On 16 April 1917 French tanks were committed to battle for the first time at Berry au Bac. 35 tanks out of 121 brewed up under enemy artillery fire. On 5 May 1917 they were committed for the second time at the Moulin de Laffaux; this time no tank suffered the same fate, as their vulnerability had been reduced by technical modifications.

Last month, as a matter of urgency, the Army Staff decided to launch the manufacture of personal protection kits in order to react to the increasing severity of combat in Afghanistan. Current military procurements in the development stage have the aim of extending the technical advantages still enjoyed by Western armies when compared with their adversaries. However, their development cycles (which can be anything from 10 to 30 years) cannot anticipate their future conditions of use at the time they were conceived. Our adversaries can acquire rapidly (and often off the shelf) new capabilities which may imperil the operational superiority of our forces in sensitive areas such as telecommunications, anti-tank weapons and booby traps; they seek constantly, and often successfully, to escape the trap of asymmetry in which they are caught by our technological and tactical superiority.

The quick introduction of palliative solutions to re-establish a lost operational advantage is a major challenge.⁽¹⁾ This is why the Chief of Army Staff (CEMAT) has decided to provide his ground forces with a process of reactive adaptation, allowing them to adapt more quickly and more coherently in terms of doctrine, training, equipments and acquisition programmes, and even of organisation. Situated in the time gap between immediate modifications and normal acquisition programmes, the idea is to respond to urgent operational requirements by the modification of equipment already in service by the acquisition of a better performing equipment (or one with new functions), while at the same time compressing the time needed for manufacture or acquisition.