French nuclear submariners only see ships as targets

You have to stand at an angle to fit between the racks of torpedoes, Exocet missiles and mines in the weapons room of the Emeraude nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarine. Their subs are the smallest in the world, the French boast. Definitely not for the claustrophobic.

The bright orange mines, forest-green missiles and torpedoes are stacked horizontally facing the firing tubes, just like in the movies.

"The torpedoes have propellors," Cdr Frederic Renaudeau explains. "They break a ship in two. The missiles go faster; they neutralise a ship, but they won't kill it."

To prove his point, he recalls the 1982 Falklands War. Britain destroyed the Argentine Belgrano with a torpedo; a French-made Exocet crippled but did not sink the HMS Sheffield.

The British nuclear-powered Triumph floated a few hundred metres away, flying the Union Jack while black tiles fell off its wet, whale-like sides. The Triumph and its 11 sister subs were about to be called back after a flaw was discovered in their nuclear propulsion system.

In 1999 the Triumph's sister ship, Splendid, fired Tomahawk cruise missiles at Belgrade, hollowing out ministries the size of city blocks. Unlike their army counterparts in Kosovo, the British and French navies enjoy chummy relations. "Our navies are about the same size," a French officer explained. "The British are the only ones who understand us. A British frigate escorted the Foch [aircraft carrier] in the Adriatic last year. We don't have the same weapons, but we're complementary."

Capt Yves Boiffin, the commanding officer of the nuclear attack submarine squadron at Toulon, says he is happy to put British officers on his ships. Under the French Presidency of the EU, Paris is pushing hard to strengthen European defence policy, but it is taken for granted that nuclear forces will be the last - if ever - to be integrated. "It's not a technical problem for subs," Capt Boiffin says. "It is directly linked to the way that Europe goes politically."

The French attack subs cannot fire cruise missiles, but that may be rectified in the next generation of Barracuda submarines around 2012, giving them a "sea-land" role.

Sea-land is all the rage in naval strategy. With the Cold War long over, subs are expected to do more than lurk in north Atlantic waters waiting for Soviets. The Emeraude did its bit for the Yugoslavian war, preventing the Serbs from using their navy by patrolling the mouth of Kotor harbour in the northern Adriatic.

Nuclear missile-launching submarines, the pioneers of French and British nuclear deterrence in the 1970s, still exist, but since no one can think of anything to fire a ballistic nuclear warhead at, their utility is in question.

But the conventionally armed, cheaper nuclear attack subs, costing about three billion francs (£360 million) each, can gather intelligence, interdict enemy ships, protect surface forces, sow mines and, of course, attack. "Submariners say there are only two kinds of ship," Capt Boiffin says with black humour. "Submarines and targets."

Nuclear attack submarine crews spend up to two months below surface. Being cut off from their families is one of the greatest hardships; they are allowed only one 20-word telegram per week. Seventy-five men live in extremely cramped quarters around the nuclear reactor that powers the submarine. Five years ago 10 crew were killed when a steam pipe exploded in the compartment they were inspecting on the Emeraude.

Cdr Renaudeau says a collision or fire is his worst nightmare. But for him, life on the Emeraude is not without poetry. "Sound travels much better through water than air," he says. The French call those who listen to the sounds of the deep their oreilles d'or, their golden ears. They can distinguish between commercial and military shipping, between shrimp and whales.

"Life on a surface ship can be tiring, because the sea moves around you," Cdr Renaudeau explains. "We aren't subject to the movement of the sea. It's so quiet, so calm. You put earphones on and listen and it's magical, like hearing the rain on the roof of a country house at night."

But in the Boys' Own adventure sweepstakes, the Lafayette class stealth frigate must beat the grotty old submarines with their hunt-and-kill ethos. Modelled on the US stealth bomber, the four-year-old Lafayette was designed with James Bond in mind. Its smooth surface almost without hard angles and radar-beam-absorbing paint give it the profile of a fishing trawler.

The ship has special quarters for navy commandos, like those who whisked the renegade Christian Lebanese, Gen Aoun, out of Beirut in 1991, or those who might be dispatched to capture suspected Yugoslavian war criminals.