Be careful, Greyland is preparing to launch a vast military offensive. Objective: to protect the civilian populations against the armed forces of Redland, which wants to annex Auvergne, a region of Greyland …
This fictitious scenario established by the CEAM, Center of Military Air Expertise, is the starting point of a vast military exercise which will start next Monday, and which should make it possible to prepare the Air Force for combat. and Space. The Volfa exercise will last three weeks, until October 15, and will bring together around fifty aircraft on the ground (combat aircraft, transport and assault planes, helicopters, drones, detection and command planes, etc.) and some 750 airmen. These resources will be deployed on two air bases, BA 118 in Mont-de-Marsan (Landes) for fighter and transport planes, and BA 120 in Cazaux (Gironde) for helicopters.
Some 25 complex missions, day or night
“The exercise will take place mainly in the South West [Corrèze, Creuse, Gironde, Landes, Tarn-et-Garonne, Gers et Haute-Vienne] and the Massif Central, and we will carry out around 25 complex missions, day and night, to train with different modes of action, from pure hunting to the drop of commando through parachuting troops. The whole spectrum of air operations, ”explained to 20 minutes Colonel Gilles, director of exercise Volfa.
We should therefore see a few planes in the sky in this part of France in the coming weeks, since two flights are scheduled per day, as well as night flights on Tuesdays and Thursdays. However, many exercises will take place over the Atlantic, a much less restrictive area, especially for supersonic flight.
Live fire exercise in the Captieux military camp
New equipment equipping the air forces will feature prominently, including the Rafale F3R, the A400M Atlas, the C130J Super Hercules and the Reaper drone. We will also find Mirage 2000, a detection and control aircraft
Awacs and Caracal and Fennec helicopters. “We will also have foreign participation with
Eurofighters Germans, a Canadian transport aircraft and helicopters. “
This is for the air. On the ground, three Mamba ground-to-air defense systems (trucks with very long range missiles) used to defend sensitive points or accompany land forces, will also be deployed. “It allows us to do what’s called an air defense bubble around a point. »These exercises will take place with live fire, on the
Captieux shooting range, which straddles the Gironde and the Landes.
“Place our operators as close as possible to reality”
“Our scenario will unfold in three phases, continues Colonel Gilles: the idea will initially be to regain air superiority to liberate the disputed area. Then the opponent will retaliate, so we will have more defensive phases. We are also going to lose planes, and for that we will have to mount missions in order to recover crews ejected in enemy zones… ”
The aim of this Volfa exercise, which is a first in this form, “is to prepare our air forces, from the commando to the ground-to-air operator, including the fighter pilot, for the operations of tomorrow. “
Colonel Gilles explains in fact that “we want to place our operators as close as possible to reality” and for that, “we must train at high intensity, that is to say by simulating a conflict with an adversary who would be much better equipped than what we have known lately, in Afghanistan for example where we were more on the logic of counter-insurrection. There, we want to face an air force that would be symmetrical to ours, and which would cause us problems. We are really training in that perspective, for future conflicts that are no doubt harder. A risk which is not fictitious.