Same source as my previous message:
Challenges.fr_June 12-18. Printed version. Author: Vincent Lamigeon.
The Rafale put to the test
The French fighter suffered its first combat loss during India's bombing of Pakistani bases in early May.
Can it still compete with Chinese and American aircraft? An investigation.
For several weeks, a subtle, insidious tune has been floating in the air. Like a slight but persistent doubt about the performance of an aircraft that seemed to have succeeded in everything for ten years. May 7, 2025, 1 a.m.: The Rafale makes its his first war mission under the colors of the Indian Air Force. In retaliation for the Pahalgam attack in Kashmir (26 dead), India launches Operation Sindoor, a series of strikes on terrorist sites and military bases in Pakistan. The Dassault fighter participates in the barrage of fire, along with Sukhoi Su-30s and multiple suicide drones. But a few hours later, it's Pakistan that declares victory: its Chinese-designed J10 aircraft, Islamabad claims, have shot down five Indian aircraft, including three Rafales. Even though only one Rafale appears to have been lost, the news has the effect of a bombshell. New Delhi refuses to comment. This is the original sin, leaving the field open to all hypotheses. One scenario is crystallizing: the Indian aircraft was destroyed by a Chinese PL-15 missile, a long-range weapon carried on the Pakistani Air Force's J-10s.
Despite the total lack of evidence, the defense community is going into overdrive. Some see the episode as evidence of the end of Western military technological supremacy, in the face of now more advanced Chinese equipment. Others are criticizing the Rafale's electronic warfare system, the Spectra, deemed incapable of detecting and jamming the Chinese missile. In the absence of an official reaction from India, Dassault and the French camp remained silent.
A few weeks before the Paris Air Show, the "bad buzz" took hold and has hardly dissipated since. "The first confirmed combat loss of a Rafale casts a shadow over Dassault's recent momentum," analyzed Fabian Hoffmann, a researcher at the University of Oslo and host of the blog Missile Matters, on May 7. This does not mean that the Rafale is a mediocre platform [the Eurowings or the F-16 could have had identical performance], but it highlights its limitations as a fourth-generation aircraft, particularly in terms of survivability." Legitimate questioning? The ramblings of pseudo-specialists Manipulation? While the fog of war remains thick, a month after the operation, some certainties are beginning to emerge. The first, strangely overlooked, is that the Rafales used during Operation Sindoor hit the mark. Satellite images from American specialists Maxar and Planet show that Scalp missiles fired by French aircraft, as well as Russo-Indian BrahMos missiles fired by the Sukhoi, hit at least six Pakistani air bases. The photos highlight very specific impacts on the Nur Khan air base, very close to Islamabad. This strategic site is located 1.5 kilometers from the Strategic Plan Division, the military unit in charge of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal (170 warheads). Craters are also visible on the runways and hangars of the Bholari, Sargodha, and Rahim Yar Khan bases, other major military bases.
"Operational Success"
As a May 21 note from the British think tank Rusi pointed out, Pakistani air defenses, mostly supplied by China, were therefore unable to protect some of the country's most strategic sites. "Chinese arms manufacturers benefited from a media advantage disproportionate to the tactical or strategic context of the engagement," points out researcher Walter Ladwig, a lecturer at King's College London, in the Rusi note, even referring to an "operational success" for India. The second certainty is the incredible intensity of the air confrontation between India and Pakistan, probably the largest air battle of the 21st century. The operation reportedly involved at least one hundred aircraft, which engaged in long-range combat, each remaining on their own side of the border. In this type of conflict, attrition (the loss rate) is traditionally high, especially in the first few days, when it can reach 5%. The loss of a Rafale is therefore nothing dramatic and can have multiple causes: enemy missiles, friendly fire, or technical problems. "Losing an aircraft in flight while conducting a high-intensity raid is an act of war, nothing more, nothing less," said General Bruno Clermont, former commander of the Istres air base and former advisor to the CEO of Dassault Aviation. "No fighter is invulnerable. No pilot is invulnerable." India also reportedly lost a Su-30 and a MiG-29, two Russian-designed aircraft, without causing a stir comparable to that following the destruction of the Rafale.
These losses are all the more understandable given that India, to avoid an uncontrollable escalation, had been holding on tight.
