Commodore Christophe Mérieult entered the French Naval Academy in 1989. From 1992 to 2002, he held various positions in operational units before taking command of the public service patrol vessel "Cormoran" based in Brest. After a while as an executive at the Naval Academy, he obtained a Master's degree in management of information systems and geographic applications at the National Bridges and Roads School (Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées), the National Geographic Sciences School (Ecole Nationale des Sciences Géographiques) and the National telecommunication School (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications). He then worked as a programme officer in the field of civil satellite communications. In 2010, he joined the Joint Space Command at its creation as head of the positioning navigation and synchronisation section. He represented the Joint Staff at interministerial meetings and at NATO on issues relating to GPS and its European equivalent, Galileo. He became deputy and then head of the space policy and cooperation office within the same organisation and negotiated at that time various cooperation agreements (with Germany, the United States, the EU, etc.) in the space domain, particularly concerning space surveillance. Appointed as head of the communication and information systems and cyberspace division at the NATO Joint Force Command in Naples, he contributed to the organisation of the 2018 Trident Juncture exercise, during which more than 50,000 troops were deployed in Norway. Returning to France in 2019, as second-in-command of the joint and cyber defence programmes command and head of the joint capabilities implementation centre, he was in charge of coordinating numerous programmes and projects in the fields of communication and information systems and nuclear, radiological, biological and chemical weapons. In April 2021, he joined the "National Security Council" (SGDSN), where he dealt with issues relating to the entire space domain, particularly those concerning European programmes. He was appointed deputy to the Space Commander on 1 September 2023. Commodore Mérieult is a Knight of the Legion of Honor and an Officer of the National Order of Merit.
