French army falling apart, documents show

[Todjaeger]

I think this may be a misunderstanding, & that the proposal is not to reduce the army from 50000 to 30000 (as you correctly say, it is much larger than 50000), but to reduce the deployable combat forces (referred to as "operational troops") from 50000 to 30000.

It is quite possible that the article was supposed to be about the size of the deployable forces... Though once I read the Atlantic 2 jet reference, it did bring me up short. What I would currently like to know, is what percentage of the equipment that is supposed to be deployable is actually operational or available. For instance, of the French Leclerc tanks, how many are actually fielded? If only half are fielded, with the rest assigned to training duties and/or storage, that is an entirely different picture than the one the article painted.

-Cheers