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It is mildly disappointing that the courses primarily focus on European or Eurocentric doctrines. When it comes to COIN, you simply can't ignore India and their TTP and doctrines. Westpoint has published several good thesis on the subject. It is a rare view on COIN from an non expeditionary perspective. Pretty sure Americans can learn a LOT from Indian failures and successes.

hello i'm german and i was a military during 35 years and what i can say is this I worked with the French army and what is very striking is that it has preserved all its traditions...and for me that is what makes an army! without tradition it is a group of individuals who cannot “faire corps” as the French say. that's a bit of the problem with us in germany, we have been so anti-militarist for 50 years that military traditions have completely disappeared, military songs are almost always banned, etc... in France it's really all the contrary, when you join a regiment you have the impression of joining a family and you make your own everything that revolves around it. The French army with a long military past is probably the army in the world which has preserved the most traditions. In England I'm afraid it's a bit the same thing as in Germany, the army has been downsized so much that the family pool from which 70% of recruits were made is in the process of dying out. this is particularly striking in the English navy which is now only a shadow of its former self. with 75 ships - including the Victory - it represents around half of the French navy. What is most lacking in the English navy is the lack of supply ships, which greatly reduces the ability to send several naval groups to the seas of the world. I also worked with the 22 SAS of Hereford around 25 years ago, at the time they were quite good, but the lack of real operations during the last 20 is felt heavily...in military terms, what is lost is very hard to reacquire, and we know that in germany. I hope they succeed. Despite all this, both armies are very good, I would still give a big + for the French army, because the French have also retained their production lines and know-how in all sectors of defense. They have also preserved and improved their capacity for projection and the ability to interact between the three armies, air, land, sea....the intervention they carried out in Mali a few years ago is a real work of art of war of movement and should be shown in all military schools. Another thing that both armies have to face is the recruitment...Recruitment in England is today laborious and in England there is communitarianism, which risks greatly complicating things in the future. In France the country is very centralized and secularism is something sacred, the way of life or religion really have no place in the armies even if tradition imposes Catholic ceremonies. France now also has difficulty recruiting but the family military pool is still present, and the difficulty is much less than in England. But for me the biggest problem with the English army is that it is too affiliated with the Americans...like us in germany..... Too much dependence, too much American equipment, for example the purchase of F35s in Germany and England is a real mistake....with 1 click Lockheed Martin can make any F35 unusable if its use is not suitable for Americans ..this is not possible in an army that wants to be sovereign over its actions. We must develop national equipment and materials or buy European ones. That's it,...well I'll stop there, there are so many things to say...greetings

It's very simple: the French Army is used to making war. The British is not. British soldiers run away from the battlefield when they see the enemy in the distance.

4:40 Deployable force -> ‘combat forces’, capable of fighting with a structured command, can be considered as the ‘punch’. Projectable forces -> between 12 and 18,000, depending on ‘where’, limited by air and sea transport. Long-term deployable forces (>6 months) -> less than 10,000 (for combat operation, we have more people in oversea deployment without being in combat). That's what it generally returns from reports.

It's never gonna be the Russians against the French, or the Russians against the British, it's gonna be the Russians against France, GB, Poland, Germany, Romania, Finland, Ukraine, the baltic states, NATO or not. If NATO collapses, it's gonna be a European equivalent, with the US in the background supplying ammo. Russia's game will be to prevent such an alliance and undermine NATO, but I don't think it's gonna work. They've shown their hand, and there are more countries ready to join than to leave.

La France et l'Angleterre unis ensemble versus russes ils vont les bouffés avec leurs précisions tactiques et beaucoup plus moderne que les Russes c'est tellement évident .

Infovalorisation is not even a word in French! It probably means "valorisation de l'information", maybe treating raw data into operational information...

Over the last 40 years political parties of all shades have systematically and deliberately used the defence budget to bail out other departments, shame on them for destroying a once effective, formidable and proud military.....

Spot on!

8:09 SCORPION: contact synergy reinforced by intel valorization

As French, it was really interesting to have a clear and enlighted point of view from a foreign country. Highly instructive vidéo. Thanks a lot for this great content.

