According to the staff, a magnitude exercise will engage in 2023 some 20,000 tricolor and allies soldiers, to respond to the evolution of the geostrategic context and the “perspective of a major conflict”, as in Ukraine .
by Elise Vincent and Cédric Pietrapurunga
It will be the most important military exercise led by the French army since the end of the Cold War. In the spring of 2023, some 20,000 tricolor soldiers and allied countries (United States, Belgium, Italy, Great Britain, etc.) will be engaged in maneuvers, called Orion, intended to simulate a “major conflict” with a state adversary , announced the Defense Staff on Tuesday, November 15. “We have never done an exercise of such a magnitude over such a duration,” says General Yves Métayer, responsible for planning the operation within the armies.
Concretely, several maneuvers must take place from the end of February to early May. The first will be held for three weeks in the south of France and will consist of a landing of troops by the sea and by the air. Objective: to establish a bridgehead in a fictitious country, called Arnland, plagued by destabilization orchestrated by militias supported by a hostile state named Mercure. For this operation, 7,000 soldiers will be mobilized. The Charles-de-Gaulle aircraft carrier, two amphibious helicopter holders and around twenty other surface buildings or submarines will also be engaged.
The second maneuver will be from mid-April to the beginning of May, and will simulate a direct invasion of Arnland by Mercury, which the French forces will have to try to repel. The equivalent of a division – or 10,000 to 12,000 men – will be deployed in Champagne, on a front of fifty kilometers long and two hundred kilometers deep. All the means of the army will be mobilized, in particular the new armored vehicles Griffon or Jaguar.
a “civil-military” dimension
According to the French staff, this XXL exercise is justified by the evolution of the geostrategic context and the “perspective of a major conflict”. “You have to prepare for the worst to prevent it from coming or being able to alleviate its consequences,” said General Métayer. If the idea of this exercise was born in the summer of 2020, the war in Ukraine obviously accelerated its implementation. The engagement scenarios are also inspired by the wrestling of prorusian militias in Donbass since 2014 and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February.
The particularity of Orion is also to integrate a “civil-military” dimension, that is to say all the services of the State which could potentially be affected by the imagined conflict: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Inside, passing through the transport or health sector. “In the event of a major commitment, the armies will need civilian tissue to win the effort,” said the staff. These civilians should not be integrated as such in Orion, but interministerial “wargames” could take place during the exercise.
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