French Military aviation update and discussion

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Gautam said:
Very risky business right there. Multiple large body turboprop aircrafts landing on unprepared runways. Visibility be damned with. But I suppose risks you have to take for the sake of the mission.
I wonder under what condition you would need to do that ?
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Mali war?
 
A Person said:
For these particular pictures, it was done to validate that it could be done, because the aircraft is intended to be able to do tactical airlift.
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I see, and that would make sense. I was thinking if it was an emergency landing that was prompted by the presence of enemy AD in the area and was wondering how landing would help you in such a situation. Anyway, thank you.:)
 
Civilian passenger gets unexpectedly ejected from Rafale B jet

The identity of the civilian passenger (who “does not belong to the [French] Ministry of Armed Forces”) was not publicly disclosed. Journalists or elected officials are often invited to take part in “observation” flights approved by the Minister, for information and communication purposes.
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In fairness Macron should never have been on-board because he was below the minimum height for the ride.
 
Mirage IV will soon celebrate the 60th anniversary of its first flight!
General characteristics

Performance

Armament

  • Bombs:
    • 1× AN-11 free-fall nuclear bomb or
    • 1× AN-22 free-fall nuclear bomb or
    • 1× Air-Sol Moyenne Portée nuclear missile (Mirage IVP)
    • 16× 454 kg (1,000 lb) free-fall conventional bombs
 
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French Air Chief Of Staff On Transformative New Aircraft And Upgrades
Jun 4, 2019Thierry Dubois and Tony Osborne | Aviation Week & Space Technology

The French Air Force is undergoing a far-reaching transformation, introducing a number of new aircraft and upgrades in a short period. Meanwhile, it is busy fighting in Central Africa and the Middle East. With Germany and Spain, it is defining its needs for a Future Combat Air System (FCAS) in 2040. Aviation Week Editors Thierry Dubois and Tony Osborne discussed the service’s plans with Philippe Lavigne, France’s air chief of staff.

AW&ST: With forces deployed overseas in the Middle East and Central Africa, can you give us an idea of the tempo of operations for the French Air Force at present?

The French Air Force is very busy, not only with operations abroad, but also at home with the protection of our airspace and the nuclear-deterrence mission. For example, in air-policing, we have 20 aircraft and helicopters on alert at our air bases in France at all times. We’re also addressing the new threat of drones.


As well as supporting NATO reassurance measures, we’re planning in 2020 to aid in Baltic air-policing with Mirages in Estonia, proceeding with flights with AWACS and for intelligence-gathering. This year’s NATO Tiger Meet [held in Mont-de-Marsan, France, in May] was focused on anti-access, area-denial challenges that we have met in the Levant. We are performing this exercise not only with fighters, but with helicopters, transports, ground-based air defenses and jamming.
In the Middle East, our aircraft are flying from Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. The [Islamic State group] territorial caliphate is gone, but the job is ongoing, and we continue to work with the coalition for which it has been an important effort since 2014.

And what about in Africa? We have been there since 2013, flying over an area as large as Europe from our two main air bases.

In Africa we are using our [MQ-9] Reapers like a mini-AWACS . . . . Their crews are tactical coordinators linking with the fighters, transports and attack helicopters. They have the intelligence, the operational credibility and know how the enemy fights.

Are you arming the Reaper soon? Yes, by year-end our Reapers will be armed with the GBU-12 [laser-guided bomb], then in 2020, we will have the Block 5 with the GBU-49, GBU-12 and the Hellfire [missile].

The French Air Force is undergoing quite a transformation with the introduction of many new platforms. Is this unprecedented in the air force’s history? We have been through many transformations, but never in such a short time frame.

So what are the highlights of this transformation? We were already familiar with the capability of the A330 MRTT, but now that we have our own version, the Phenix, we have been able to take Rafale fighters all the way to Reunion Island, an 11-hr. flight from Paris. We will receive our second aircraft this year and are speeding up the introduction with the first 12 out of 15 arriving by 2023. What is amazing is that in 2023, we will be able to put 20 Rafales in locations such as New Caledonia in 48 hr. with eight MRTTs. It is a game-changer for us.

We are developing new capabilities for the Phenix and testing systems to support the nuclear-deterrence missions. We also want to get it inside the FCAS and have it be a node of this very big network growing the communications flow and building interoperability.


Sounds like you have global ambitions. France has many interests in different parts of the world—islands and territories. We also have economic interests. Some of my fellow air chiefs feel we are now a global air force, and they are right. We have made choices not to lose capability but just to reduce them enough so as not to lose them, so we have the new procurement law, and that makes us stronger. We have the operational credibility, the political and financial credibility. Each year we will have an increased budget for the air force, so I am very lucky to be in this period.