En France ont a surtout nos propre missiles nucléaire issu de notre propre programme et on ne dépend de personne pour les utilisés.

My guess is that the personnel in the French army (and to a certain extent, the French navy, airforce as well as the gendarmerie) speak better French, and the British speak better English. But again, I might be wrong.

Problem for France is now war is sooo expensive, with missiles worths millions,.. Maybe drones and ia could be an opportunity if they take it. They have all it take to be very good in it, but their governements are incompetent and slow... (im french)

To what extent has NATO membership influenced French and British decisions regarding mass? They must probably think that a conventional war, with mechanized infantry etc, would not happen without the help of NATO partners...

🫤 I’m not sure that the comparison is possible... In truth, the French army seems good, however, NO war won since Napoleon! The first world war, just as the second was won by the coalition of the world! All the colonial wars: Lost... Recent conflicts: Lost... The best services are: Israeli special forces, British, US, after, certainly France because its major handicap is a zero command, because held by incompetent men, proud, giving lessons... The armies that win are those who have the political courage to represent the people, and where the people is united with their politicians, which is not the case of France...

I enjoyed the joke at the start haha I don’t think any commander on the planet would take a French or British Infantry Battalion over a US Marine Infantry Battalion, but that’s not to say we should not be looking at what changes they are making and why they are doing it. It’s a changing battlefield and lessons can be learned before the first shot is fired and at other expense before your own contact.

Super presentation, very interesting and informative! I really wish you'd do a video on the Canadian forces, because the shocking state needs to be addressed. Again-thanks for a great video! Cheers-JHW

Not so dependent on the US at all, has more nukes, France is in the EU... Better I think. With all due respect to the UK armed forces, one of the best in the world

You start well with a minimum of hand waving body language, yet as the video proceeds You seem to ramp up the waving hands emphasis on each point made. Exceptionally distracting and damaging to the flow of communication. First class content and analysis, yet observing Your physical gesturing detracts (from an observer's point) from one's appreciation of Your posting. It is currently a social behavioral change which seems to historically stem from the BBC's requiring of their On Air presenters attending Body Language training. In just a few years time the HAND WAVING fashion has gone bonkers, and RUclips & other social media contributors have increasingly adopted these behaviors as a NORM. GOOFY. A review of Presenters mannerisms even a couple of years ago reveals a basis for this point. ♾

Great video, very informative! It would be great to see you make a video on the current state of the Royal Navy and RAF!

the fact : you approve such a thing " Réponse sélectionnée by YOU @Dusty2feathers il y a 2 heures The french have more white flags in their rucksacks. How dare you choose to sustain such lies. I do consider viewing your videos. Sorry .

Pax Americana, just the name of the channel tells a joke 😅

Both cannot really be labelled as "armies". The British are not able to field one single brigade, the French armies consists only of wheeled vehicles apart from the small handful of mbts. It´s a complete joke.

Nice to ear a English who know really France

So interesting! Thank you 🙌

« Trident missile test failure for the second time in a row. Missile embarrassingly plopped into sea at launch attended by Defense Secretary Grant Shapps » (21 feb 2024)

« British Army crisis: MPs warned armed forces 'haemorrhaging' troops as uninterested young people have left the British Army knee-deep in a “disastrous” military staffing crisis.» 17 janv. 2024

« 'UK's military too small to fight' A senior US general reportedly told former defence secretary Ben Wallace, that Britain was "barely a tier two military power." The figures, published by The Times, show that if the army continues to lose troops at its present rate, the number of regular soldiers will fall to 67,700 by 2026. » (20 january 2024)

gigachad

Ukraine has already consumed 2/3 of the Soviet stockpiles of armour, artillery, ammunition, service age recruits; stockpiles that took seventy years to hoard. In addition showing a smattering of relatively cheap mines, man-pads, drones, and the odd stream, can stop several hundred billion dollars of air and ground assets, of a wannabe Emperor. Many lessons will have to be learnt, and alternate kit procured, after many million hours of Civil service time, consultants, lawyers, lobbyists, ... have been expended, and many PowerPoints produced, to be competitive in future.

Has this guy ever served ?

