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At the intersection between the evaluation of public policies and regional economics, this article assesses thanks to an original database the coherence of the support policy of the French ministry of defense during the major territorial restructuring that occurred in France since the 2000s. Based on data collected at the district level, an econometric analysis links the demographic, economic and political situation of the communities affected by restructuring with the financial compensations they received from the Ministry. The analysis questions the spatial planning logics within the ministry of Defense's rationalization policy. The results show that the socio-economic situation of communities is fairly well integrated into the overall strategy of the public planner. This, allows to feed the debate about the relevance and the effectiveness of this kind of policy when it is undertaken by an actor, whose primary function is not to do spatial planning but to prepare and organize the Defense of the country.

International audience; This paper presents an overall economic perspective of the main trends at work in the geographic pattern of the national defense in France. The framework assumes a public planner aiming to maximize the social utility of defense under a dual constraint: financial constraint and geographic constraint with an historical legacy. Through an analysis of current changes in the defense organization, we stress a play of forces between geographic concentration and geographic dispersion. On the one side, the current trends in defense organization show an economic rationalization that modifies the geographic pattern with waves of geographic concentration. On the other side, the dispersed spatial configuration of defense, legacy of several centuries of history, exercises all its influence on the current restructuring of defense. Such play of forces can be examined in the light of "decreasing cost" concept. In the framework of the "decreasing cost" concept, the paper proposes an overview of both social and regional costs caused by the rationalization process of defense.; Cet article propose une mise en perspective économique des principales tendances observées dans l'organisation géographique de la défense nationale en France. On considère un décideur public cherchant à maximiser l'utilité collective des armées sous une double contrainte : une contrainte financière et une contrainte géographique héritée de l'Histoire. On identifie un jeu de forces entre concentration et dispersion géographique. D'un côté, les tendances récentes dans l'organisation des armées montrent une logique de rationalisation économique et de concentration géographique. D'un autre côté, la configuration spatiale dispersée de la défense, héritage de plusieurs siècles d'Histoire, pèse de tout son poids dans les restructurations. Ce jeu de forces peut être éclairé par le concept de " coût de régression ". L'article propose alors un aperçu général des coûts sociaux et territoriaux associés à la rationalisation de la défense en utilisant le concept de " coût de régression " comme grille de lecture.