It doesn’t happen every day, the chief of defense, the general Marc Compernol was the guest on the show Jeudi en Prime. If he made the trip, exposed himself to the cameras, it was above all to ask for additional means for the army.
The general explains: “PAt the moment, we had investments in equipment with 8 billion contracts signed in 2018. It was necessary. It sounds like a lot, but if I tell you that it represents 1.5 times the total investment of the past 30 years, it says a lot about these 30 years. We needed these investments, but that’s not all.“
For the general, it’s not just the equipment that needs to be improved in the army: “We need more money to build infrastructure, to have measures to attract people, for operations, so it takes more than the 9.2 billion investments planned. The disinvestment for years in infrastructure and in training means, we must also work on it. “
For the chief of defense, these investments are all the more necessary as the army has many challenges to take up: “There are four important elements. The big challenges for the years to come are staying operational, being able to deploy on the ground,increase our capacity to act, as requested by Europe and NATO and as is happening in the world. We must also introduce the new equipment that is arriving and all this with personnel who are leaving us en masse to retire. “
Find new recruits and refocus on their missions
Because the army also has to face a lack of human resources, explains Marc Compernol: “We are losing a lot of people. 2,000 each year, 1,800 of whom retire and the rest who leave for other reasons. We will have to compensate for that. In the short term, I think that it will also be necessary to hire civilians to carry out missions that are not military. We have to work on our attractiveness, a decent salary, working and living conditions. And in terms of recruitment, go find other pools. ” If the general is creative in finding new recruits, there is no question for him to restore compulsory military service.
The general also pleads for a refocusing of the army on its missions. He was critical of the presence of the military in the streets of Belgium: “Our mission is for me outside of Belgium. It’s true that we are the only ones who can deploy well-trained and trained people in a very short time […] We have been on the streets for 5 years, I think that after 5 years the government should have found a structural solution. What we do becomes structural when we are not dimensioned and equipped for it, our people are not trained for it “. This presence on the street also has an impact on young recruits: “This is a generation that we will have to watch over, to make an extra effort. There is a generation of young non-commissioned officers, young soldiers for whom military life is to keep the streets of the law. “
Hope to be heard
The fact remains that these claims are not new and have already been repeated by its predecessors without any real result. But for the general Compernol, the chances of being heard are greater today: “JI hope that I will be able to explain to the political world our needs. We are more heard now than before because the security situation has changed. With the attacks, it drew the attention of the population to the fact that there is a security problem. Since the end of the second world war, people did not feel the danger. Now, with all that is happening in the north of Africa, terrorism, the occupation of Ukraine, threats from Russia, people see that there are security issues. “
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