On August 18, 2008, a column of French soldiers left the Tora base in Afghanistan, heading towards the Uzbin valley. The mission of the day was to show themselves in the area, meet the population, and prove that they could go anywhere. Seemingly nothing out of the ordinary. At 3:40 pm, the first shots rang out. Two hours later, ten soldiers were dead (along with their Afghan interpreter) and twenty-one others were injured. For the first time since the Algerian War, a French infantry section had been destroyed in combat.
The shock was national. The coffins arrived at the Les Invalides courtyard, the cameras were there, so were the speeches. Just a few months earlier, Prime Minister Francois Fillon had stated that France was “not at all at war in Afghanistan.” Defense Minister Herve Morin, questioned in the hours following the ambush, still contested “the word war.” Then life resumed, and people moved on.
This movement of emotion followed by forgetfulness is precisely what Michel Goya refuses to accept. “Theory of the Combatant” (Perrin) starts from Uzbin to pose a question that many prefer to avoid: how could these men be sent down there so poorly prepared, so poorly equipped, in an area that no one officially wanted to call a combat zone? And more importantly, what does this tragedy say about how France treats its infantrymen, those whom Goya calls close combatants, whose job is to kill or be killed in intimate contact with the enemy?
Michel Goya develops his answer over several hundred pages. It is accessible, well-documented, and pulls no punches.
Before going further, it is worth stopping to look at the reconstruction of the ambush itself, which occupies the first chapter. Michel Goya recounts the events hour by hour in detail. The Carmin 2 section led by Adjutant Euvrard progresses on foot towards the pass in 30-degree heat, heavily laden with their bulletproof vests and bivouac bags, slowly moving along the path, then the first shots fired at less than 100 meters from the pass, the crossfire, using rocks as the only cover, RPG rockets exploding, ammunition running out, comrades falling.
The problems were piling up even before the first shots were fired. The column resembled a makeshift arrangement: French units that did not know each other, Afghan soldiers in pick-ups, an American special forces team grafted onto the mission at the last moment. No single leader in the field. Radio connections that failed at the wrong times. Ammunition rationed to the bare minimum: 180 rounds per man, while their counterparts in Kapisa carried 400. The section had 23 men instead of the required 30, to adhere to the staffing limit set by the Elysee Palace.
Facing them were seasoned Afghan fighters, perhaps 150 to 170 in number, who knew the terrain by heart and had meticulously prepared the ambush. Without bulletproof vests, without helmets, but mobile, disciplined, determined. Some approached within fifty meters of the French positions. They did not lack ammunition.
The fact that a nation’s ability to impose its will on an enemy ultimately depends on its ability to engage its soldiers at the contact point, at the risk of their lives, is essentially related to its ability to win wars. It is essential to have nuclear weapons to deter a nuclear attack or a massive invasion by a non-nuclear power. It is equally essential to be able to strike hard conventionally and with precision from a distance through the sky while protecting oneself from such attacks.
Michel Goya is not looking to assign blame to a single culprit. He notes a “bad conjunction of planets” in planning, recognizing that the orders given once the combat was engaged were generally good, and he does not discount the courage of the men on the field. But he poses the question that bothers him: how, in 2008, did a French section get destroyed by rebels armed with old Kalashnikovs? Because it wasn’t considered necessary to equip them better. Because no one wanted to admit that they were going to war.
This political denial has very concrete consequences. No heavy artillery available. Attack helicopters? The Tiger helicopter was awaiting upgrade to naval standard, apparently deemed more urgent than deployment in Afghanistan. As for drones, there were none. Stocks of ammunition for a day and a half of combat. Since they were not at war, they did not prepare for war. The result: ten deaths.
After Uzbin, Michel Goya takes a broader look. He traces the history to understand how the modern infantryman was built and why he was gradually pushed to the background despite his central role in any armed conflict.
The great revolution of the foot soldier took place between 1880 and 1918. In less than forty years, everything changed: units dispersed under fire, inter-armed coordination became essential, grenades, light mortars, and machine guns transformed the battlefield. A French battalion in 1917 projected seven times more ammunition per man than in 1914. The modern infantryman, scattered, burdened, progressing in short bounds from one shelter to another, was born in the trenches of the Great War.
It is from this point that things become more complicated: since 1945, the way of fighting on foot has evolved very little. The soldiers of the 2nd Armored Division (2nd DB) of General Leclerc in 1944 had an organization, firepower, and maneuverability that would have allowed them, according to the author, to easily replace a French section in Uzbin, given digital communication and night vision readiness. This assertion may surprise, but it is well-argued.
While aviation, missiles, communications, and intelligence underwent successive revolutions, the infantryman stagnated. Why? Michel Goya points out several reasons. First, there was the technological illusion: progress in other areas was thought to compensate for the lack of investment in the foot soldier. Then there came the budgetary logic: large, politically visible armament programs ate up resources at the expense of “small programs” (tactical drones, sufficient ammunition, suitable individual equipment). And there was still this denial of reality: as long as war was not named, the consequences were conveniently ignored.
The case of the FAMAS became emblematic of this inertia. This assault rifle was introduced in 1979. Its successor, the HK416, was available for purchase as early as 2005 (French special forces were already using it). Ordinary infantrymen did not receive it until 2018, after all the combats in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, and a large part of those in the Sahel. Thirteen years to change a rifle costing 1300 euros each. Someone who has witnessed these delays cannot help but write with a sense of bitterness.
