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What It Means to Be Expeditionary a Look at the French Army in Africa

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What It Means to Be Expeditionary a Look at the French Army in Africa French soldiers with French Foreign Legion’s 6th Light Armored Brigade assault objective during bilateral seize-and-capture training exercise with U.S. Marines on Quartier Colonel de Chabrieres, France, May 29, 2015 (U.S. Marine Corps/Christopher Mendoza) What It Means to Be Expeditionary A Look at the French Army in Africa By Michael Shurkin ormer U.S. Army Chief of Staff well as more scalable, tailorable, and also evoked the imperative of having an General Raymond Odierno regionally aligned. General Odierno’s “expeditionary Army.”2 What, however, F elaborated a vision for the Ser- successor and the current Army Chief do these terms mean? What would it vice’s future that left many questions of Staff, General Mark Milley, similarly take for the Army to realize the gener- unanswered. Specifically, he called for has spoken of the need for the Army als’ vision, and what, if any, are the the Army to be more expeditionary as to be “agile,” “adaptive,” and “expedi- associated risks? tionary,” and to have an “expeditionary A recently published RAND study mindset.”1 Lieutenant General Gustave of French army operations in Mali in Michael Shurkin is a Senior Political Scientist at Perna, writing in the March–April 2013 noted that in many ways, France’s the RAND Corporation. 2016 issue of Army Sustainment, has army epitomizes the characteristics 76 Features / A Look at the French Army in Africa JFQ 82, 3rd Quarter 2016 General Odierno and General Milley have Among other capabilities, Odierno rapidly shape conditions in the operational highlighted. It is a living example of a called on the Army to be the following: area, and operate immediately on arrival technologically sophisticated force that exploiting success and consolidating tacti- capable of task organizing at increas- checks all of the generals’ boxes; it does • cal and operational gains. Expeditionary ingly lower levels to execute “small well precisely the things the generals call capabilities are more than physical at- footprint” operations on the U.S. Army to do. Studying how tributes; they begin with a mindset that capable of rapidly deploying scal- the French army has organized itself and • pervades the force.7 able force packages, with the smaller operates provides insight into what their packages capable of rapidly reas- ideals might mean in concrete terms for The U.S. Army Training and sembling into larger formations as the U.S. Army and the associated ben- Doctrine Command’s 2015 pamphlet required efits—but also the implied compromises The U.S. Army Operating Concept: oriented to stress small-unit leader- and risks U.S. planners need to consider. • Win in a Complex World, which bears ship that thrives in an environ- When comparing the strengths of the Odierno’s signature and reflects the ment of dispersed, decentralized French and U.S. armies, it must be ac- Future Force 2025 project, builds on the operations knowledged that there is little the French above by adding scalability, tailorability, aligned regionally so that operating can do that the ever-adaptable U.S. Army • and the ability to manage in austere envi- units are familiar with local cultures, cannot. However, the Army’s general- ronments. It defines expeditionary as “the personalities, and conditions. purpose forces arguably are not designed ability to deploy task-organized forces on and organized to deploy and fight on a Odierno’s priorities later found ex- short notice to austere locations, capable small scale (at the brigade level or below), pression in the “Army 2025” concept. of conducting operations immediately and the Army normally does not create According to a white paper published in upon arrival.”8 The pamphlet also adds company- and battalion-size units from January 2014, the Army has to “operate a new term, expeditionary maneuver, multiple parent organizations, something differently.” It has to operate “decentral- defined as “the rapid deployment of task the French do routinely. There is usu- ized, distributed, and integrated.” It also organized combined arms forces able to ally a cost incurred when organizations must be “mission tailored,” with units transition quickly and conduct operations do things they are not designed to do.3 organized with the “capabilities needed of sufficient scale and ample duration American planners, moreover, appear for a specific mission and environment.” to achieve strategic objectives, aims to to have different understandings of Units also must be “engaged regionally.” turn the enemy out of prepared posi- what constitutes “enough” in terms of At the top of the agenda, however, is a tions or envelop forces from unexpected force protection, vehicle protection, revised force design featuring “optimized directions.”9 capabilities, and so forth.4 The French, combat