“…To overcome this difficulty, 89 semi‐structured interviews were conducted with actors who had taken an active part in the state's decision to choose the Rafale naval aircraft 8 . Aside from the actors working at a bureaucratic level (Béraud‐Sudreau, 2014; Genieys & Michel, 2004, 2006; Hoeffler, 2013), interviews were conducted with the highest level political (the defence ministry), military (CEMA [chief of staff of the armed forces], chief of staff of the president of the republic, chief of staff of the air force), and administrative (DGA [Direction générale de l'armement—the defence ministry's arms procurement agency]) officials of the state (Cohen, 1994; Irondelle, 2011), as well as of the defence industry (CEOs or advisers to successive CEOs of Dassault Aviation and Snecma). In doing so, it is the most comprehensive qualitative study on one of the biggest French armements programmes since the end of the Second World War.…”