New capabilities and new munitions for the Rafale F5
In addition to the UAVs themselves, the Rafale F5 will be equipped with new munitions and new capabilities, enabling it to overcome certain relative weaknesses vis-à-vis the F-35. This is particularly the case in the area of suppression of adversary anti-aircraft defences, commonly referred to by the acronym SEAD which, as we have reported several times since 2018, represented a major gap in the Rafale's operational panoply until now.
Although the composition of this capability, which will be fitted to the Rafale F5, has not yet been officially presented, we can assume that it will be based on the joint use of radar jammers in addition to the aircraft's self-defence systems, to give it the possibility of encompassing other aircraft in its protective bubble, as well as one or more anti-radiation munitions, designed to move up the adversary's radar beam in order to destroy it.
New ammunition for the Rafale F5
The FMC is intended to replace the SCALP cruise missile currently fitted to the Rafales of the French Air Force and Naval Aviation.
The Rafale F5 will also be designed to deploy the new Franco-British FMC (Futur Missile de Croisière) and FMAN (Futur Missile Anti-Navire) missiles, which will replace the SCALP/Storm Shadow cruise missile and the AM39 Exocet missile respectively.
These two long-range precision munitions, currently under development, will have advanced features such as stealth and hypersonic speed to challenge modern air defence systems such as jamming and decoy systems, and will give the aircraft highly advanced long-range strike capabilities in the decades to come.
The aircraft will also be fitted with a pod that merges the capabilities of the Talios target designation pod and the RECO NG reconnaissance pod into a single piece of equipment, giving the fighter highly accurate tactical air-to-ground, air-to-surface and even air-to-air vision, and thus multiple operational options while remaining in non-emitive mode.
Finally, the Rafale F5 will be designed to operate the new ASN4G nuclear-tipped hypersonic cruise missile, which is to replace the ASMPA in the two squadrons of the French Air and Space Force and the flotillas of the French Navy forming the air component of the French deterrent. However, this capability, although critical for French defence, will probably have very little influence on the international market.
Other munitions and capabilities could be integrated into the Rafale F5 by 2030. These include light precision air-to-ground munitions such as the BAT-120 LG from Thales, as well as medium-range prowler munitions, especially as these light weapons would naturally find their place on board the combat UAVs supporting the aircraft, including Remote Carriers.
It will also benefit from the Rafale F4's current arsenal, including the Meteor and MICA NG air-to-air missiles, as well as the highly effective ASSM-propelled glide bombs.
As a result, by 2030, the Rafale F5 will have a comprehensive and highly modern operational toolbox, perfectly in line with and even superior in some respects to that offered by the F-35, depriving the latter of one of the key assets on which it built its commercial success.
The Rafale Club revolution
The Rafale F5 will therefore be a highly modern, high-performance air combat system that is exceptionally well equipped to meet the challenges of the coming decades. However, the Rafale F3 could boast comparable advantages over the F-35A in a number of recent competitions, all of which went in favour of the American aircraft.
Clearly, Dassault Aviation and the French Ministry of Defence have taken full account of the causes of these failures, and intend to rectify them with the Rafale F5, by equipping the aircraft with a discourse and a commercial environment designed to stand up to the American aircraft.
Firstly, it was necessary to come up with a new sales pitch for the F-35. Lockheed-Martin has developed an extremely effective marketing strategy in recent years, presenting not the current performance of the proposed aircraft, but its future performance and capabilities.
And while the timetable and capabilities promised have clearly been far too optimistic to date, this approach has proved highly effective.
Several Rafale operators, such as Greece, have an aeronautical industry that could participate in the development of the aircraft.
For example, during the Dutch competition, the Rafale F3 had to demonstrate its operational capabilities in the face of mere technical and commercial promises from Lockheed-Martin, a good third of which have since been broken. Similarly, Switzerland based its decision on future promises from Lockheed-Martin, both in terms of budget and performance.
Up until now, France had confined itself to protesting against the US strategy in this area, without much success. With the Rafale F5, it is taking the opposite position.
Not only does it promise future performance and capabilities, but it will also be able to demonstrate that the Rafale has followed the same development paths since it entered service, including for its customers. In other words, the Rafale F5 will be fighting with the same weapons, but with sharper arguments against the F-35A in the years to come.
