Three Rafale of the armee de l'air will be stationed at the Dushanbe air base in Tajikistan in mid-March. At the same time, two Rafales of the Marine Nationale will join the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, which is deployed off the coast of Pakistan. These five aircraft will operate over Afghanistan. 

I'm surprised there are only two Aeronavale Rafales committed. How many is the carrier routinely deploying with? Or is this merely a reflection of how many Rafale M's have been upgraded to the F2 standard?

Kudos to Dassault, the Aeronavale and Armee de l'Air on their success. Godspeed to the squadrons and our hopes go out for a safe return.

-- Shaken - out --

You realize that the R.550 was a horrible missile when the PL-7 was released to service in 1987. It is a very short ranged, tail-chase missle and only slightly better than the original AIM-9B in overall capability. Also, the R.550 was widely exported in advance of the PRC / Pakistani alliances. It does not seem like any reasonably financed intelligence service would have had difficulty acquiring scores of this weapon.

The Israelis won over Bekaa Valley because they secured every advantage before going out to fight.  That's just sound tactics, and it would've worked had the Israelis still been flying Mirages and Kfirs. 

 

The Syrians were subpar pilots, but they were not--according to Russian sources--flying just the inferior MiG-23s with Jaybird radar.  They also had at the time top of the line Floggers as well.  Their tactics, while abysmal, were also straight out of the Russian playbook.  When the news got back to Moscow, there was a lot of thinking done.  A Russian fighter pilot (a Colonel, whose name escapes me) wrote a long treatise that, for once, threw party loyalty out the window and just told the plain truth: Soviet tactics stunk.  This was a Red Star article, and he very plainly said that, had this been Central Europe, the Red Army would be getting decimated by NATO airpower, because Frontal Aviation would've ceased to exist.  He noted that the Flogger itself was a good aircraft that was surprisingly decent in a dogfight (a comparison the Israelis themselves made after capturing a Flogger of their own), but that the tactics were so poor and the Israelis so good that the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

 

Surprisingly, this Colonel was not demoted nor shot, and the V-VS picked up on his treatise.  A lot of what he wrote went into the refinements of the MiG-29 and Su-27, and had the Soviet Union lasted longer, probably would've seen massive changes in Soviet air combat training.

 

As far as the Rafale goes--it'll do fine.  The most important part of this is putting the aircraft in harm's way (it will get shot at, even if only by small arms) and putting the maintenance crews in a hostile environment--hot high conditions they wouldn't get in Djibouti.

 

I have only skim read this thread, so sorry if I am asking for a repeat.

 

Firstly, I think it is great that the Rafale is going out there, and it will be even better if they are there at the same time as the RAF Typhoons which are planned to go out (I am not sure when exactly).

 

What can we expect these French aircraft to be armed with?

 

I gather they will be using their cannon to good effect, can they/do they also use unguided rockets?  Can they self target laser guided munitions?  Are they equiped with GPS guided munitions?

 

And will the aircraft going be single seat, or more appropriate for CAS, 2 seat varients?