Compass Points - Vive la France!
French military trains for war.
March 11, 2024
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It has been said that the recent focus by the US Marine Corps on building a line of Marine missile units off the coast of China is reminiscent of the failed Maginot Line the French built after World War I. The Maginot Line was bypassed and proved useless at the beginning of World War II.
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During World War II in the Pacific, US Marines took an opposite approach. Instead of sitting static on defense, the Marines were famous for their rapid offensive that bypassed some enemy island forces, while rapidly assaulting and defeating others. Today strangely, it is the US Marines who are focusing on deploying more Marines into static island positions and it is the French who are working to build an offensive, combined arms force.
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MAILLY-LE-CAMP, France — French troops are preparing for a high-intensity conflict against an enemy who can match them with firepower — a big change for an army that's spent the past decades fighting counterinsurgency campaigns in places like Mali and Afghanistan . . . .
Instead, infantry, armor, engineers and artillery, integrated with new technology like drones that stream information back to the troops and provide killing power on the battlefield, must work together seamlessly.
“The war in Ukraine reinforced the importance of combined arms combat. It’s the only way to fight,” said Lieutenant Colonel Vincent, head of the camp’s coordination and steering office. His last name can’t be disclosed for security reasons.
-- Politico
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The French left behind the folly of the Maginot Line long ago. Now, the French are focused on something much more powerful than static defense.
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Informed by lessons learned from Ukraine, military experts stress the significance of combined combat operations and the seamless integration of infantry, armor, artillery, and advanced technologies such as unmanned aircraft. Failure to adopt such tactics could result in catastrophic consequences, as witnessed in previous conflicts.
-- Novinite.com
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The French do much of their combined arms training at CENTAC at Mailly-le-camp in eastern France. The Marine Corps was famous for its combined arms training at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms. But now there is no true combined arms training at 29 Palms, only a scaled down "integrated training." The Marine Corps has said that if tanks, for example, are needed, the Marine Corps can get tanks from the Army. Is that true? If the Marine Corps does not train as a true combined arms force, how will the Marine Corps be able to fight as a combined arms force?
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Even if the Army were programming to support the Marine Corps (it is not!), Marine commanders and their staffs no longer know how to conduct offensive, combined arms operations. Rather than arrogantly assuming that the Army will reinforce the Marine Corps with assets, it is much more operationally sound that the Marine Corps will be forced to detach its infantry to work under Army commanders who do know how to conduct offensive combined arms operations. All wars quickly result in a shortage of infantry. There will be uses for Marine infantry companies, under Army command. In the same way, it is likely Marine Air will be commanded and managed by a Navy or Air Force JFACC. Marine ground and ground logistics to the Army. Marine air and air logistics to the Navy. End of story for the Marine Corps MAGTF.
-- Keith Holcomb
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To the combined arms focus of the French military, Compass Points says, "Vive la France!"
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If the French, who once put their faith in the static defense of the Maginot Line, can change their thinking and instead focus on a combined arms force, perhaps the US Marine Corps can put away their focus on a static, neo-Maginot Line in the Pacific and refocus on the famous Marine crisis response MAGTF -- a mobile, global, combined arms, maneuver force of Marines.
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Politico - 03/08/2024
French soldiers train for the killing fields of Europe
By Laura Kayali
https://www.politico.eu/article/french-soldiers-under-fire-train-for-what-war-is-like/
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Novinite.com - 03/08/2024
“The goal of any conflict is to control your opponent and overcome them. Controlling their beliefs about your abilities helps you understand their assumptions and plan a strategy accordingly. As a well-known translation of Sun Tzu puts it, “all warfare is based on deception.”
Having Marines telegraph their strategy and actually divest of its Tanks, Artillery, Bridging equipment and a quarter of its Air Assets doesn’t show “deception.”
If I were a Chinese general, I would do exactly what we did to the Japanese in WW II and that is to bypass these small units of Marines and render them ineffective.
It is important to remember the entirety of the French strategic failure in 1940 lest people be lulled into believing they've avoided repeating the error but are only focused on one part of it. One can actually argue that the Maginot Line worked because it was not actually seriously attacked and breached until after the main battle of France had been lost. This defeat denied the Maginot Line the field formations that would have supported its defense against serious attack. But what was really missing from France's strategy was the modern mechanized forces that would be expected to engage a German offensive in the region north into which the Maginot Line would channel its attack. The remaining failures to properly anticipate a major thrust through the Ardennes despite warnings from previous exercises and even a warning from DeGaulle about this risk. France also lagged in its modernization efforts which saw proper armored divisions only take the field during the German invasion and its latest model fighter aircraft only coming off production lines in numbers during and even after the offensive. (The Germans made good use of both French armor and aircraft afterwards).