Above all, at the same time as announcing the new timetable for the Rafale F5, aiming for entry into service in 2030, the French Ministry of Defence announced the creation of a "Rafale Club", an initiative designed to bring together users to deal with maintenance and upgradability issues, and to influence and even participate in the development of new capabilities and even new standards for the Rafale. This is not a new strategy, as the success of the Leopard 2 tank was largely based on a similar approach.
But it also represents a profound conceptual revolution in France's approach to the Rafale, making all current and potential users partners and stakeholders in the future of the aircraft and its capabilities.
This new strategy will enable the industrial aeronautical capabilities of Rafale users to be integrated much more effectively into the aircraft's ecosystem, and is a strong argument in favour of the French fighter over the F-35A and its excessively closed environment in the hands of Lockheed-Martin and Washington.
The price argument
Finally, the Rafale F5 will be able to rely on one last strong argument against the F-35A in the years to come: its price. Not that the French aircraft will be cheaper to buy than the Lockheed-Martin fighter.
Since the beginning of this tug-of-war between Lockheed-Martin and Dassault, the two aircraft have systematically been in a similar price range for the acquisition of the aircraft as well as the systems, munitions and all the services required to operate them.
However, for a number of years now, it has been apparent that the cost of owning the F-35A has not only failed to fall to meet the targets initially set by the US Air Force, but has actually continued to rise, well beyond the rate of inflation alone.
Despite Lockheed-Martin's commitments, the cost of owning the F-35 remains very high, and is even tending to rise faster than inflation.
Until now, this drift has been ignored in the equipment competitions in which the fighter has taken part, both because of Lockheed-Martin's perfectly oiled discourse supported by the US State Department, and because of the obvious short-sightedness, whether deliberate or not, of the European, Korean or Australian negotiators on this subject.
However, the subject is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, including for its main user, the US Air Force, which, without calling into question its attachment to the aircraft, is being forced into major budgetary planning circumnavigations in order to contain the time bomb represented by the aircraft's ownership costs.
And the same will apply on the international stage. Until now, potential customers have been able to feign good faith and ignore the signals in this area, so as to be able to turn to the aircraft offering the most promising technological and operational environment in the making. But this will no longer be the case in the years to come, as the F-35's budgetary shortcomings become increasingly obvious and impossible to ignore, while the promised operational advantages will have been erased, and in some cases far surpassed, by the Rafale F5's new capabilities.
Conclusion
As we have just seen, the arrival of the Rafale F5, and to some extent its mere announcement, will profoundly change the balance of power between the French fighter and its main adversary, the American F-35A. With renewed operational capabilities flirting with the 6ᵉ generation of combat, new-generation appendages and munitions, and a commercial strategy that represents a profound break with French tradition, Dassault Aviation's fighter will, in the years to come, more than match Lockheed-Martin's aircraft in almost every area.
However, the potential results of this strategy are difficult to assess. When the Rafale F5 enters service, the vast majority of European air forces will already be equipped with the F-35A/B, either partially or in full, making the aircraft a standard that will be very difficult to dislodge within NATO, as well as with the main players in the Western sphere of the Pacific theatre.
Similarly, many of the major air forces in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America will already have undertaken their modernisation, and the market for the F5, apart from existing customers or those under negotiation in the short term (Iraq, Serbia and perhaps Colombia spring to mind), will be small, unless a new wave of international tensions leads to a new phase of densification of the world's air resources.
However, there are still some potentially important alternatives for the new French fighter. Saudi Arabia, for example, will have to replace its Panavia Tornado and F-15 aircraft over the next few years - a total of some 150 aircraft - as will Morocco, which will have to replace its F-5 and F-1 to keep pace with the modernisation of Algerian aircraft. In addition to Colombia, other South American countries such as Peru and Ecuador will also have to modernise their forces.
Finally, in Europe, Hungary will soon have to replace its Gripens, while some F-35 users, such as Denmark and Belgium, whose fleets are smaller because they are more expensive, could consider the French aircraft to increase their weight.
Be that as it may, it would appear that the Rafale F5 will, in many respects, be much more than just a new version of Dassault Aviation's jewel in the crown, but a genuine new departure for the aircraft, which could see its operational and commercial horizons radically reshaped for decades to come.
It would be hard to wish for more for the only fighter with exclusively European DNA at the moment.
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