Since the end of the Cold War, the fighter fleet of the Air and Space Force has been divided by three, going from more than 600 Mirage F1s, Mirage 2000s and Jaguars to less than 200 Rafale and Mirage 2000D and -5F. The Naval Aeronautics fleet has also undergone a severe slimming down, going from 80 Super-Étendard, F-8 Crusader and Étendard IVP, to only 40 Rafale M.
This reduction in format has often been criticized by specialists on the subject, as well as by certain parliamentarians, and even, more recently and in a more subdued manner, by the general staffs themselves. Thus, the Air and Space Force publicly estimates that it would need “at least” 225 combat aircraft to meet its operational contract.
However, the optimal format of the French fighter seems, today, more a question of political and budgetary negotiations, than the result of objective reasoning, in the face of the needs which the Air Force and the Naval Aviation must be able to respond.
In this article, we will attempt to carry out this reasoning, and to determine what this format would be, necessary and sufficient, to allow French hunting to fully and effectively fulfill its present and future missions. As we will see, the current format appears very underestimated.
In this section:
The format of the French fighter fleet today, its origin and its operational contract
What exactly is this format, and where does it come from? Today, LPM 2024-2030 aims to bring the French fighter fleet to 225 combat aircraft, with 185 fighters for the Air and Space Force, and 40 for Naval Aeronautics.
This format was set by the 2022 Strategic Review, itself taking this format from the 2018 Strategic Review, which served as support for the creation of the previous LPM 2029-2025. Here again, it was not the 2018 Strategic Review which set this format, since it was instructed to use all of the force formats, defined by the 2013 White Paper.
It is, in fact, this White Paper which establishes, for the first time, this format of 225 combat aircraft, with the 185/40 distribution between the AAE and the French Navy. To achieve this result, the designers of this White Paper, whose guideline was to reduce the size of the French armed forces as much as possible, established a relatively simple operational contract for the two air forces.
For the AAE, it was necessary to be able to guarantee the projection of 15 combat aircraft, including on remote bases, as was the case in Niger and Jordan, to support the French and allied forces deployed in the Sahel. or in Iraq and Syria. In addition, the AEE was to ensure the availability of the air component of the French deterrent, with two squadrons equipped with Rafale. The French Navy was to arm the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle with 18 fighters for two two-month deployments per year.
This reduction in formats also made it possible to significantly reduce the training and training needs of crews, as well as ammunition stocks, especially since the main conventional threat then envisaged concerned asymmetrical conflicts, in Africa or elsewhere. Middle East, with a very reduced threat to the aircraft themselves, and relatively reduced operational pressure on the deployed forces.
The operational pressure on French hunting since 2014, significantly higher than that estimated by the 2013 White Paper
Obviously, this operational pressure, since 2013, has absolutely not respected the planning of the White Paper. The Air and Space Force has had to, on several occasions, deploy twenty to thirty combat aircraft on external missions, including in Europe. The aircraft carrier, for its part, has often far exceeded the planned four months at sea per year, with a record of 8 months at sea for the year 2019, before its IPER.
If the French armies have largely reduced their deployment in Africa in recent years, the deployment in the Levant remains unchanged, while the evolution of tensions and wars in Europe and the Pacific have led to new deployments. particularly demanding in terms of flight potential for both aircraft and crews.
On this subject, precisely, it appeared that the devices deployed tended to consume their flight potential much more quickly, compared to the devices used in France for training and Air Police missions, by a factor ranging from 2 to 3.
Like all aircraft, civil or military, fighter planes must follow a very strict maintenance procedure, punctuated by major inspections, after a certain number of flight hours, during which the aircraft are almost completely dismantled and reassembled. , to guarantee its proper functioning in the future.
In fact, these major visits make each aircraft unavailable for several months, and are all the more frequent as the aircraft fly a lot, particularly in external deployment, and during operational missions.
40 fighter planes promised by France to NATO, in the event of tensions or conflict
If operational pressure has evolved considerably in recent years, the war in Ukraine, and the strong tensions between NATO and Russia, have led to a review of the key parameter, at the heart of the very construction of the necessary and sufficient format, of the French fighter fleet.
Indeed, France has committed, since its return to NATO's Integrated Command, to providing the Alliance, in the event of conflict, with 40 combat-ready fighter aircraft. This commitment is not new, but recent geopolitical developments have changed its status.
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Can't!
Not to mention the trained crews who, in the event of a conflict, will never be able to compensate for the resulting losses!
Thank you very much for this article. THE Rafale Is it its versatility and its fairly high cost the trap of the Air Force? We would gain so much from having a supersonic single reactor for air defense missions... The mirage III mirage IV couple in a way. If it turns out to be impossible to achieve this level of manning on line, would it be possible to replace the air defense mission with a first-rate DCA? Or to replace part of the bombing missions (CAS, Deep strike) with a fleet of drones? I don't think we'll get all 110 Rafales more.
I do not think that the commitment to NATO allows the substitution of planes piloted by loyal wingmen, at least, for the moment. I think they should be seen more as next-generation appendages, not as alternatives.
Afterwards, it is certain, a single engine, which we could develop, for example, with the Swedes, would allow this format to grow at a lower cost per aircraft, but the additional design costs would most certainly neutralize this benefit. As long as we do not consider, in the economic equation, revenues as well as expenditures, we will have to make decisions under strong constraints, leading to questionable trade-offs.
Hello, thank you very much for this article.
Would it be possible to write a follow-up article on the support fleet including A330MRTT, AWACS, A400M, etc.?
MRTT and Awacs, probably, because it's relative to AAE posture. For the A400Ms, it will be more difficult, because the basic data, in terms of necessary support to the combined forces etc., is unknown to me, and probably very difficult to obtain, if not simply confidential.