Pourquoi le Rafale F5 sera plus attractif que le F-35 en 2030 et au delà ?
Why will the Rafale F5 be more attractive than the F-35 in 2030 and beyond?
Part 2/2 By Fabrice Wolf 19 November 2023
While the Rafale F5 will be able to draw on new capabilities and performances specific to the aircraft, it will also benefit from a renewed operational, industrial and commercial environment, potentially giving it the upper hand over rival offerings, in particular the Lockheed-Martin F-35 Lightning II, from 2030.
For almost two decades now, international competitions between the Rafale fighter jet from France's Dassault Aviation and the F-35 from the US company Lockheed-Martin have systematically favoured the latter, to the point where the American aircraft is now becoming a veritable standard for European air forces, to the great displeasure of aircraft manufacturers in Europe.
But the new version of the Rafale, designated the F5, due to enter service from 2030, could well profoundly change the operational and commercial balance of power between these two aircraft for years and decades to come.
In the first part of this article, we looked at two aspects of this evolution: the transformation of the Rafale into an Air Combat System with the F5 version, and the arrival of the Neuron and Remote Carrier combat drones, which will erode the strengths of the F-35A while exacerbating those of the French fighter.
In this second part, we will look at 3 other major areas that will affect this balance of power: the new capabilities and new munitions of the Rafale F5; the emergence of the Rafale Club and a new French commercial and industrial strategy; and finally, the influence of the rising cost of owning the F-35 on future competitions.
3- The Rafale F5's new capabilities and new munitions
In addition to the UAVs themselves, the Rafale F5 will be equipped with new munitions and new capabilities, which will enable 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.
The FMC is intended to replace the SCALP cruise missile currently fitted to the Rafales of the French Air and Space Force and Naval Aviation.
The Rafale F5 will also be designed to deploy the new Franco-British FMC (Future Cruise Missile) and FMAN (Future Anti-Ship Missile) missiles, which will replace the SCALP/Storm Shadow cruise missile and the AM39 Exocet 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 merging 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. The BAT-120LG is a light precision gliding bomb suitable for low-intensity theatres to avoid collateral damage, but also for high-intensity engagements to saturate opposing defences.
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 very 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.
4- 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 was able to 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.
For example, during the Dutch competition, the Rafale F3 had to effectively demonstrate its operational capabilities in the face of mere technical and commercial promises from Lockheed-Martin, a good third of which have since not been fulfilled. 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 is it promising 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 "Club Rafale", an initiative designed to bring together users both to settle questions of maintenance and upgradability, and to influence, or even participate in, the development of new capabilities, or 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 every current and potential user a partner and player in the future of the aircraft and its capabilities.
This new strategy will make it possible to integrate the industrial aeronautical capabilities of Rafale users 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.
5- 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 operated 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.
Until now, this drift has been ignored in the equipment competitions in which the fighter has taken part, both because of Lockheed-Martin's well-oiled pitch supported by the US State Department, and because of the obvious short-sightedness, whether intentional or not, of the European, Korean and 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. Indeed, by the time the Rafale F5 enters service, the vast majority of European air forces will already be equipped with the F-35A/B, either partially or fully, 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 be modernising, 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 in the 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 small because they are expensive, could consider the French aircraft to increase their weight.
Whatever the case, it seems 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.
On the one hand, the retirement of the Mirage 2000B suggests that pre-qualification for the Rafale F4.2 has been completed.
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