You submitted the best technical proposal. You knew it. The client chose someone else. Dozens of SME leaders in the defense industry face this reality every quarter, silently wondering if their teams aren’t good enough. They are. The problem lies elsewhere, and it has nothing to do with your competence. It has everything to do with how your company is perceived, understood, and anticipated by the defense ecosystem—sometimes twelve to eighteen months before the call for bids is published. This article is not a sales pitch. It is a mirror.
Salbris, Loir-et-Cher. Pierre-Jean Brochand heads MecaSup, a company with 35 employees, €4.5 million in revenue, and more than enough industrial capacity in precision engineering to go around. With €38 billion in orders to be awarded by the French Defense Procurement Agency by 2025, orders are pouring in for some defense SMEs. But others still aren’t seeing any of it. And they’re hesitant to invest in producing more and faster due to a lack of visibility or cash flow. The CEO’s verdict is final: “There’s a lot of talk, but we’re not seeing the orders. I mean, I hope we’re not in a war economy—otherwise, that’s serious.”
This paradox highlights a blind spot in France’s defense procurement system. The 2024–2030 Military Planning Law (LPM) allocated €413.3 billion to the armed forces over seven years, representing a 40% increase compared to the previous LPM. Yet, for some executives, the trickle-down effect seems like a pipe dream. The DGA has placed orders worth €38 billion for 2025, primarily with major industrial prime contractors such as Dassault Aviation, Thales, MBDA, and KNDS. Despite a booming market, the situation for defense subcontractors is far from ideal for the 4,500 companies in the defense industrial and technological base.
The troubling question: Why do some small and medium-sized businesses capitalize on this windfall while others—despite being technically flawless—miss out on the opportunity?
The French BITD is a statistical anomaly. The typical profile of an average BITD company is an SME with fifty employees and defense-related revenue accounting for around 25% of its total revenue. In other words, tens of thousands of you look alike on paper: size, expertise, certifications, and know-how. And that is precisely where everything comes down to.
For thirty years, technical excellence was the key to success. Mastering a niche, possessing critical expertise, and holding the necessary clearances: that was enough to survive. The BITD network thus took shape, consisting of direct or indirect subcontractors to major defense contractors, spread across the entire country but concentrated primarily in historically significant regions chosen for their proximity to natural resources and distance from disputed borders. These companies are particularly concentrated in five regions: Île-de-France, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Occitanie, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, and Brittany.
The problem is that everyone is competent. Technical expertise has become a necessary condition, but it is never enough on its own.
Three factors have been game-changers in less than five years:
The war economy is driving unprecedented pace. The DGA has identified 4% of the 4,000 companies in the BITD as potential “bottlenecks.” A technically brilliant subcontractor that is perceived as unstable becomes a risk. The buyer is no longer looking for the best. Instead, they are looking for the most reliable, the most visible, and the most predictable.
Cybersecurity has become a deal-breaker. Since June 2024, Safran has required its subcontractors to meet a minimum cybersecurity standard. Safran has made the Bronze level mandatory for its subcontractors. At Dassault, some 1,000 critical subcontractors must complete a 21-question cybersecurity questionnaire.
Financial pressure is redefining the criteria. The 2024 OED/DG Trésor study of 2,072 mid-sized companies and SMEs shows that, when comparing companies with similar revenue, value added, sector, and age, BITD companies generate a lower gross operating surplus than the comparison group. This lower margin reduces the ability of BITD companies to invest.
The direct result is that buyers no longer read your technical proposal first. They assess your overall credibility first. If that isn’t immediately apparent, they’ll never read the rest.
Here is the truth that few observers are willing to admit openly:by the time the request for proposals is issued, the outcome is largely a foregone conclusion.The list of companies being seriously considered has been compiled well in advance—through internal discussions among project managers, DGA briefings, and feedback from other programs.
