For him, “we have to move up a gear.” In the new book he publishes this Wednesday, words of honorGeneral Pierre de Villiers looks at the head of the French armies, of which he was Chief of Staff between 2014 and 2017. Invited by BFMTV, he answered questions from Apolline de Malherbe, believing that the international context was pushing to increase the capacity of the country. military effort.
Criticizing the modern dangers constituted by the permanence of “radical Islamist terrorism” and the “return of the States of power”, he launched as follows:
Concerned about a situation of “increasing instability”
The media, let’s talk about it: the military programming law plans to increase the budget of the armies to 44,000 million euros in 2023, at the end of a new increase of three billion euros. In 2017, the year of the resounding resignation of General de Villiers in disagreement with the allocation assigned to our troops, it was 32 billion. “I think that will be insufficient,” the officer swept.
“But he was capable of carrying out operations, that’s about winning a war. It is not the same scale, it is not the same in terms of ammunition, stock. We have to review the logistics”, explained Pierre de Villiers. “We are in a situation of growing global instability, we have to put in the means,” he hammered, explaining that “when there is a pandemic we put in hundreds of billions, inflation tens of billions… We have to move up a gear.”
The army before the envelope.
And it is not only in the field of logistics where it is about speeding up. Because the recovery of the French troops also implies recruitment and training according to General Pierre de Villiers. “Between 2008 and 2015 we cut 20% of the military. It was a mistake in terms of what we know today,” he said. “We have been talking about increasing our reserve force capabilities for 20 years – we have 40,000 reservists – we haven’t done it,” he also regretfully said, before pointing to the source of the problem, citing “budgetary reasons.”
Pierre de Villiers advocated a reversal of the order of priorities: “When you build an army model to protect the French, you have to determine the threat, then determine this model in physics – the equipment, etc. – then we determine the budget allocation. .
Source: BFM TV