Delhi had warned Islamabad of its intention to strike. Pakistan's forces were therefore on high alert, with around forty aircraft in flight, according to several sources. India had also imposed "strict rules of engagement" on its troops, which "prohibited launching attacks against Pakistani aircraft or preemptively neutralizing air defense systems," according to the think tank Rusi.
Informational Defeat
Did India underestimate the will and capabilities of its adversary? Possible. A very reliable source claims that the Meteor long-range air-to-air missiles were not installed on the Rafales used during Operation Sindoor. The Indian Air Force would thus have been deprived of its most formidable weapon in air combat. "It is possible that the Indians underestimated the range of the PL-15 missiles on board the Pakistani aircraft," believes a French pilot. Other sources mention the decisive support of a Pakistani Saab 2000 Erieye radar aircraft, which would have allowed the missiles to be guided beyond their conventional range, thus surprising the Indian pilots. While the causes of the Rafale's loss remain unclear, the way in which the incident was exploited leaves little room for doubt: the affair was the subject of a major information offensive led by China and Pakistan. A French intelligence memo, published on May 19, denounces "pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and pro-Pakistan operations" that exploit the supposed losses of combat aircraft "to target India, but also Dassault Aviation and the French defense industrial and technological base." The memo highlights in particular satirical content shared by the Chinese influencer Brother Hao (16 million followers) on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, and then reposted by hundreds of pro-CCP accounts on X (formerly Twitter). The document also highlights a fake news story launched by the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post about Indonesia's supposed questioning of the purchase of 42 Rafales following the loss of the Indian aircraft. This blatant fake news: Jakarta signed a letter of intent for the acquisition of additional Rafales during Emmanuel Macron's visit on May 28. The Rafale affair therefore looks, above all, like an informational defeat for the Indian side. "The initial silence of Indian military spokespersons created an information vacuum, filled by technically ill-informed and strategically misleading comments," asserts Walter Ladwig in the Rusi think tank note.
"Technological Asymmetry"
Questions about the capabilities of the French aircraft should not be dismissed out of hand, however. In January, a report by the think tank Ifri (French Institute of International Relations), which is unlikely to have any Chinese or Pakistani connections, caused a stir. Signed by French pilots Adrien Gorremans and Jean-Christophe Noël, it evoked a "clear technological asymmetry" between the Rafale and the F-35 stealth fighter jets, against which "the combat mission is very difficult to achieve given the current state of the sensors." And the authors hammer home the point: "In the event of engagement alongside its Western allies in a high-intensity conflict, the French fighter jet could be restricted to a backup role for fifth-generation fighters, in a two-tiered air coalition." The Rafale as a backup? At Dassault Aviation headquarters in Saint-Cloud, the uppercut is hard to swallow. "I'm waiting to see the French become backups for European countries equipped with F-35s," the group's CEO, Eric Trappier, quips in his interview with Challenges (see page 76), reminding us that stealth, while undeniably useful, is never total. Lockheed Martin's F-35 is, in fact, not invulnerable: several US Air Force aircraft have almost been shot down in recent months by Houthi rebels over Yemen, as revealed by the New York Times on May 12.
Lack of Stealth
However, the lack of stealth has been identified by Dassault and the French Armaments Agency (DGA) as one of the French fighter's weak points. The successor to the Rafale, the Franco-German-Spanish New Generation Fighter (NGF) of the SCAF (Future Combat Air System) program, will indeed be stealthy, but it is not expected before 2045. To fill the gap, the Ministry of the Armed Forces launched a stealth combat drone program last year, known as the UCAV (Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle), which will accompany the fighter starting in 2033. This aircraft, derived from Dassault's Neuron demonstrator, will carry out the most dangerous missions, including "first entry" into theaters of operation and the suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD).
The Rafale itself will undergo significant developments. Its future F5 standard, scheduled for 2030, will integrate a new radar, a new electronic warfare system, and new optronic sensors.
The engine manufacturer Safran is also offering a beefed-up version of the M88 engine, called the T-Rex, which would increase its thrust from 7.5 to 9 tons. A welcome modernization: having entered service in the early 2000s, the Rafale could, given the pace of progress of the SCAF, still be flying in 2060.
/deepl