Britain spends billions more than France on defence, so why is the French military superior?

It’s an uncomfortable comparison because we spend several billion a year more than the French, and it feels like they get more out of it than we do,” says Savill. “I would say, though, that they have different gaps. The Charles de Gaulle, for example, is not available for a certain proportion of the year. Had it been unavailable now, they would have had zero aircraft carriers to send [to Cyprus]. “The French asked us to send support helicopters a few years ago to help them in Mali because they didn’t have enough of their own.”