysées on Bastille Day, 14th July. She did so in 2005, dressed in the military skirt and boots (“awfully hot,” she laughs) uniform of a female student at the prestigious École Polytechnique. She remembers having “a few butterflies before the parade, but once you start marching, you forget the stage fright. It went by super quickly,” she marvels…
Monique Legrand-Larroche is a petite woman whose kind blue eyes and very long hair, habitually worn in a ponytail, belie the iron determination which led her to becoming France's first 4-star General... and the holder of a private helicopter pilot's licence…
Caroline Laurent has a very quiet voice for a four-star General! I have to lean forwards to hear her even though we're sitting in a large, quiet office that's been set up for her in the French Ministry of the Armed Forces' pavilion at the Eurosatory land and air-land show, held just outside Paris last week. I have half an hour scheduled with her. Our conversation lasts more than twice that long…
Delphine is not only a colonel in the French DGA (see glossary), she's an engineer, a doctor in robotics and has been the director of advanced studies for land systems for the past year. “What motivates me is trying to build things,” she says…