units (BCT [Brigade Combat Turning now to the French army, we in contrast, operate on a small scale by Team] 2025)” intended to meet several find that it embodies many of the desired design and doctrine and appear to have objectives, among them being “more attributes mentioned above. Of particular an altogether different understanding of effectively mission tailored” and “region- interest, however, is not the degree to sufficiency. ally aligned.” The Army should have which the French army is expeditionary, “increased expeditionary capability” and but rather what the French example im- Envisioning Expeditionary be a “more expeditionary force” that plies for U.S. Army assumptions, as well In February 2013, General Odierno nonetheless “has retained capability.”6 as the risks involved if it were to become presented his vision of the future in an What the text does not provide is more like the French. article in Foreign Affairs, along with insight into how the force must change to issuing the more official 2013 Army be “more” of in so many ways. The most Operation Serval Strategic Planning Guidance.5 The prominent question, however, remains The French Operation Serval began on Army, he noted, changed as a result of the meaning of the word expeditionary. January 11, 2013, the day after Islamist a decade of operations in Afghanistan The fullest definition dating to just prior militants who had already seized control and Iraq. It needed, in effect, to be to the Future Force 2025 project can over northern Mali began an offensive recentered. The top priority was restor- be found in the 2012 Army Doctrine that threatened the nation’s capital, ing the Army’s conventional capabilities Reference Publication 3-0, Unified Land Bamako. France first responded by and retaining its value as a deterrent Operations: committing to the fight special forces associated with its ability to deploy and (SF) assets that were already in the sustain indefinitely large formations Expeditionary capability is the ability region. While the SF focused on stop- capable of defeating any adversary. to promptly deploy combined arms forces ping the offensive and rallying Malian However, for a variety of reasons, the worldwide into any area of operations army defenders, France rushed general- force could not simply revert to what it and conduct operations upon arrival. purpose troops into theater. The first to had been in the 1990s. On the contrary, Expeditionary operations require the arrive—also on January 11—were units it had to be something altogether new. ability to deploy quickly with little notice, flown in from Chad, where they had JFQ 82, 3rd Quarter 2016 Shurkin 77 been engaged in a long-running opera- proportionately larger support element. ments, and they have no strategic lift tion. Other units drove in from Côte What the French do—and what they of their own. However, the French— d’Ivoire, while still more units began have designed their army to do—is perhaps in light of their weak logistical arriving from France. measure out their forces in small incre- capabilities—arguably have made a By January 15, the French had ments and aim for “just enough.” That virtue of necessity by designing their stopped the militants’ offensive and involves, among other things, the ability forces to deploy and operate on a small begun advancing north to seize control to disaggregate and re-aggregate forma- scale and tailor their forces to meet spe- over the broad strip of land on either side tions on the fly as well as the will to cific needs. of the Niger River, commonly referred to accept a good deal of risk. The French pushed modularity to as the Niger Bend because of the river’s well below the brigade level. They did curving path. The Bend includes north- The Numbers this in the 1990s as part of a number of ern Mali’s most populous towns, Gao Setting aside the unknown number sweeping reforms intended to transform and Timbuktu. The French employed of SF troops who were present in the army from a large conscription-based fast-moving armored columns combined Mali before Serval began, the French continental force designed to fight the with airborne and air-land operations, contingent in Mali—whose north- Soviet Union into a smaller, more expedi- coordinated with SF and with air support ern half alone is roughly the size of tionary force. (By law, the French military from the French air force. The French France—started at zero. Moreover, could not deploy conscripts overseas, took Gao on January 25 and Timbuktu rather than first gathering strength and thereby forcing the army to rely on an 4 days later. They kept moving quickly, then committing to the field à la Opera- “army within the army” consisting of fully securing distant Kidal—the epicenter of tion Desert Shield, the French fielded volunteer formations that historically had Tuareg militancy—by January 31, and their units as they arrived in theater, a colonial vocation. Chief among them Tessalit on February 8.
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