SUMMARY

In this essay, Benoît Pelopidas outlines what is known about French NC3 and identifies discursive, sociological and temporal challenges to assessing the validity of claims on this topic. After reviewing the primacy of presidential nuclear authority, the nuclear chain of command, civilian control over the arsenal, tension between legitimacy and robustness of the chain of command, the role of military authority in the launch order, inadequate code transfer, and accidents and close calls, he concludes: “Beyond the problems of arbitrariness, mismanagement, incidents and accidents outlined above, there are key components of the French nuclear command and control system about which we either do not know much or have partial and conflicting accounts.”