The DGA conducts ongoing mapping efforts. The DGA ITE center, an organization attached to the S2IE and based in Angoulême, monitors information across more than a hundred topics, ranging from the economic health of French SMEs to the war in Ukraine. Regulatory changes, annual financial reports, cash flow issues, and the status of equipment on NATO’s eastern flank: delivered in the form of newsletters, this data informs the daily deliberations and decisions of the defense community.
Understand exactly what this means: your company is being reviewed, scrutinized, and ranked long before anyone asks you anything. The DGA’s regional representatives, on the other hand, do the groundwork. The engineer by training describes himself as the interface between the DGA and the sector’s economic and institutional players: “My role is to monitor economic and technological developments among BITD suppliers, report any difficulties, and provide targeted solutions.”
| Upstream phase | What's at stake | What the buyer sees |
|---|---|---|
| 18 monthsout: capacity planning | The project manager draws up the industrial plan | Are you on her radar? |
| 12 months prior: supplier risk assessment | Identification of limiting factors | Does your image convey reliability? |
| 6 months out: informal preliminary consultations | Verification of potential partners | Does your name come to mind right away? |
At each of these moments, it’s not your past credentials that speak for you. It’s what the ecosystem says, writes, and remembers about you.
Last December, ammunition manufacturer KNDS signed a three-year contract with Les Forges de Tarbes, its supplier of 155mm shell casings, with the option to extend the agreement for an additional three years. In exchange, Les Forges de Tarbes committed to doubling its production capacity if necessary. A win-win agreement on the industrial front of the war economy.
Why Les Forges de Tarbes? Not just because of the quality of their hollow sections. Because, in the client’s mind, they had becomethe obvious choice for this specific need. Visibility + commitment + industrial transparency.
Before opening your technical proposal, the buyer—whether a government agency or a Tier 1 supplier—unconsciously filters the options. Four key factors carry significant weight. None of them appear in the specifications.
The requirement for a minimum annual turnover of 50 million euros imposed on companies wishing to bid is based solely on the option provided by Article R. 2142-6 of the Public Procurement Code. Officially, the financial criterion in contracts issued by the Directorate General of Armaments is not intended to exclude small and medium-sized enterprises, but to ensure that the manufacturer or industrial consortium selected has the economic and financial capacity to supply this equipment throughout the duration of the contract.
Unofficially, it acts as a filter. Your website, your financial communications, and your presence in rankings and specialized media all play a role in projecting—or failing to project—this stability.
The head of S2IE emphasizes the need to “share and extend this visibility” across all players in the production chain, particularly SMEs that serve as subcontractors to large corporations, so that growth can be achieved collectively. But for that to happen, the buyer must know that you can keep up.
This message is built on public evidence: disclosed investments, advertised job openings, announced partnerships, and content that demonstrates your industrial capabilities. An SME that remains silent on these topics is perceived as stagnant—and therefore vulnerable.
The AirCyber initiative, launched in 2018 by Airbus, Dassault, Safran, and Thales, aims to help suppliers improve their cybersecurity maturity. It also seeks to provide a common framework in response to the growing number of regulations and requirements. Following a cybersecurity assessment—which starts at 5,000 euros—subcontractors are offered the opportunity to progress through levels ranging from bronze to gold.
“Among our smaller suppliers, some answer ‘no’ to virtually every question, including trivial ones like, ‘Do you have password-protected Wi-Fi?’ Yet some of them have defense contractors as clients—that’s concerning,” says Arnaud Massia, deputy head of information systems security at Dassault Aviation. The result: failing to publicly communicate your compliance implies that it does not exist.
Here is the most underrated signal. A potential buyer—whether they find you through Google, LinkedIn, a trade show, or a referral—needs to understand within 90 seconds:
If your website looks like that of a generic mechanical subcontractor, you’ll be categorized as such. If your LinkedIn profile doesn’t mention your commitment to defense, you won’t show up in buyers’ internal searches.
A recent industry study confirms a growing divergence. Revenue for subcontractors is rising sharply, particularly for SMEs, up 11%, but also for equipment manufacturers, up 8%, between 2023 and 2024. The proportion of profitable companies stands at 83% for SMEs and 74% for equipment manufacturers.