What about training? We have now received all 17 of our new Pilatus PC-21s, and the first cadets were to begin flying at the end of May. The instructors have already been trained. Also, two years ago, even before the contract was signed with UK-based defense services provider Babcock for PC-21 training, two of our pilots were trained on the PC-21 with the Swiss Air Force. One is now a quick-reaction alert pilot, so we have demonstrated the possibility to train pilots from the PC-21 to the Rafale directly. We have yet to decide what we want to do, but this is an option.

What are the upgrade steps for the fighters? The F3R upgrade will be operational on the Rafale in the near future with the Meteor missile and Talios pod. The Meteor has arrived, and we have tested it. The F4 upgrade is the beginning of the FCAS and, like the MRTT, we have plans for the connectivity and the radar. But the big thing will be connectivity. Upgrades of the first two Mirage 2000Ds, out of a total of 55, will get underway next year.

What’s the involvement of the French Air Force in the FCAS? With the German Air Force, we have discussed operational requirements a lot. My predecessor and his German counterpart signed a high-level requirements document. And they match.

Of course, in every cooperation, you have the bilateral parts and the national ones, so you can have differences—we have a nuclear-deterrence need. French Air Force officers continue to work with their German counterparts, as well as procurement agencies and the OEMs, on what will be the best concept, the best team and the best capability of each member of the system. They are talking about the fighter, the remote carrier, UAS, stealth, speed, connectivity, etc. We are looking at what will be needed in 2040, factoring in today’s needs.

You have to consider the FCAS as an Android-like operating system—it is open. Nobody knows what the threats or the technologies will be in 2040.

From now on, we have to both test technology to ensure air dominance in 2040 and that the FCAS is compatible with legacy systems.

Spain’s needs are included in the high-level requirements and it is set to join the ongoing joint common study at the OEMs’ level.

As for an unmanned air combat vehicle being part of FCAS, nothing is decided yet.

Operations in Africa revealed a shortage of ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] capacity. How are you addressing this? There is a lot of transformation here, too. We currently have our C-160 Gabriel [sigint platform based on the C-160 Transall], which is an amazing system, but we are now developing a new universal electronic-warfare capability called CUGE. This will be much more accurate than Gabriel as well as being faster and more agile, which will make it more useful and capable; after all, speed is life. We also are buying lighter platforms—Beechcraft King Airs—for surveillance. We have two leased right now, but we are buying eight.

Where are you with establishing a Franco-German squadron of C-130Js at the Evreux Air Base? We are on a very good path. We never had such integration between our two air forces. The squadron will include four French aircraft, including two KC-130J refueling tankers—the first of which we are receiving this year—and six German ones from 2021.

We have welcomed German families for a site survey this year, to visit the Evreux base and see its environment. Meanwhile, the infrastructure in Evreux is being built.

We intend to have mixed pilot and maintenance technician teams. With Germany’s air chief of staff, we will discuss the sort of mission we can plan for a French pilot and a German navigator, or vice versa, on a C-130J. We already are doing it on C-160 Transalls in Niger and Afghanistan.

We are seeing air forces take an increased interest in space. I s it the same in France? France has a huge interest in space, and we are seeing other nations performing activity such as the recent anti-satellite missile launch in India. Our president has said we need to have a space-defense strategy, so we worked on it and are awaiting his decision.

I will not tease the contents, but if we want to protect our interests in space, we have to detect threats better and identify what they are doing. It is like in the air: Once you detect and identify, you have to react. You can act defensively by moving away if you do not want to be seen or heard. Or you go for more active protection. We are waiting for the decision of our president.

The air force already is involved in space activity, two-thirds of the personnel dealing with space are airmen, and we are developing our developing our academy’s training program.
 
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French Air Force deputy talks strategy, Brexit and future fighter jets
By: Christina Mackenzie   1 day ago 129

PARIS — As deputy chief of staff for plans and programs with the French Air Force, Maj. Gen. Frédéric Parisot is the go-to person if one wants to know the force’s plans for the future.

And so Defense News caught up with him ahead of the Paris Air Show at his office in the new building for the Armed Forces Ministry in southwest Paris. The Air Force officer tackled strategies, aircraft projects and the impact of Brexit.

In November, the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Philippe Lavigne, announced a new strategic plan known as the “Flight Plan” to ensure the Air Force is “powerful, audacious, agile and connected.” Can you expand on that?

