In the fall of 2024, the French Army conducted special forces training exercises under the code name Perseus. The scenario specifically prepared for the potential deployment of French troops to counter a russian incursion from Belarus into northern Ukraine.
Intelligence Online reports that the exercises involved 3,200 troops from French special ops and were held in a location within France chosen for its resemblance to the Dnipro River basin near Kyiv.
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According to the publication, the core units participating in Perseus were the 1st and 13th Parachute Regiments under the French Army Special Forces Command (Commandement des actions spéciales terre, CAST).
Supporting these regiments were operators of Mavic 3T drones, the 6th SIGINT Company tasked with detecting and jamming russian radio communications, and the 712th Cyber Ops Company responsible for cyberspace monitoring, such as tracking leaks of enemy data on the Telegram messenger. Additionally, the special forces utilized imagery from reconnaissance satellites.
However, the authors of the report criticized the omission of FPV strike drone training during the exercises, arguing that this oversight does not align with the realities of the battlefield in Ukraine.
Defense Express would like to emphasize the broader implications of these military exercises. The Perseus drills illustrate France’s efforts to adapt and incorporate lessons from the Ukrainian Armed Forces' battles against russian invaders.
This is not the first such initiative: French exercises in October 2024 integrated AMX-10RC vehicles, often labeled as wheeled tanks, and infantry on motorcycles — tactics observed in Ukraine’s ongoing war — into domestic training.
A particularly notable aspect of the Perseus exercises is the apparent preparation for potential troop deployments to Ukraine under various military and political conditions.
The contingent size of 3,200 soldiers appears to correspond to the operational limits of French military transport aviation, which can deploy up to six of the 21 available A400M aircraft.
It appears that the French military focused on rapid deployment, though it likely came at the expense of including heavy weaponry in the simulation. For comparison, in March 2024, France began preparations to deploy a brigade of 4,000 troops and 50 Leclerc tanks to Romania. The transfer is planned for spring 2025 as a more logistically demanding operation.
In summary, the drills showed that the French armed forces stick to their traditional doctrine and view UAVs primarily as situational makeshift tools, filling gaps where regular heavy weapons cannot be deployed.
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