Archives – CSFA: ‘COMBAT PROVEN’ (II of II)

Photo: logistic support during the Serval Operation in Mali © EMA / ECPAD
(as published in >>> https://operationnels.com/2014/05/12/dans-les-coulisses-de-serval-assurer-le-soutien-logistique-dans-le-brouillard-de-la-guerre/)

By Murielle Delaporte - Interview with Air Force Lieutenant General Jean-Marc Laurent, Commander of the Air Force Support Command – CSFA - (conducted in 2014).

This second part focuses on the lessons learned from Operation Serval in Mali in 2013 and the role of the CSFA during a mission that was highly unusual because of the nature of the theatre.

The French Air Force was essential to the success of the first phase of Serval: what is your initial assessment of this particularly demanding operation?

For the French Air Force, and more pragmatically for the air support forces, Serval was an extraordinary challenge and an engagement in which the qualities of a combatant - expertise, efficiency, robustness and resilience - proved to be both essential and perfectly mastered. From the technicians' point of view, the theatre and the engagement presented specific characteristics in terms of elongation and operating modes. Unlike Afghanistan and Libya, we had to operate over considerable intra-theatre distances and with a particularly extensive air system, which made the logistics considerably more complex, especially given the historical shortage of air transport resources (strategic or tactical).

As in Afghanistan, the Malian theatre is landlocked at the heart of a vast continent. In these conditions, for reasons of accessibility but also responsiveness, airborne logistical supply capabilities are the most relevant and those that respond most directly to the political and security challenges. The operation in this sub-Saharan region has also been marked by its operational architecture, based on several sites covering a large part of the Sahel.

Media coverage of operations often focuses on the ‘hottest’ areas of engagement for our national forces, but it must be understood that an air operation involves a continental or, at the very least, sub-regional area, which profoundly structures their operational response. Thus, while Mali is the focal point of military effects, the action of the air forces, and in particular the support forces, must be understood within a vast network of theatre bases which interact with each other and form part of an interconnected operational architecture (in the same way as the network of air bases in mainland France).

Each movement of weapons systems from France to the Sahel, or from one site in the theatre to another, has responded to an overall rationale which imposes a global approach to the theatre and rejects, as far as the air component is concerned, any segmentation by country or form of commitment (coexistence of three regional operations with different initial objectives: Epervier, Serval and Sabre). This capacity for global technical and operational management is one of the strengths of the CSFA.

Of course, the AFSC does not act alone, it does not take credit for the entire operational success of the operation, and it has worked in perfect compliance with the directions given by the operational commanders (CPCO - Centre de Planification et de conduite des Opérations (i.e. planning command)- and CDAOA - Commandement de la Défense Aérienne et des Opérations Aériennes (e.g. Air Defence and Air Operations Command), and in collaboration with support management structures (CICLO - centre interarmées de conduite logistique opérationnelle (joint logistics management) -, CMT - centre multimodal du transport (multimode transport center) -), operational air service providers (including the EATC - European Airlift Transport Command -) and shared support services.

If geography has conditioned the action of the air force's operational support forces, the modes of action have also been decisive in the way operational support for Serval has been approached. In Afghanistan, the French Air Force gradually deployed to the periphery of the theatre (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and the UAE), developing robust support structures (including Manas, which I had the honour of commanding). This gradually increased the pressure on the enemy. France then invested in the country's coalition airbases, which became centres of operational activity whose capacity and resources will remain historical references (in particular, Kandahar and Bagram).

In Libya, for the first time since the Second World War, the French Air Force carried out combat missions ‘to and fro’ from national soil (mainland France or Corsica). This initial period enabled the CSFA operational support forces to combine support for ongoing operations with preparation for the redeployments of the force that were to take place as close as possible to Libya (Souda in Crete and Sigonella in Sicily). Although the Harmattan operation was marked by a considerable acceleration of the operational process (compared with Afghanistan) and by a permanent race against the clock, the operational process was nevertheless staggered and the projection of power on the one hand, and of forces on the other, was carried out in a favourable operational order by projecting operational support from site to site before the weapon system operators (crews and technicians, among others) settled in. In this respect, we can congratulate ourselves on a perfectly oiled technical-operational mechanism that never experienced the slightest operational interruption or day-off during the eight months of the engagement.

For Serval, the operational situation was somewhat different and represented a new and unique challenge for the support forces. Although the first air missions were launched, as for Harmattan, with a delay that could be counted in hours, the power and force projections were carried out simultaneously because the Rafales that left Saint-Dizier landed in Africa before their technicians, even though they benefited from the support offered by the N'Djamena base. It therefore took a great deal of ingenuity and pragmatism, but also energy and determination on the part of the technical support levels to ‘follow and support’ the manoeuvre and anticipate it as far as possible. The same was true for the redeployments to Bamako and other regional airfields, where the time squeeze between aircraft deployment and logistical manoeuvre was extreme and, moreover, combined with a large-scale ground deployment that did not exist for Harmattan and had not been conceived in the same way in Afghanistan.

The CSFA has always been proactive manoeuvre-wise, and one should not forget that the first airmen on Malian soil were mainly technicians from this command. Operation Serval was therefore marked by a further acceleration in operational time, which continued throughout the engagement. Indeed, after the first entry by the air force, the ground forces (including a certain number of airmen from the CSFA air engineering units) advanced towards the north of Mali with speed and power in a rustic and unsecured environment. In this respect, I am very pleased with the way in which the French Air Force's technical fighters performed during the engagement in the Gao and Tessalit regions, where they enabled the ground and air forces to make progress with the necessary logistical support.

Finally, Serval saw the simultaneous engagement of all the air force's air components. While, as in other operations, combat aviation was at the forefront of power projection, with a Rafale weapons system that continues to revolutionize combat from the air with exceptional efficiency and adaptability, transport aviation had its moment of glory with airborne operations of remarkable design and execution. UAV systems also showed just how much they were adding a new dimension to politico-military action. Behind these systems, technicians have fought hard and given their best to extract the necessary operational energy from our old Transalls, which are running out of breath, and from our rare Harfang UAVs, with an availability that enables them to operate uninterrupted for dozens of hours.

So that's my first brief review, concluding with three points that I consider fundamental:

• First and foremost, Serval highlighted the extraordinary men and women who are capable of the impossible and who strive to extract the best from weapons systems with severe resources and a logistical context.
  
  
• Serval is also an Operational Support organization that has confirmed its “Combat Proven” character. My concern is that it retains its relevance and coherence despite budgetary pressures and the temptation, for some, to find some short-term and unlikely savings. After all, operational support is not an environmental element of military capability, it is its very substance. We even need to be convinced that, in the air, operational ‘stewardship’ does not follow the commitment of forces, but that it must, on the contrary, anticipate it, and that from its power stems the power of military effects. Its concept and organization must therefore be based on this absolute principle.
  
  
• Finally, looking to the future and preparing for it, the support forces must continue to mature operationally. They need to imagine and design the operational support of tomorrow, which will involve increasingly reactive, distant, tougher and more complex operations. In particular, they must continue their battle against time, which is no longer measured in days or weeks, but resolutely in hours. They must seek out and adopt the best factors for robustness and resilience. Finally, as I have always demanded of my units, they must always fight and think in terms of the operational effect to be achieved before thinking about technical support production.