Army to join French wargame

BRITISH troops are to take part in a “high intensity” wargame to prepare for a “major conflict” as part of drills that France, the host country, says are the largest it has organised since the end of the Cold War.

Operation Orion, which is due to take place in the region of Champagne next spring will involve 20,000 allied forces, according to the French defence ministry, which unveiled the plan this week.

The wargame against a bellicose “state power” was “accelerated”, according to Le Monde, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. American, Belgian and Italian forces will also be among those taking part.

General Yves Métayer, of the French army, said: “We have never held an exercise of this scale and duration.” Troops will land in France to establish a bridgehead in a fictitious country called Arnland, destabilised by militia backed by a hostile state called Mercury.

Next, they will simulate a direct invasion of Arnland by Mercury.