Driven by a mostly hot and sunny weather along the week some 351,000 visitors attended this year’s Paris International Air Show, between 15 and 21 June, turning the venue into one of the most successful ever. On dynamic display each day of the week this year were only two forefront fighter plane: the French Rafale and the Sino-Pakistani JF-17 Thunder, this last being shown in France for the first time ever.
With a total of 84 Rafale fighters sold on the export market in a mere few months, first to Egypt, the to Qatar and India, the iconic French combat jet strongly remains in the limelight, and this was especially the case during the recent le Paris Air Show where everything began daily with a masterly air presentation of the Rafale given by the Armée de l’Air. No one should however forget that, given the tense situation of the dwindling French defence budget, these Rafale sales will largely be served at the expense of the French Armed Forces, as most export deliveries will be made from dedicated Rafale F3 batches previously ordered by the French Air Force and the French Navy…
Impacted first is the French Navy’s Aéronavale which was supposed to withdraw from service during this summer the ultimate dozen of no less iconic but now very long in the tooth Dassault Super Étendard « modernisés », or modernized SEM, which still equip a full naval squadron : Flottille 17F in Landivisiau in Brittany. Alas, this will not happen soon enough. And the SEM should soldier on – by lack of replacement – beyond the originally announced 2015 deadline, for maybe at least two years more ; even though the new date of withdrawal signified by the Marine Nationale remains set at the summer of next year.
The French Aéronavale has received so far 42 Rafale Ms since 2000. M- 1 to 42 (of which four are at the most modern F3 standard with Thales RBE2-EASA active array radar, M-39 to 42). Rafale M-42, delivered in January to the Navy, was exhibited in the Dassault Aviation static display park at the recent Salon du Bourget, armed with an MBDA Exocet missile under the fuselage. Operational attrition at sea having cost so far four Rafale Ms to the Aéronavale over a fifteen year period (Rafale Ms No.18, 22, 24 and 25), the Navy has today on strength just 38 Rafale Ms. But not all are in frontal service.
If we take into account the ten Rafale M/F1s (M-1 to 10) removed from duty a while ago to be upgraded to the F3 standard by Dassault Aviation at a €300 million additional cost — and scheduled to be delivered until 2018 at the rate of two aircraft per year (M-10 and 9 were delivered a few months back) — the French avy has on hand not more than thirty Rafale M distributed roughly as follows: ten to the Flottille 11F and eleven to Flottille 12F in Landivisiau and three to ETR 2/91 at Saint Dizier Air Base. This means a total of only 24 F3 standard aircraft in active service, the other six being either in reserve or still in the process of being modernised from the F2 to the latest F3 standard.
If initially, in 1992, the official French Navy needs for Rafale Ms had been set at 86 aircraft, this figure was reduced to 58 aircraft in 2008. It should be recalled here that in 2010, 180 Rafale in total were to be purchased : 132 for the Air Force and 48 for the Navy. To this date 141 Rafales have been delivered to the French Armed Forces, the last being, during last February 2015, Rafale B-353 (now the second aircraft of the Egyptian order for 24 aircraft, which began with the transfer of Rafale B-352 removed directly from French stocks). The present situation means that only 134 Rafales remain in French hands.
Currently, the added life-extension of the last Super Étendard Moderniséd in service is considered close to nil, given the large number of SEM/Standard 5 still in stock. The old vet still is a good war machine, as it demonstrated during bombing sorties performed from the deck of FS Charles-de-Gaulle alongside Rafale Ms, from February to May last, against “Islamic State” ground targets in Iraq.
It however poses a problem for the French GAE (carrier air group) as it forces the Aéronavale to keep on board the carrier, where space is always short, two types of aircraft of different models with their spare parts and their specific support materials, including armaments specific to the SEM, like GBU-49 Paveway II 250 kg bombs and GBU-58 Paveway II 125 kg guided bombs, which are not used on the Rafale M. Let’s recall here that the ideal combat staffing of the Charles-de-Gaulle as of 2018 should be composed of a single carrier air group with two homogeneous flottilles totalling 20 Rafale Ms on board, accompanied by two E-2C Hawkeyes and at least six helicopters responsible for deck safety and transportation. A new page of the Charles-de-Gaulle will then open, but we are not there yet.
On the Armée de l’Air side, not much change has to be expected in the number of squadrons in service before the end of this decade. Nowadays, two squadrons of Rafale C and B fighters are based at BA 113 in Saint Dizier (EC 1/7 and EC 1/91) , along with a conversion and lead-in training unit (ETR 2/91). One more (EC 2/30) is based at BA 118 in Mont-de-Marsan where the newly commissioned Air Warfare Centre opened some days ago, and, to sum up, a last one (EC 3/30) at BA 104 in Al Dhafra, UAE.
Thus over eighty Rafale now fly in Armée de l’Air markings. Contrary to French naval squadrons which are made of 10 to 12 Rafale Ms, the Air Force squadrons are made of 20 aircraft each. Mention should be made also of the Rafales used by the Centre d’Expertise Aérienne Militaire (CEAM) and the Centre d’Essais en Vol of the DGA.
The Rafale programme for the French Armed Forces has been set at 286 aircraft : 228 for the Armée de l’Air (118 Rafale C et 110 Rafale B) and 58 for the Aéronavale to be supplied before the end of 2025. The whole programme should cost the French taxpayers some 44 billion euros. With the present export order book, a grand total of 370 Rafales is to be produced by Dassault Aviation. With further likely export contracts in view, it is quite likely that the 400 mark will be reached before 2030. Not bad, for a fighter plane which many in the French media still considered, not so long ago in fact, as simply « invendable » (unsaleable)!
By Jean-Michel Guhl
