Would France be ready in the event of a high intensity war?

On this spring morning, artillery salvoes resound in the Aisne. Quickly, the tanks go into action. The VBCI (armoured infantry fighting vehicle) of the French army launched the assault and landed their infantry, closely followed by two Leclerc tanks. A few hundred meters away, the soldiers of the 24th infantry regiment arrived in helicopters to take the enemy combatants in a pincer movement. Objective of the manoeuvre: to take back the town of Jeoffrécourt, from the hands of the forces of “Mercure”, a powerful state having invaded its neighbor “Arnland”, supported by France. At the end of a morning of clashes, the city was taken back.

This fictitious but life-size combat took place on April 30 at the CENZUB (training center for actions in urban areas), the army’s large urban combat training center, within the Sissone military camp. It is one of many battles punctuating phase 4 of Orion, a vast exercise organized by the French army for three weeks between April and May to mimic a high-intensity conflict. “This meeting was decided in 2019 in view of the hardening of our armies, details General Pierre Schill, Chief of Staff of the Army, from a tent at the Mailly-le-Camp command post. I think he taught us a lot.”

In this “war”, nearly 12,000 soldiers, including 1,700 allies, were directly engaged on the ground, as well as 2,000 vehicles, 40 helicopters and around a hundred drones. But overall, this exercise, part of which was simulated by computer, aimed to reproduce a conflict between 70,000 allies and 45,000 “Mercury” fighters on a front 400 kilometers long and 250 wide. “The scale of Orion constitutes a real added value in the preparation of our forces: it is a stress test for our organisations”, underlines General (2S) Thierry Corbet, responsible for evaluating the feedback from all maneuvers.

Reduction of means for 30 years

“We see that there are States which are rearming and we must be ready for these fights where it could hit, explains General Emmanuel Gaulin, commander of the Orion force, a few minutes after having stormed Jeoffrécourt with a thousand men. and dozens of armored vehicles. Our objective is to show that we are capable of opposing an equal opponent in a high intensity operation.” At a time when the very real din of arms resounds again in Europe, it is difficult not to make the connection with the war in Ukraine.

Would France be cut out to withstand such a shock? Almost fifteen months after the start of its invasion launched on February 24, 2022, Russia is posting abysmal losses: several thousand armored vehicles, including more than 1,900 battle tanks, according to the count kept by the independent site Oryx. To which would be added, according to Western intelligence, between 175,000 and 200,000 men killed or wounded.

“The French army is extremely efficient in carrying out punch operations against asymmetric enemies, gauges Marc Chassillan, military engineer and consultant specializing in defense. But it lacks stocks and mass to hold out over the long term in the event of a high intensity.” Like many European countries, the drastic reduction in the means allocated to the French armed forces since the end of the cold war is not unrelated to this. From 1349 battle tanks in 1991, France had only 222 left in 2021. Similar trajectory for combat aircraft, having melted at the same time from 686 aircraft to 254. As for the numbers of the armies, they followed the same movement: 453,000 professional soldiers and 420,000 reservists at the fall of the USSR, compared to 203,000 and 41,000 reservists in 2021.

At the same time, the share of GDP devoted to defense fell over the same period from 2.8% of GDP to 1.9%. A dry regime which has not failed to alarm certain senior officers in recent years. “In a high intensity conflict, with an attrition rate close to that of the Falklands in 1982 (8%) the air force would have no more planes in ten days and probably no more missiles after two days”, raised the former commander of the strategic air forces, General Bruno Maigret, in a parliamentary report published on February 17, 2022, just one week before the start of the war in Ukraine.

Vocation to intervene in coalition

Despite the budgetary efforts made in the future LPM (military programming law) for the years 2024-2030 – with 413 billion euros allocated over the period, against 295 billion for the previous one – the text has disappointed some specialists. “It partially responds to some of the problems we had, particularly in terms of drones, ammunition stocks, or intelligence, but there is still a lack of budget so that we can really increase the format of our forces, judges Yohann Michel, researcher on defense issues at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).As everywhere in Europe, the French military tool has deteriorated over the last decades, and only one LPM of this volume cannot be enough to replenish all of our forces.”

In fact, with the exception of doubling the numbers of the reserve, the text does not provide for massive increases in personnel or in the number of armored vehicles. In this corseted context, Orion must nevertheless make it possible to better target the needs in the years to come. “An operational preparation of this magnitude helps us to study in detail how we must organize and prepare ourselves by optimizing the resources granted to us”, underlines, bent in his fatigues, Colonel Christophe Richard, designer of the exercise.

A stone’s throw away, the Army Chief of Staff recalls that in the event of a high-intensity conflict involving its forces, France would not be fighting alone. “Our country is not threatened with being invaded on its soil, points out General Pierre Schill. We therefore have a vocation to intervene in coalition in collective defence, with our NATO partners and allies.” Closest to the – fictitious – front line, the determination of the troops is in any case beyond doubt. “We are ready to respond to any type of threat, and we did not wait for the war in Ukraine for that”, affirms, resolutely, Sergeant Soifouani, who commands, surrounded by his men, a Caesar cannon. France has real assets up its sleeve: “Extremely qualified personnel, sophisticated equipment and an industrial base that still exists in France, summarizes Yohann Michel. Our real challenge is above all to change scale.”