With the return of war to Europe, the French army trained with its allies. At the Maily-le-Camp training camp on the border between Aube and Marne, soldiers prepare for a larger-scale war.
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Mailly’s training camp is one of the largest in France. It extends over 15 kilometers in length over 13 of woods, small mounds and warren. Under the tent of a command post, an interoperability exercise between the French and Belgian armies is being prepared. “On the ground, there is no direct interaction between French and Belgian soldiers, warns Captain Loïc, of the third marine infantry regiment. There is captain-to-captain interaction on the regimental network.”
On this site, the soldiers train to use the systems of the two Belgian and French armies at the same time to geolocate their men. “One of the objectives of this training is also to compare the SICAS system of the French with the ELIA system of the Belgiansexplains Captain Yelle, of the Belgian army. We will synchronize them so that friendly forces, ours and those of neighbors are clearly visible on both systems.
Larger exercises
The return of the so-called war “high intensity” in Europe requires training to adapt and in particular, the ladder explains General Philippe Dutroncy, in charge of training at Mailly. “High intensity is the enemy at parity, the change of scale of the war and combat phases which are necessarily longer.”
An enemy with parity is capable of using: artillery, combat tanks, aviation, cyber jamming… Training is therefore now designed on the scale of a division, a unit of 25,000 men. Mailly, and its 20,000 hectares of training ground, are no longer big enough. “Mailly is as big as Paris, but it is absolutely not enough to train this level of unity. The training ground of a division is a field that is 100 to 150 kilometers wide by 100 to 200 miles deep.”
The training therefore takes place on open land, that is to say in the fields and in the surrounding villages. “You don’t get into houses kicking doors and throwing grenadessays the General with a smile. We rather carry out the operations prior to the battle in open terrain and we twist the scenarios so that the battle takes place in the time when we will be able to do everything that I have just described. The first exercise of this magnitude begins on Friday February 24: on the program an assault on Castres airport and an amphibious landing on the beaches of Montpellier. In the spring, tank battles will be organized in the camps of Mailly and Mourmelon.
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