Rafale: Combat Proven

Conceived as an evolutive, powerful, versatile and easy to maintain combat aircraft, the Dassault Aviation Rafale omnirole fighter has earned many plaudits for its ability to conduct combat operations in difficult conditions, far from its support infrastructure. Now firmly in service with the French Air Force and the French Naval Aviation, the Rafale has successfully been engaged in combat operations in Afghanistan, Libya, Mali, the Central African Republic and Iraq.

Inherent Flexibility

Taking advantage of the Rafale’s inherent operational flexibility, French aviators and sailors have conducted, from three continents, an extremely large range of combat missions in all sorts of weather conditions. Libya was a typical example: on the very first day of the operation against forces loyal to Colonel Gaddafi, French Air Force Rafales achieved air-superiority, struck ground targets, carried out reconnaissance missions and helped determine the enemy’s electronic order of battle. For the next seven months, French Air Force and French Navy Rafales remained at the forefront of the NATO effort, logging thousands of flying hours in combat with a mission dispatch rate close to 100 per cent.

In Libya, Rafales employed a wide range of weapons against a large quantity of armoured vehicles, artillery pieces, mortar emplacements and hardened targets such as aircraft shelters, command posts, ammunition dumps and radar centres: Scalp stealth cruise missiles, GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided bombs, Hammer (highly agile, modular munition extended range) stand-off precision weapons, and even their 30mm 30M791 internal cannon.

Forward deployed Rafales

The French Air Force has an extremely long experience of fast jets operations from austere forward operating bases, in Africa and further afield. With the successive retirements of the Jaguar and of the Mirage F1, the Rafale is now taking a major role in Africa: a detachment of Rafales is now permanently based in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad. From there, they cover two theatres of operations simultaneously and routinely carry out missions over Mali, Niger and Chad in the North, and the Central African Republic in the South where French forces are engaged in peacekeeping missions.

In the Middle East, a squadron of French Air Force Rafales has been stationed at Al Dhafra airbase, in the United Arab Emirates, since 2011. From Al Dhafra, they conduct missions over Iraq as part of a wide coalition.

Ease of Maintenance

Since its first engagement in Afghanistan, the Rafale has been deployed to numerous bare forward bases where it has always been maintained by small teams of technicians. Thanks to the Rafale’s advanced maintenance concept, the detachments’ logistical footprint is very low, diminishing the need for strategic airlift assets. Once on the theatre of operations, the Rafale proves both very reliable and easy to support and maintain, a decisive advantage for the French Air Force which always tries to deploy a limited number of airframes to keep operational costs under strict control. Experience in Afghanistan, Chad, and the UAE has showed that sand, dust and extreme heat do not have any adverse effect on Rafale performance or maintenance procedures.

In combat, the Rafale has proved to be an affordable and dependable military asset which can carry out – with deadly accuracy – an incredibly wide range of missions, from show of force passes to kinetic attacks at standoff distances.