The popularity of the Air-Land Operational Space doctrine should not call into question the Western view of the battlefield and the contact battle. Network operations, as war is all too often pictured these days, place great emphasis on the use of indirect fire thanks to the separation of the ‘sensors’ and the ‘executors’. Western armies have a very different concept of war. According to the American historian Victor Davis Hanson,⁽¹⁾ we inherited the battlefield concept of a clash of front lines from the Greeks. The objective of the hoplites was to bring about a decisive battle and to destroy the adversary’s armed forces. War, which favours a direct attack, was therefore rapid and extremely brutal. This heritage dogs us still and dominates the Western idea of war. Today, it is fashionable to decry the concept of the contact battle. Nevertheless, the overseas operations conducted by the Army are peppered with violent engagements. In Côte d’Ivoire, the engagements at Duékué⁽²⁾ and Gohitafla⁽³⁾ certainly had some of the characteristics of high-intensity combat, where the French crews engaged were only able to get the upper hand thanks to their level of training and their cool-headedness.

Every day, light armoured vehicles (VBLs) patrol in Afghanistan, under the constant threat of attack from improvised explosive devices (IED). When designing an armoured vehicle today, it is vital to consider that the crew do not always have the luxury of a UAV to guide them into action. Very often they must meet the enemy face to face, sometimes at very short range, especially as current operations show that one cannot expect to see obvious front lines. Units are very dispersed in the theatre of operations and crews have to master the use of satellite radio as much as the teachings of Avants postes de cavalerie légère.⁽⁴⁾ In such a setting, light armoured vehicles can no longer play a subsidiary role while awaiting the arrival of main battle tanks, Cold War style. In Côte d’Ivoire, army crews several times came close to fighting forces equipped with more powerful vehicles: Gazelle against Mi-24, ERC-90 Sagaie against T-54 or VBL against BMP-1. For Panhard, it became necessary to get the most from its light platforms to enable crews, where necessary, to confront and defeat their adversaries. Technology now permits this leap in capability. The development of remotely operated weapons and high-powered medium-calibre guns (40mm CTAI) will enable the optimisation of light platforms. A well-protected VBR armed with a powerful medium-calibre gun offers an optimised solution in terms of cost-effectiveness.

The Light Armoured Vehicle

Lessons from Iraq have shown the necessity for operations to be conducted under armour. The morale of a crew derives in large measure from the confidence (warranted or not) they have in the protection of their vehicle. The ‘exploits’ of the US Army Stryker in Iraq cannot be viewed without a certain irony. This brand-new 8x8 personnel carrier had to be up-armoured as a matter of urgency to protect it when it had just entered service. In view of the threats which weigh on troops on operations, whether RPG anti-tank rockets or IEDs left at the roadside, it is reasonable to wonder if the cannonball has advanced further than the breastplate and the race towards ever larger and heavier tanks is in vain. To borrow Winston Churchill’s metaphor,⁽⁵⁾ armoured vehicle combat does not resemble a duel between medieval knights so much as combat between two eggshells armed with hammers. The need is to strike first and to keep on striking. In this context it is more sensible to favour armoured vehicles of less than 10 tonnes. Apart from their advantages in terms of airportability (in C-130 or heavy helicopter), vehicles of the size of the VBL or the VBR have advantages due to their stealth, their ability to fit into the environment and to move easily through the alleys of Third World towns.