The Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, inaugurated, Thursday, November 3, this new grip. A displacement which also aimed to push a certain number of cooperation and armaments contracts with Bucharest.
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It is an understatement to say that comfort is still rudimentary, in Cincu, this small Romanian base located in the middle of the hilly slopes of the carpathians, called to become the main French military hold on the eastern flank of Europe. Part of the 750 soldiers who are now deployed there alongside 150 Belgians and Dutch in rotation are still housed in tent. The water network is experiencing a number of failures, and there is still a real place of weapons.
But nobody, among the officers welcoming the Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, who came to inaugurate the premises, Thursday, November 3, seeks to hide the logistical challenge that has represented, since the spring, the development of this vast clay land. “It may seem paradoxical, but it was almost simpler in the Sahel,” summarizes a officer. Of the 485 current camp bungalows, more than 360 came directly from Niger where France completed, in August, its withdrawal from Mali.
In a Romania, which is certainly very demanding of military reinforcements, but very brightly sovereignty, the French were forced to treat local businesses in their tenders for their work. If cinccu has the virtues of rusticity for training in the war of “high intensity”, its isolation and the poor condition of the two bridges to be crossed to achieve it have complicated the transport of heavy equipment.
Leclerc chartered by train
Another problem rediscovered by the armies during the development of this new base: the absence of homogeneity in the rules for crossing European borders for military equipment. An old problem whose Leclerc tanks, promised by the head of state on October 13, are the first to have paid the price. While Paris wanted, at the bend of this announcement, to demonstrate its speed of deployment, it could, to date, send, by road, that its armored vehicles of combat and infantry – around ten.
Leclerc tanks, also around ten, have been, according to our information, to oppose a categorical transit refusal by road from Germany. And this, as tonnage limitations even applying to the Bundeswehr. It is therefore by the train that the Leclerc should soon leave France, around November 10. A longer way than by road, and which should take, again, several days, for lack of transit facilities.