'Playing at War': French Army Mocked Online for 'Great Nonsense' of Orion-23 Drills
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For weeks, France has been holding their largest ever Orion 2023 war games with allied forces. Some 7,000 troops are involved on air, land, and sea, and the drills come amid NATO anxieties about their ability to support Ukraine as a proxy force against Russia in the longer term.
The war games scenario is a thinly veiled parallel to Russia’s special operation in Ukraine: a hostile power called "Mercure" has invaded a French ally named "Arnland," and the French and allied troops must establish a bridgehead in Arnland and push out Mercure's forces.
One aspect of the drills involved urban combat exercises, held in Cahors, a city on the Lot River in southern France. The drills saw several hundred French and British troops practice fighting in narrow urban streets, including fighting house-to-house, and coordinating the evacuation of wounded.
💥🇫🇷 FLASH - Des militaires de l’opération #ORION ont investi les rues de #Cahors en plein milieu des civils dans le cadre de l’exercice d’ampleur. La mission (menée avec des balles à blanc) consistait à reprendre la ville assiégée. (témoin) #ORION23 #Lot pic.twitter.com/pWXhVatp2t
— Mediavenir (@Mediavenir) March 12, 2023
However, the drills went on as residents went on about their regular daily business around town. Video shows the troops laying down machine-gun fire at their imagined enemy using blank rounds as residents move around them carrying groceries and other goods, almost as if the two groups of people did not exist in the same space.
One participant in the games who spoke with French media described it as a "publicity stunt" that sometimes bordered on being "great nonsense."
"We played war games to please the executive," another mused.
Pierre-Jean Jouve, a parliamentary collaborator for National Rally, dismissed the exercise as "making likes" on Instagram and seeking to ease acceptance of the controversial five-year military programming law. French President Emmanuel Macron has called for a €400 billion budget to overhaul the French Armed Forces.
Ces exercices militaires réalisés avec des balles à blanc dans les rues de Cahors nous interrogent ?
— Carėne Tardy (@Carene1984) March 12, 2023
Chaque jour, les violences se multiplient dans les rues des villes françaises sans qu’une réponse policière et pénale ne soit donnée, alors que les habitants subissent ces… https://t.co/PQfK1taq2Q pic.twitter.com/4xJIFnrcfM
Carène Tardy, departmental councilor of Ain in eastern France, mused about how the authorities had refused to respond to rising crime in Cahors and "prefers to devote itself to a simulation of war" instead.
The drills are just the first phase of the Orion 2023 war games. A second phase is scheduled for mid-April in Champagne. The total cost is estimated at €35 million.
