Up to 12,000 soldiers will be mobilized. The French armies are preparing for an exercise on an unprecedented scale in the first half of 2023, in a scenario of major conflict against a State, the relevance of which is confirmed by the war in Ukraine. In particular, the Army’s new Griffon armored vehicles, Leclerc tanks, but also ground-to-air defense systems, combat aircraft as well as the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier and two amphibious helicopter carriers will be deployed there.
“The geostrategic context justifies this exercise” whose idea was born in 2020, well before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, underlined Tuesday General Yves Metayer, commander of the state forces employment division. – major of the armies. “In 2017, the (French) Strategic Review described the arrival of the prospect of a major conflict and the need to prepare for it. We must adapt our operational preparation and our employment doctrine” after more than two decades of asymmetric warfare against the jihadists, he commented during a presentation conference for the “Orion” exercise.
Several phases
This large-scale exercise will consist of three phases. Between the end of February and the beginning of May, 7,000 soldiers will be engaged in a sequence which will include naval operations in the Mediterranean, an amphibious operation then an airborne phase in the south of France.
It will be a question of simulating an intervention in a country destabilized by militias, bordering a powerful State orchestrating these disorders, and endowed with nuclear weapons. Then, from mid-April to early May, the armies will simulate a high-intensity air-land confrontation against this neighboring state, with the deployment of 10,000 to 12,000 soldiers in north-eastern France, i.e. at divisional level.
Land, sea, air and space
The Orion exercise will have the particularity of involving all the components of the armed forces (land, sea, air, space) in all the material and immaterial fields (cyber, information, etc.). European partners (Germany, United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy, Spain) will be involved, as well as the United States, which will play a division in a digitized way.
Between the two major sequences, a civil-military phase will be organized under the aegis of the General Secretariat for Defense and National Security (SGDSN), which will focus on the various means of civilian support to the armies in the event of a major engagement ( health, transport, etc.), reserves and the information struggle. “After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the mechanisms that existed during the Cold War were allowed to wither away in the event of a mobilization”, argues General Metayer.