The same story goes for drones. In 2008, a micro-helicopter equipped with a camera cost less than 1000 euros on any model aircraft site. It was deemed “not serious” to buy gadgets without going through the regulatory procedures. Meanwhile, the few tactical drones the French army possessed were sent to Kosovo. They would be deployed in Afghanistan in October 2008, two months after the ambush. Adjutant Euvrard did not foresee the ambush.
The heart of the book is an inventory of the structural errors of the French army. Not just one-night mistakes or individual faults, but deep-rooted dysfunctions of a system that gradually deprioritized its fighters.
The first problem is mass. France no longer has enough soldiers capable of close combat. The historian estimates that around 40,000 people are genuinely trained and prepared for assaults under enemy fire. This is 0.06% of the French population, a historically low level. In 1989, the army had 73 active duty regiments and 93 reserves. Today, there are 38 regiments, many of which cannot be fully equipped simultaneously. To send a single battalion to Romania in February 2022, equipment had to be drawn from over twenty regiments. This is not just a metaphor. It is what actually happened.
Secondly, there is the equipment issue. Michel Goya talks about a “big crunch”: a progressive collapse of the combat vehicle fleet, a result of a combination of reduced programs midway, exploding unit costs in consequence, and weakened maintenance chains to save money. The case of the VBCI illustrates this mechanism well: this infantry fighting vehicle was supposed to replace 1000 AMX-10Ps. Eventually, only 630 were ordered, driving the unit price to a point where the cost of 1000 was paid for 630. Almost all the AMX-10Ps were scrapped. In the end, more was paid for less.
Thirdly, there is the reserve issue. The United States devotes 0.1% of its GDP to this. France, ten times less. France has 40,000 reservists when a similar effort could provide 256,000. Michel Goya points out that without their reserves, the US would not have held in Iraq, Israel would not have been able to fight any of its wars, and Ukraine would have been invaded in 2022. This is not just a theory; it is the concrete evidence shown by recent conflicts.
The fourth problem, perhaps the most difficult to resolve as it relates to culture, is the inability to adapt quickly. Eleven years to change a rifle. Drones deployed after the catastrophe instead of before. A persistent fascination with sophisticated large platforms at the expense of what is immediately useful to the soldier in the zone of death. And a military administration that, in difficult times, prefers to defend the budgets of large programs rather than risk hearing that “you can do better with the same budget” becomes “you can do just as well for less.”
The value of a combat group is a concept that Michel Goya takes the time to assess. CT = M – (Q – C)², where M represents material resources, Q is troop quality, and C is command. A deliberately simple formulation but effective in showing that quality and command matter more than sheer volume: a two-level difference between two units gives the stronger unit a high chance of victory and a loss ratio of up to 1 to 10. A three-level difference, and victory is practically assured.
At Uzbin, the Afghan combatants were not superior in equipment, but they were superior in preparation, knowledge of the terrain, cohesion. And they had ammunition. This imbalance was by no means inevitable.
This reasoning applies to current challenges as well. With a dozen deployable tactical groups (roughly the maximum French capacity today), serious difficulties would have been encountered in defeating the Islamic State at the height of its power in 2015, which then had as many combatants as the entire French close combat force. It does not take much ill will to arrive at this conclusion, just a bit of arithmetic.
On this note, Michel Goya looks with interest at the US Close Combat Lethality Task Force (CCLTF), launched in 2018 with over $2 billion annually. The stated goal: that an American combat group should be able to inflict forty times more losses than it receives. This is not about augmenting a soldier program with technology. It is an all-encompassing approach that mobilizes tactical history, organizational sciences, soldier psychology, and hyper-realistic training, akin to Top Gun but for ground combat. The idea is that if a combat group becomes hard to kill, if the enemy has to accept forty or fifty losses to eliminate one, then engagement in frontline combat becomes more probable, operations become more efficient, and conventional deterrence regains real credibility. Michel Goya advocates for France to be inspired by this approach. It is hard to disagree with him.
In conclusion, Michel Goya paints a grim picture. France finds itself in the first stage of strategic stress, where the threat is not yet visible enough to trigger real mobilization. Urgent reactions follow each tragedy, credits are unlocked, reforms are announced, then the urgency dissipates, and old habits resurface. This is what happened after Uzbin, after the attacks in 2015, and it is what is still happening today, despite the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the sudden reevaluation of European security that it triggered.
The solutions proposed are not new, and that is precisely the problem. Building up equipment mass. Investing substantially in reserves instead of treating them as budgetary variables. Streamlining and decentralizing procurement procedures so that a regiment can buy a drone without spending four years in committees. Training combat groups realistically. Recruiting and retaining soldiers by paying them decently and making the regiment a home, not just a human resources provider for other structures.
None of this is revolutionary. These are the commonsense arguments that military wisdom has been formulating for a long time. The problem is the gap between formulation and action, a gap in France measured in years, sometimes in decades. Eleven years for a rifle. Two months delay for drones that could have changed the course of August 18, 2008. A reserve ten times underfunded compared to what it should be.
What Michel Goya is essentially saying is that close combatants bear the brunt of losses in a conflict, receive national ceremonies when they fall, and yet remain the last in line in terms of investments, equipment, and political attention during ordinary times. They are only acknowledged when they die. “Theory of the Combatant” simply states that it is time to change this, not out of idealism but because they are the ones who win or lose wars.
This is a useful book. In a public debate on defense often dominated by questions of nuclear deterrence, aircraft carriers, or overall budgets, it serves as a reminder that at the end of the chain, there is a combat group of seven men advancing under fire with what they have been given. And that what they were given, for too long, has not been sufficient.
