# Aging French military set to get boost



## jollyjacktar (16 Jun 2008)

Reports From Abroad
European power
Aging French military set to get boost
Last Updated: Friday, June 13, 2008 | 3:38 PM ET Comments7Recommend28David Common CBC News 
Members of French Air Force stand beside a Mirage 2000-D aircraft during an India-France joint air exercise about 135 kilometres west of Calcutta, India, in 2007. (Bikas Das/Associated Press)Any sailor will tell you the Gulf of Aden off Somalia is a dangerous place. Enough that the United States, Canada, Britain, France and several other nations have dispatched warships to ward off Somali pirates and protect the strategic sea lanes.

Yet the ships were no deterrent to the fast-moving boats of well-armed sea robbers last April. The pirates seized the crew of a French-flagged luxury yacht, demanding millions of dollars in ransom for both people and vessel.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy promised a tough response and he came through. French commandos stormed the yacht, chased the pirates on to land, shot out their get-away trucks, seized them and recovered the money. The whole episode was filmed by the soldiers' chase helicopter, making the French look like real-life Mission Impossible agents.

The reality couldn't have been much different. Two of the French frigates carrying the rescue troops suffered engine failure. Their launch, weighed down by special forces equipment, sunk. While the Atlantic 2 jet giving chase over Somali territory lost an engine and had to make an emergency landing in Yemen.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to announce some major changes for his country's military next week. (Francois Mori/Associated Press)France's army is among the most active in Europe, with substantial operations in Africa and Afghanistan. Turns out the strain of those operations has crippled much of its now-aging and heavily used equipment.

According to confidential defence documents recently leaked in French newspapers, less than half of France's Leclerc tanks (142 out of 346) are operational and they too regularly break down. Only a minority of its helicopters are fit to fly: less than half of the Pumas, 37 per cent of the Lynx and just 33 per cent of its Super Frelon models (built some 40 years ago, incidentally). Two-thirds of France's Mirage (F1) reconnaissance jets are unusable at present.

Sarkozy knew all this when he was elected. In one of his first acts as president, he ordered a Defence White Paper. And now he's set to unveil its recommendations, and his response on Tuesday.

It is widely expected Sarkozy will confront the problem of a strained, deteriorating force by cutting it. He'll buy new hardware, but to fit a smaller, better-equipped army. He will, almost certainly, close military bases, reduce France's nuclear arsenal and fighter aircraft inventory, as well as the number of its operational troops, from 50,000 to 30,000.

Then he'll likely talk about creating something new, and controversial: a headquarters for European military planning. Some would (and do) argue that a certain organization created to help Europe armies plan for a Soviet invasion several decades back already does that. It's called NATO.

But Sarkozy, and now the Germans, support the idea of a separate Europe-only entity. He said European nations would stay as NATO members and the new organization would only complement the military alliance, though some academics are certain it will inevitably compete for scarce resources, and shift the policy direction.

Afghanistan deployment leads to U.S. backing
The French government has quietly circulated a confidential memo outlining its hopes for a common European Union defence policy.

The five-page memo calls for Europe to develop its own fleet of transport aircraft, create a permanent European defence college, launch European military satellites (though individual countries can keep their own), and create a mechanism for the common funding of operations (as opposed to the "costs borne where they fall" approach used today).

The Americans have long fought the idea, worried that such a move would undermine NATO. They successfully pushed to have a previous attempt by former French president Jacques Chirac shot down.

But Sarkozy has sought America's support this time with a quid pro quo. France is a NATO member but Charles de Gaulle pulled his country out of its unified military structure in 1966, choosing an independent path. Sarkozy plans a triumphant return.

The deployment of French soldiers, planned for late this summer, to eastern Afghanistan was another carrot for the Americans. They now back Sarkozy's plan.

Britain though, with a long-held policy of Atlanticism, is resistant.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown views Sarkozy's plan as a French ploy to undermine the NATO alliance and boost common European defence by establishing a European rival to NATO.

But with the Americans on side, and U.S. diplomats lobbying Brown on Sarkozy's behalf, many of the past obstacles seem to have been removed. Europe is now running military operations of its own in Chad and in Kosovo, and a co-ordinated policy approach seems logical and now perhaps inevitable.

But it is clear, if Sarkozy's European military headquarters idea gets off the ground, it would have overlapping responsibilities and projects to what NATO's military now already does. Sarkozy's answer: cut down what NATO is now doing on European defence.


----------