But behind the average, the gap is widening. Some are getting it, while others are just watching. Five behaviors set the former apart.
They don’t “create content.” Instead, they publish analyses, expert opinions, and technical explanations that make their expertise accessible to non-specialists: journalists, lawmakers, young buyers, and financial professionals. They become a go-tosourcein their niche.
They announce investments, new hires, certifications, and partnerships. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and mid-sized companies will need to raise between five and seven billion euros in new financing—including one to three billion euros in equity—over the next five years to fund the approximately 17.5 billion euro increase in their order books. In this race for capital, the “invisible” players will raise nothing.
Bpifrance and the DGA have launched the first cohort of the Defense Accelerator. Comprising 28 SMEs, this program is launching amid the unique context of a transition to a wartime economy, which requires a rapid ramp-up in industrial production rates. The selected companies are part of the Defense Industrial and Technological Base. Being among these 28 means immediately coming onto the national radar. But getting in requires having already established, beforehand, a clear understanding of one’s role.
Regional defense industry clusters, deputy defense attachés for armaments, GICAT/GICAN/GIFAS, and specialized media: the successful SMEs are present, mentioned, and recognized in these forums. The purpose of these promotional efforts is to increase the visibility of French SMEs in the partner country and, ultimately, to contribute to an increase in orders placed with the French defense industry.
Rather than viewing AirCyber or NIS 2 as a cost, they present them as a mark of reliability. The first level is intended to ensure compliance with the European NIS 2 cybersecurity directive, which came into effect in France last October and will be subject to penalties for non-compliance starting in late 2027. Those who anticipate and communicate about this compliance gain a noticeable head start.
| Criterion | Small business that is losing money | A successful small business |
|---|---|---|
| Competitive Landscape | “We’re better technically” | "We're more strategically transparent" |
| Business Outlook | At the AO | 18 months to go |
| Communication | Brochure + trade show | Continuous, multi-channel narrative |
| Cybersecurity | Endured | Displayed as evidence |
| Institutional partners | None | Mapped, activated |
| Website | Catalog | Demonstration of expertise |
The government has launched an initiative on a scale not seen since the 1960s. The French defense industry consists of nine major groups with a European and global reach, around which a vast network of 4,500 startups, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and mid-sized companies is organized across the country, representing 220,000 direct and indirect jobs. Bpifrance has created a €450 million fund to finance the defense industry. Accessible with a minimum investment of €500, this fund aims to enable French citizens who wish to do so to invest capital to meet the growing needs of companies in the sector.
But this window of opportunity will not last forever. An amendment to the military programming law will be presented and debated in Parliament to accelerate the country’s rearmament. The choices made by industry players today will shape the defense industrial base for the next ten years. The ground gained now cannot be lost.
The mirror is clear:
The SMEs that are succeeding in BITD today aren’t the ones that perform better. They’re the ones that get their message across better, sooner, and more clearly. Technical expertise is proven once. Perceived clarity is built up quarter by quarter.
This is precisely the problem we address at Autour de l’Image with The Influence & Authority Engine. This isn’t marketing. It is the methodical building of strategic visibility for SMEs whose expertise deserves to be seen, understood, and anticipated by defense buyers. Authoritative content, presence in industry conversations, financial and industrial transparency, and visibility within the ecosystem: everything that makes your name stand out in the mental map of your clients.
Before reaching out to a sales representative, before rewriting a brochure, before responding to the next RFP, ask yourself one simple question:Does your name come up spontaneously in the 18 months leading up to a program, in the conversations that matter?
If the answer isn't a resounding "yes," the problem isn't your technical proposal. It lies further upstream.
Discover the Defense Trajectory Audit. In less than 30 days, we’ll identify how your ecosystem truly perceives you, what factors are elevating or downgrading your standing in invisible rankings, and what can be addressed before the next planning window.
