Mr. President Jean-Jacques Bridey. General, you are in command of the Command Doctrine and Education Centre (CDEC), which is attached to the land staff. After listening to you at a conference-debate, I thought I should hear you before our committee.
Dear colleagues, I believe that you will indeed learn new things about French military doctrine.

Major General Pascal Facon, commanding officer of the Command Doctrine and Training Centre. I thank you for your welcome, just as I thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk to you about the feedback from three conflicts, in the Levant, in the Sahel-Saharan strip (BSS) and in Ukraine. In the context of this hearing, I am accompanied by Colonel Nicolas Auboin, who heads the doctrine division, and Colonel Gilles Haberey, Chief of Staff of the CDEC.

The CDEC is an organization under the authority of the Major General of the Army, Lieutenant General Barrera. Its mission is twofold: to develop the instructions for the use of our army, i.e. its doctrine - defined by Marshal Foch as a "set of principles applied in a way that is consistent with the principles of the Army.on, depending on the circumstances" -, based in particular on feedback (RETEX) and prospective studies; to train the future leaders of our armies and those who will help them to decide.

The objective of the CDEC, its four schools, three divisions, two divisions and a tactics chair is to design, teach and promote French military thought in an operational environment characterised by by our commitment on the national territory, by the continuation of external operations such as Barkhane and Chammal, by technical progress which makes the battlefield evolve before our eyes every day and by a possible return of high intensity conflicts.

This hearing provides the CDEC with a unique opportunity to present the main lessons and conclusions drawn from three ongoing conflicts in the Levant, the BSSet in eastern Ukraine. We are thus responding to the centre's motto: "If you want peace, prepare for war. »

RETEX influences a whole cycle that we call DORESE - acronym for Doctrine, Organisation, Human Resources, Equipment, Force Support, Training. It is a methodology that provides a comprehensive approach to the question of capabilities, which are no longer seen solely through the prism of equipment.

This approach is essential because the time for study and RETEX is not the time for action. As General Foch said when he was head of the War College between 1908 and 1911 : "The reality of the battlefield is that you learn nothing; you do what you can with what you know. From then on, to be able to learn a little, you have to know a lot and know it well. "That's the whole point of command training and the work of RETEX.

RETEX has many consequences and uses. First of all, it sheds light on the actions of those in charge of forging the sword and shield of our forces. The Major General Charles Beaudoin, Deputy Chief of the Land Staff Plans and Programmes (DCDS), when he was heard last 16 May, showed that every programme and every piece of equipment, however small or simple, refers to an operational need that stems directly from feedback.

RETEX is at the origin of reactive adaptation at all stages of the DORESE process, such as the fight against Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) that destroy our vehicles: what equipment do we therefore need to have to deal with them? The same applies to the fight against UAVs, which are now in widespread use. At the other end of the spectrum, feedback from experience feeds proactive anticipation with the exploratory doctrine SCORPION - acronym for "Contact synergy reinforced by versatility and infovalorisation".

It helps Land Forces Command (LFC), the provider of certified forces for an operation, to train our units. The experience gained by our forces at all levels in different operations is the fuel for the operational readiness conducted by the newly createdThe experience acquired at all levels by our forces in various operations is the fuel for the operational preparation conducted by the new Joint Training and Combat Schools Command (E2CIA), created on 2 July in Mourmelon-le-Grand and placed under the authority of the LFC.

Finally, the feedback from the experience feeds into the doctrine and operational instructions of our Army, ensuring that it is not a fixed thought.

RETEX feeds into military thinking that combines the lessons learned from operations, whether experienced or observed, and a reflection conducted in all directions on the evolution of forms of conflict. Last week, we received a senior official from the Historial de Péronne, to reflect on the factors of resilience and resistance of a society, in the light of the experience of 1914-1918. The "warrior spirit", regularly highlighted by General Bosser, Chief of Army Staff (CEMAT), was at the centre of our discussions. We thus reflect on what we see, what we imagine, when we look at our history.

Without being predictive, without making it possible to foresee everything or anticipate everything, RETEX, on the other hand, fully participates in the formation of action-oriented minds. "The perfect armour does not exist, but we must not be caught unprepared", as CEMAT often says.

You asked me to give you an analysis of three conflicts. It will not be a question of going back over their politico-military genesis, or even of giving an opinion on the conduct of operations, which is the responsibility of the Chief of the Armed Forces Staff (CAS).
We will, however, seek to characterise the main determinants of these conflicts. Above all, we will also show that the choices made in the Military Planning Act (MPA) are justified in the light of what we know about current commitments and what we envisage for future conflicts.

In terms of method, I will not present the conflicts in the Levant, the BSS or Ukraine in succession. Rather, I propose to approach them from the perspective of the Operational Superiority Factors (OSF), as identified in "Future Land Action", and thus to look at these three conflicts through the prism of the eight factors of operational superiority: mass, cooperation, understanding, agility, influence, moral strength, endurance, leadership performance. These factors are constantly combined to achieve the desired end state from a military point of view.

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