French artillery regiment changes structure due to drone threat — Defense News
The 68th African Artillery Regiment of the French Army is reorganizing its units equipped with 155mm Caesar self-propelled howitzers to improve their survivability amid the threat of drones and counter-battery fire. As Defense News reports, under the model being tested by the regiment, batteries are being reformatted from two sections of four guns into three sections of two guns. The total number of Caesar howitzers in the regiment currently remains unchanged.
Regiment commander Colonel Rémy Jaillier said that smaller and more dispersed units should improve the availability and speed of employing fire, as well as resilience against counter-battery warfare. The regiment plans to coordinate several firing sections and retain the ability to deliver massed fire with the Atlas fire control system.
Preparing positions and decoys
The regiment is creating a separate artillery support section that will identify firing positions, pre-position ammunition and deploy decoys. Previously, each firing section had its own small reconnaissance element.
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According to Jaillier, Caesar howitzers will wait for fire missions in so-called “opacity bubbles” — camouflaged sites with minimal emissions to make detection more difficult. Firing positions are also planned to be equipped with protective metal cages that the self-propelled howitzers will be able to reverse into.
Testing the new model
The 68th Regiment tested the new organizational model this year at the Canjuers military training ground in southern France and during the large-scale French Orion 2026 exercises, which ended in late April. According to the commander, this made it possible to refine the unit structure, protective cages and decoys. The first Caesar battery is planned to be fully transferred to the new structure next year, followed later by the other batteries.
Jaillier noted that the experience of the war in Ukraine has demonstrated the vulnerability of artillery positions under constant drone surveillance. At the same time, he stressed that Caesar’s key advantage is mobility, so prepared positions should not become a universal approach. The new model is currently an initiative of the 68th Regiment itself and is not considered a standard structure for the entire French Army.
