French Navy helicopter carrier Tonnerre begins joint maritime drills with Ghana Navy.

The French Navy’s helicopter carrier Tonnerre docked in Tema, Ghana, on October 1 to begin a four-day bilateral exercise with the Ghana Navy focused on maritime security and interoperability. The mission supports France’s long-term Corymbe presence in the Gulf of Guinea and regional anti-piracy cooperation.

The Ghana Armed Forces, on October 1, 2025, announced that the French Navy’s landing helicopter dock Tonnerre (L9014) docked at Tema to launch a four-day bilateral exercise with the Ghana Navy focused on interoperability and maritime security. The port call aligns with France’s long-running Corymbe presence in the Gulf of Guinea, while Paris confirmed Tonnerre’s program includes counter-drone and asymmetric-threat training, live-fire shoots, and surveillance flights under the SIREN course for regional officers. The arrival follows a Marine Nationale statement that 37 trainees are embarked to reinforce cooperation within the Yaoundé Architecture framework for maritime security. Together, the agenda underscores a practical mix of deck operations, small-boat defense, and command-and-control drills ashore and at sea.
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French Navy amphibious assault ship Tonnerre (L9014) is a 21,000-ton vessel that features a full-length flight deck for up to 16 helicopters, a well dock for landing craft, and a NATO-standard hospital for humanitarian missions (Picture source: French Navy/ Marine Nationale).

Tonnerre is a Mistral-class amphibious assault ship built for power projection and afloat command. At full load, it displaces about 21,300 tons, measures 199 meters in length, and features a 6,400-square-meter flight deck with six helicopter spots and a 1,800-square-meter hangar for up to 16 helicopters, moved by two aircraft elevators. The aviation complex routinely handles NH90 Caïman and Panther maritime helicopters and can support heavy rotary platforms on a strengthened spot, giving Ghanaian crews a rare opportunity to practice multispot flight ops, vertrep, and hoist evolutions from a large deck.

Below decks, an 885-square-meter well dock embarks landing craft for ship-to-shore movement. The class can carry four conventional landing craft or operate France’s fast L-CAT/EDA-R catamarans, enabling rapid offload of vehicles and personnel. Vehicle spaces total about 2,650 square meters, sized for a Leclerc tank company plus 46 other vehicles or, alternately, up to 70 light vehicles. Embarked troop capacity is 450 for sustained deployments, surging to roughly 900 for short durations. A NATO Role-3 hospital with 69 beds and two operating rooms gives Tonnerre a humanitarian and mass-casualty response profile rare in West African waters.

For close-in protection, Tonnerre fields Nexter’s NARWHAL 20 mm remote weapon stations and pedestal SIMBAD mounts for MBDA Mistral very-short-range missiles, complemented by heavy machine guns. The NARWHAL’s stabilized electro-optics and programmable airburst options, paired with the fire-and-forget Mistral, are designed to counter fast inshore attack craft and low-slow-small aerial threats. That pairing mirrors the Marine Nationale’s emphasis this week on counter-UAS and asymmetric drills in Corymbe, where live gunnery and tracking serials stress rapid target handoff between sensors, bridge teams, and remote mounts.

French and Ghanaian teams are rehearsing maritime rescue, pollution response, anti-piracy tactics, and crisis coordination, blending classroom and afloat phases to tighten communications and decision-making. By running the course from a large-deck amphib with ample command spaces and organic airlift, instructors can stage realistic boarding, medical, and casualty-evacuation vignettes at scale, while Ghanaian watchstanders rotate through the ship’s operations room to practice reporting chains and information fusion.

Since 1990, Corymbe has maintained an almost continuous French naval presence in the Gulf of Guinea to deter piracy, protect maritime trade, and build partner capacity. The region’s collective security framework, the 2013 Yaoundé Code of Conduct and its associated architecture, remains the backbone for coastal-state coordination against piracy, trafficking, and illegal fishing. Recent high-profile narcotics seizures by French units underscore why capacity-building remains urgent even as reported piracy incidents fluctuate year to year. Tonnerre’s stop in Tema, paired with SIREN, is a signal that Paris intends to keep blending presence, training, and enforcement support alongside Ghana and its neighbors to make the Yaoundé system work at sea, not just on paper.