In 1777, Antoine de Sartine, Louis XVI's Navy Minister, opened a cannon foundry near the naval shipyards in Indret.

In 1778, the Lorient naval dockyards succeeded La Compagnie des Indes du port de L’Orient.

During the 19th century, the naval dockyards underwent a transformation as the fleet of sailing ships and were replaced by motorised vessels.

In 1898, after specialising in the building of vessels with propellers rather than sails, the shipyards in Cherbourg were tasked exclusively with the construction of submarines.

Finally, in 1927, a decree definitively laid out the missions of the various naval dockyards:[5] Brest and Lorient were tasked with the construction of large vessels, Cherbourg with building submarines, while Toulon, Bizerte and Saigon took charge of the maintenance of the fleet.

This rationalisation of the roles of the naval dockyards was accompanied by technical and military innovations and the production of vessels at a higher pace, against the backdrop of an arms race and colonisation.

The technical problems experienced by this first-ever motorised submarine meant that it remained a prototype rather than an operational war vessel.

In turn, the DTCN was answerable to the Délégation Ministérielle pour l’Armement (DMA), set up by Michel Debré.

The loss of the overseas naval dockyards was compounded by the French Navy's reduced need for vessels and the increased difficulty in obtaining funding.

This trend gathered more pace after the end of the Cold War, despite the diversification of the DCAN activities, which now included maintaining the electric power network and clearing mines from the coastline.

But, looking beyond the order books, it was the public status of the DCAN that was gradually called into question, and it came to be considered as an administrative obstacle to the development of the potential of France's naval dockyards.

In 1992, the DCN's activities for the state were attached to the Naval Programmes department (SPN), which was the contracting authority for vessels for the French navy.

Finally, in 2001, the French government decided to transform the DCN into a fully state-owned private limited company.

It also offers its military expertise to the French Air Force to design automated navigation and combat systems, and to renovate aircraft.

Since it gained control of the Irish company OpenHydro in 2013, Naval Group has been able to progress from the research and development phase to industrial production.

The group has signed the Pacte PME, which fosters relations between large companies and smaller enterprises and sets up partnerships with leading universities and academic institutions.

The group is a partner of the Grand-Prix de l'École Navale,[17] a regatta that has been held near the Crozon peninsula since 2001.

Today, Naval Group also shared its technical expertise in composites for hulls and in navigation systems by building the experimental trimaran L'Hydroptère,[18] and it partnered with the Areva Challenge team that took part in the Americas Cup in 2007.

Naval Group owns representative offices in Australia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Chile, the United Arab Emirates, Greece, India, Indonesia, Malaysia.

The group is also represented all over the world by its subsidiaries and joint ventures, which are wholly owned or operated in association with other companies.

[23] Africa The DCN / DCNS plays a major role in "one of France's biggest political and financial scandals of the last generation [that left] a trail of eight unexplained deaths, nearly half a billion dollars in missing cash and troubling allegations of government complicity" connected to a sale of warships to Taiwan in the 1990s.

[27] The investigation in Malaysia has been prompted by human rights group Suaram as it involved Prime Minister Najib Razak when he was defence minister and his friend Abdul Razak Baginda[28] whose company Primekar was alleged to be paid a huge commission during the purchase of two Scorpène submarines.

[30] Investigations have also revealed that a Hong Kong-based company called Terasasi Ltd in which the directors are Razak Baginda and his father, sold classified Malaysian navy defence documents to DCNS.

[32] On 15 December 2015, French courts indicted Bernard Baiocco, former president of Thales International Asia for paying kickbacks to Abdul Razak Baginda.

[38] Naval Group filed a complaint against the newspaper with the Supreme Court of the State of New South Wales in Australia for having illegally published documents containing old technical information about the Scorpene.