“Powerful” means, first, that we keep our airborne nuclear deterrent, which keeps us on our toes because if ever the president tells us we have to use it, then we need to be instantaneously ready. We will be getting a new nuclear weapon system in the first half of the 2030s to replace the ASMP-Amélioré. It means we remain capable of being first in theater, that our equipment remains up to the minute. The F4 standard of the Rafale, the A400M, new electronic warfare capacities, the arrival of our second multirole tanker transport in July and others to follow — and that these aircraft will by 2025 be able to communicate directly with the Rafale — are all part of remaining powerful.

By “audacious,” we mean in our innovations. One has to be curious and ready to take calculated risks because innovations are paid for by taxpayers. The new Agency for Defense Innovation is going to play an extremely important role.

“Agile” means that we can adapt to a new working environment. For example, the future pilot is likely to spend more time managing services than actually flying the aircraft. The F4 version of the Rafale already has a virtual assistant.

And “connected,” the meaning of which is obvious for equipment, mainly means that the Air Force wants to remain linked to society, partners and youth.

What is next for the Rafale after F4? And what about interoperability with the F-35 fighter jet?

The F4 standard is open ended. We know that every seven to 10 years we need to integrate new technology, but starting with the F4 these are likely to be software updates rather than hardware. So the lessons we learn from the F4, and whatever new technology becomes available in the future, will lead to an F5 version, which will then lead to the Future Combat Air System, or FCAS.

And, of course, it is fundamentally important that they be interoperable with our allies because we’re unlikely to undertake operations on our own. Many have bought the F-35, and so interoperability with this aircraft is vital. We talk about this issue air force to air force, procurement agency to procurement agency, in seminars, conferences and private meetings, but no technical discussions as to how to achieve this have yet started in NATO.

We can’t end up with a two-pronged alliance: an F-35 one and another. The arrival of the F-35 has somewhat upset the interoperability we’d acquired with all the previous aircraft, so we have to quickly find the capacity to be totally interoperable with it.

There is confusion regarding FCAS, given that two different projects, one with the U.K. and one with Germany, both bear this name. Could you clarify?

The original FCAS, launched in November 2014, was a Franco-British project to develop a stealth RPAS [remotely piloted air system]. There was a divergence of views as to how we should proceed, and Brexit didn’t help. So FCAS has now become FCAS-DP — for demonstration program — and it’s basically developing technological bricks.

The British have launched the Tempest program for a stealth fighter. And we have a program with the Germans, which the Spanish are in the process of joining, which is actually called “NGWS within an FCAS.” NGWS stands for “next-generation weapon system,” and our cooperation includes developing a next-generation fighter, remote carriers and some weapons.

NGWS is part of a French FCAS, which, remember, means Future Combat Air System, so it’s a global system that includes the Rafale — which we’ll have until 2060/2070 — our AWACS [airborne warning and control system], the EuroMale RPAS, and the successor of the Transall Gabriel, which is called CUGE [charge utile guerre électronique, or useful electronic warfare payload], a very ugly name, but we’re thinking of nicknaming it Archangel. It will be a strategic, intelligence-gathering system based on a business-type aircraft.

NGWS is also part of a German FCAS which will include the Typhoon, for example. And the Spanish FCAS will include the F-18 and the Typhoon.
So when the NGWS is ready, in about 2040, it will have to be able to work in cooperation with all these legacy systems.

But isn’t this the same path taken 35 years ago, which ended up with two, competing European fighter aircraft: the Eurofighter Typhoon with the U.K., Germany, Italy and Spain, and the Rafale, which France developed on its own?

At this stage, it seems to be the case. We will see how Tempest develops, how NGWS develops. Today, two programs have been launched, but it’s not too late for them to converge.

Isn’t cooperation with Germany hindered by that government’s ban on export licenses for military equipment that contains German components?

It’s not a blocking factor for our bilateral projects. I’m not saying there aren’t any discussions, but it’s not blocking. It’s part of the overall discussions. We’re not talking about exporting NGWS, so it’s not an element of confrontation, but it’s a more global discussion on Franco-German exports. But it’s obvious that if the NGWS is not exportable, it will make things complicated.

How important is stealth for the NGWS, given the increased sophistication of sensors?

We are looking at various concepts, and within this we’re varying a number of parameters and stealth is among them. I can’t tell you how stealthy the future aircraft will be because we haven’t decided on a concept yet. The aircraft will probably be somewhat stealthy, but what we do already know is that hyper-stealth is not a solution because, as you said, passive radars and other sensors are being developed by our enemies. It’s by confronting the different concepts with future threats that we’ll be able to decide.

