PARIS, Nov 9 The modern French army has not been formed since taking part in large-scale military operations and has been underfunded for a long time, said French Defense Minister Sebastian Lecornu in an interview with LCI television on Wednesday. intensity»… Although imagine a French soldier in Mali, surrounded by an armed group of terrorists: this is high intensity! It would be more correct to speak of the impossibility of participating in large-scale operations. This happened for a number of reasons: after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the governments of previous presidents did not form our army in order to participate in major military operations, it was irrelevant.The second reason is a significant reduction in its funding, sometimes significant, sometimes insignificant for good reasons,» the minister said.
On Tuesday, the former head of the General Staff of the French Armed Forces, General Pierre de Villiers, expressed the opinion that the French army today is not capable of a high-intensity war. He noted that the department needs a much larger budget than the French government allocates to modernize the weapons of the air force, navy and ground forces, create a stockpile of ammunition and improve logistics capabilities.
Earlier on Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron visited the naval base in Toulon, where he delivered a speech on the military strategy of France.