"French Army 1970-1990 Quality?" Topic

I understand that this is quite a broad period, but how well drilled were the French during this time period? Especially in the 80s. Would they rank up to the drill level of American Forces in the 80s or be a bit behind or ahead?

I am interested in possibly adding some French Micro Armor to my collection, but for game purposes I am curios to hear about their quality. My limited surface research has not really given me a sense of their quality.

Thanks

Well, it was a conscript army….

But would use Foreign Legion for anything hard. They were volunteers.

It is obviously later but in Afghanistan, both the French and Italians were considered very good by US troops.

From what I recall, France really has two armies, one that is only used in France (Europe) and another that it can deploy elsewhere. The Deployable one I would rate good to very good. I believe that it was mostly volunteers from the Metropolitan army.

As gunnerphil said, in the event of trouble like Operation Daguet, Chad or Congo the FFL did the business. The FFL is good quality, the 2nd REP were as good as you can get. The rest was largely conscript in a state of continuous reorganisation.

1970-90
70s lots of old cadres had seen the elephant but might be not so wel adapted to ww3 central europe battle.
Conscript units could vary from abyssal to ok depending on degree of efforts from cadre( professional) and imagination. Roll a die.

Morale would not be so high because of the huge gap in standarts / respect/ will between professional nco/ officers and concripts. Think Argentine army Falklands.

As said before, there were ( and in a way still is) two armies : a few bns of good / very good mostly airborne, some FL, " marine" units and a couple of alpine…. And the rest.

Training and motivation improved in the 80-90 s+ for officers; more open to the world, more knowledge, less stereotyped training.
People are less going in ( esp nco) for a secure job because everything else failed; more dedicated or is because the whole size shrunk so the schools can be more picky.

I did an attachment with 2 RIMA in the late '70s. As good as any British units I served with…

I know it's a bit out of time context, but there was a company of Paras that were attached to our brigade in eastern A'stan in 2010-2011. They were very good, professional troops. I think they were part of the 2REP which explains their quality over standard French troops. Very competent and eager to mix it up…

Very interesting responses! Thanks for your help guys.

Navy: Conscription doesn't in and of itself say anything about the quality. In 1973 a swedish report had a thing or two to say about the state of the BAOR (a professional army), whilst being used to a conscript army. link

The IDF is a conscript army, but tends to be very highly regarded.

The IDF is a very motivated conscript army. That can't be said for all conscript troops in times of 'peace'.

Neither can be said about professional troops. The idea wasn't to say that conscript armies are better than professional armies, but that dividing the world into "conscript" and "professional" or "drafted" armies isn't really saying a lot.

VAB, AML and AMX ! What matters quality when you can have chic? ;-)

An army that can have a wide range of training/experience/morale makes for an interesting army IMO

"VAB, AML and AMX ! What matters quality when you can have chic? ;-)

An army that can have a wide range of training/experience/morale makes for an interesting army IMO"

I have French in micro armour, I think the above sums it up exactly :)

I think it's best to assume their conscript forces were as good (or bad) as other Euro conscript armies. The professional forces are probably as good as anyone's, and the Foreign Legion (probably most of the Light forces) are better than nearly everyone. Their equipment was always fairly state of the art.

Gaming wise their tanks are lighter armoured than most opposing armies but there are a lot of pretty big guns on the lighter stuff which can really hurt the enemy, I've had my AMX 10RC's pick off Russian tanks before they even get in range.

In the 80s tactical ADA was almost nil. AMX30 sub standart compared to others.
Germans for had a better training, shooting live several times more rounds, 15 months instead of 12, did not have that ancient regime/ colonial wars mentality in the cadres.