Thus, handing Ukraine even 20 Leclerc tanks, for example, undermines French army capabilities, given that France only has about 200 of them. France already has handed over a significant portion of its precious CAESAR howitzers, which numbered just 70, and replacing them is now a serious challenge. Given current inventories, donating even a few tanks or howitzers can cause serious problems for a force’s capabilities. The old dream that precision weapons would mean fewer munitions is a fantasy. Perhaps Ukraine and Russia were not expending these things on a rate comparable to World War I, but they have seriously challenged the idea that highly professional but small “bonsai tree” militaries could get away with substituting quality for quantity, an idea that encouraged the reduction of vehicle fleets and military stores by militaries in search of post-Cold War peace dividends. Conventional combat, even in this era of precision warfare and advanced information networks, still requires enormous reserves of manpower, equipment, and ammunition. The war in Ukraine has only placed this problem in greater relief. The report said out loud many of the things that the French military itself was struggling to articulate, while also, unfortunately, providing ammunition to the military’s critics. The study made a large splash in France, where it was picked up by journalists and cited by the National Assembly and senior French officers. ![]() ![]() But it also lacked the depth and the mass to do anything on a large scale for any length of time before it simply ran out of stuff. We argued that the French military - now indisputably the most capable in Western Europe - could do a lot of things very well. Is the current French model of warfare viable? In 2021, I co-authored a study with Stephanie Pezard suggesting that the answer was no.
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