Same level. Both incompetent and incapable of winning any conflict with other advanced nations. It was like that in WW1 and WW2 and its still the same nowadays

France always beat the british. Nothing changed.

wouldn't sureté translates to safety? great video.

SCORPION = Synergie du COntact Renforcée par la Polyvalence et l'InfovalorisatiON English : Contact Synergy Reinforced by Versatility and Infotainment

If you’re going to invade there, you’re going to literally live there. Forever. Afghanistan’s demographics are, to a large degree, a reflection of their invaders that just stuck around, as that was the only way to manage the place. From Persians and Indians, Mongols, even fair complexion descendants of Alexander and the Greek successor kingdoms. It’s not even like you colonize it. More like…..it just absorbs you, and you’re part of the fabric now. Even then, you’ll never control it all. Some parts are so remote they literally don’t know their own age, or probably even that most of the war and Taliban takeover ever happened. Good luck taxing that. Previous kings and empires that successfully ruled Afghanistan (depending how you define the term) literally just didn’t even bother trying to govern those areas. Which have always been a free space for everyone who hates you (which is probably all of them).

who needs a large force when you’ve got a nation as an ally, that wants to be the main force in everything? we just let them! the uk uses the us as our proxies……. how does that sit? 😂

Congrats for the "Ordre du Mérite" monsieur !

It’s humorous that all these comments show clearly that the commenters didn’t watch the video. Their anti-American views are all they’re interested in displaying. I don’t comment on English or French or Australian politics because I don’t live there.

Ansichtpunkt is uncommon and quite accurate

Disagree on funding, there were sizeable real-terms cuts in 2010, after the financial crisis, as there were in many countries. But since then it has remained fairly stable and even had some extra little injections of cash. The problem is the Armed Forces, mostly the Army, not being able to decide what it wants, and engaging in "entry-ism" where they deliberately under-estimate the cost of a project, in order to get it started, and then try and hang on to it and get emergency funding when lo and behold, it starts to massively overshoot the unrealistic initial estimates. If the Army had stuck with FRES, they would have got some decent vehicles by now, maybe not perfect but a lot of good R&D work was done by British firms with experience in the industry and in manufacturing AFVs. The way that programme was chopped up and eventually canned was criminal. Even fairly basic things like upgrading Warrior became farcical failures, BAE, who took over the company that originally made the vehicles, said that if he Army wanted to fit a bigger and stabilised cannonv(which they did) you'd need a bigger turret, so they designed one. They didn't get the contract though, an American firm which said they could fit everything in the old turret, despite not being the design authority and having no relevant facility in the UK at the time, got the contract. Guess what, they couldn't get everything to fit and work properly in the old turret, so they said they'd design and integrate at new one, if the MoD would pay for it. They were given more cash, and progress as eventually made, but by the time it was 90% ready the Army had got itself into budget problems again and cut the programme completely in favour of the more exciting "new" programme, Boxer. Boxer wasn't actually new at it, as it had been jointly developed by several countries including the UK, it was another platform we decided to pull the plug on just as it was getting going, but at least this time we realised the mistake and swallowed our pride to get back involved. The RAF and RN generally have been better at matching their ambitions to their budgets but have still suffered serious issues related to postponing replacing platforms for so long that they need expensive overhauls before their replacements are ready, and losing domestic design and manufacturing knowledge by letting industry wither without orders. In a way the RAF has been lucky in that it would have been virtually impossible for them to change their minds about their main platforms, the Eurofighter and the F-35.

I can confirm that nobody in French army knows the meaning of SCORPION acronym ! 😅

Stupide vidéo...

Very insightful, thank you 👌

Wonderful analysis. Would it be possible to analyse smaller NATO Armies like the Portuguese and how better could a small nation like Portugal employ it's resources to become a valid Ally?

Very interesting video. Thank you.

"Info valorisation" = "info promotion"? I know that the French are infatuated with "pôles" and "valorisations" and will whisk them into service on the slightest pretext.

Such a good blog post. Decision-making is key. Really liked your summation. Does it really matter? So both armies are keeping the 'knowledge' of how to be an army. If it is ever needed above the level of current interventions