So right now we’re spending quite a bit of time on the concept to decide what overall characteristics the next-generation fighter should have, how it would interact with the remote carriers, which could carry lethal and nonlethal weapons, to have an efficient overall system that will allow us to gain the upper hand over our enemies.

Who are these enemies? At the end of the Cold War, many Western nations assumed that state-on-state warfare was unlikely and concentrated on fighting terrorism. But the wind seems to be turning again, with NATO and others clearly pointing their fingers at Russia and China.

Daesh, or similar organizations under different names, will be around for years and years to come. But that enemy is not so dangerous. I have a classification system: the most likely enemy and the most dangerous enemy. In the first category I’d put terrorist organizations or middling powers or nonstate organizations equipped with materiel they’ve picked up in abandoned depots and places where there is not much governance. We need to know how to deal with this enemy.

But we must also know how to deal with the most dangerous — that is, the potential adversaries you mentioned. It’s not necessarily a direct confrontation with those countries but with their clients who’ve bought their military equipment. We have to find the right balance because if we concentrate only on the most dangerous, then we’ll have a military tool which is extremely sophisticated to counter a threat — which fortunately we are not terribly likely to meet — but too expensive to use in fighting Daesh. We won’t use a hyper-stealthy aircraft, such as the B-2, to go and hit Daesh. We have to balance cost and efficiency, which is important in a democracy.

If the U.K. leaves the European Union, how will this affect the strong bilateral ties between the French and British air forces?

I don’t think it will have an effect on our excellent bilateral relations because we are the same size, have the same capacities, similar military logic, i.e., we are capable of deploying operationally, of lasting on theater. And overall we are very similar, militarily speaking.

We are present in the same regions, so we have very strong military bilateral relations, and it’s not because the U.K. may leave the European Union that that will change. My personal point of view is that leaving the European Union isn’t leaving Europe. Their interests are in Europe, the stability of Europe is important for them, too. When we’ll have to undertake another operation on the outskirts of Europe, I don’t think they’ll turn around and say: “It’s not our concern, we’ve Brexited.” And in any case they’ll remain in NATO, which even today is the forum where we exchange the most.

You are also setting up close operational ties with Germany.

Yes, a joint C-130J squadron, which doesn’t have a name yet, will be officially created by the summer of 2021. It will have 10 aircraft — four French and six German — and be based in Evreux in Normandy. It will be the first time we’ve attained such a level of integration, which means there will be French and German personnel in the cockpit and in the hold. The first Germans will be arriving this summer to start all the necessary preparations. And we’ll all speak English to start with but hopefully French and German in the future.

How has the A400M changed your operations?

It’s revolutionized military air transport. It has extraordinary capacities. We are still learning how to use it, and [it is now mature enough where] we consider it for certain missions [when it would benefit] the special forces. Its ability to fly high, fast and far means we can undertake certain operations which we couldn’t with the C-130, notably to undertake operations straight from France rather than have to pre-position. Today we have the capacity to operate the same aircraft for more than 30 days on a theater without it going into a hangar every night, which is not obvious in terms of logistics, maintenance, etc.

When will the French Air Force get heavy helicopters?

It’s not budgeted for in the current military program law, but it’s a subject we bring up regularly because it would allow us to drop men and materiel deep behind enemy lines, so it’s a capacity we’re interested in. For the moment we make do with the Caracal, but its payload capacity is a bit smaller. We’ll bring the subject back to the table in 2021 when the military program law comes up for new discussion.

The special forces want this capacity, and the most obvious solution right now is based on U.S. products, although if Airbus Helicopters comes up with an offer then we’d look at that. The Germans have a pressing need for this type of helicopter, and if ever we got some, too, then we could create a joint squadron, a mirror of the one we’re setting up in Evreux, but this time in Germany. But nothing is on the cards.

French Air Force deputy talks strategy, Brexit and future fighter jets
 
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Grounded


fetch


a unit of Airbus (AIR.PA), had warned that a component in the rotor control could malfunction and cause a crash. A spokesman for the German defence ministry was not available for comment.

A German pilot died and another was injured in a Eurocopter crash last month.

Also

a titanium bolt of the Main Rotor Control may show unusual weakness and break during flights.
[...]
The same problem was also identified on the German NH90 and EC135 helicopters, but the material is not used in critical areas, meaning they will continue to operate for now.


Source:
https://uk.reuters.com
https://www.aerotime.aero/clement.ch...aviationcv.com
 
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