Armored Brigade Nation Pack: France - Belgium

FRANCE

Just as the bloodletting of World War I has left the French military a firm believer in the prevalence of firepower over manoeuvre, so did France's defeat by Germany in 1940 led it to a similar swing in the direction of mobile warfare. Beginning in the 1950s, the French military began to experiment with organizational structures aimed at facilitating rapid battlefield manoeuvre, including the Javelot brigade and the 7e Division Mécanique Rapide, eventually being standardised as the Division Type 1967. However, shortages of modern equipment, caused in part by the economic crisis of the early 1970s and the expense of the French nuclear deterrent, meant that the mechanized divisions that were to follow the new divisional blueprint were being constituted only very slowly. Although France was not officially part of NATO's command structure since 1966, there was an understanding, formalized by regular joint exercises in West Germany, that France would go to the aid of NATO should the Warsaw Pact attack.

A striking feature of the French formations of 1970s is the extent to which they were tank-heavy, due to their intended mode of operations. Their tactics were closer to US Armored Cavalry Regiments (or, indeed, their own pre-WW2 Division Légère Mécanique) in that they were not intended for holding ground. Like the DLM of 1940, the mechanized regiments were to operate like the earlier dragons portes, locating and delaying the enemy and preparing the situation for a counter strike by the tank regiments. However, during the 1980s the heavy manoeuvre forces saw an increase in the proportion of infantry, through the attachment of motorized infantry divisions to the corps headquarters, addition of VAB-equipped infantry regiments to infantry divisions, and an increase in the number of infantry companies in mechanized regiments.…