"2000 Legionnaires would have taken Fallujah in 3 days . No bashing intended ." --BW Silly idiotic comments like that invalidate everything you say. Hell the US could have taken Fallujah in an hour if we wanted to level the city too. But then we would be in five other cities doing the same thing because we failed to convince Iraqis that we are actually trying to help them. Jesus BW go to COIN training then come talk to me. "Btw , 2 tankers allow a 16 Aircrafts strike flight composed as follow : 6 M2000Ns as strikers 4 M2000Bs as SEADs 6 M2000-5MkII as escort " --BW vs more than a dozen to two dozen interceptors and SAMs coordinated by GCI and AWACs all alerted to your presence! On my thats very optimistic. You will be wishing for that suprise you brushed off so easily. BW, trust me from experience. Wars are won in the pressrooms in modern times. If it bleeds, it leads. You will have a virtual coup if the media gets enough good footage and talking points. Your plan is Bahgdad Bobs dream come true!

"I now see a bit more clearly what the problem is for the majority of US posters . USA usually go HEAVY and LOUD on the opponent , in fact so heavylly (?) and loudly that they try to archive the "near zero" casualties point . This is fine and well thought , but it is slow . Same with the Britishs . Casualties seems to be the main focus . US and UK don 't like to see coffins coming back home . Us French , we are very different . We don 't give a $hit about dying . In fact , we go berserk at the first slap ." Remember Passchendale - evey theatre/divisional/brigade commander since then has worked on the premise of necessary committment - ie, not abusing the goodwill and lives of the troops and personnel under their command. It's not a matter of bravery - it's a matter of judicious and considered use. Approp mass and momentum have qualities of their own.

Bluewings, I am not convinced that France has the logistics to pull off an invasion of Egypt. It takes a lot of supplies to keep a Army moving forward. I do think France could do puntive strikes and possible naval blockade but I think Egypts location, terrian and size of military is to much for France to pull off a invasion. Its not that the fighting capabilty of France but its lack of logistics.

I am sorry to have let myself go beyond what should be said . No bashing was intended and I was not questioning anyone 's bravery . I ' ve been a bit silly , that 's all . The fact is that I am a "rentre-dedans" ~roughneck~ who never waited for support to get the job done . Sure I was SpecOps and you don 't expect any (support) . Now , back on topic ;-) I understand that we don 't really have the numbers to operate 100 fighters at all time , so our tactics must reflect our capabilities . I will not quote back what I said but you all understood that an Air Campaign is the key to success . When I talk about ~let 's say~ a 16 Aircrafts deep strike mission from Chad or Djibouti , I imagine most posters thinking "high and fast" . No , that 's not the case . FAF is known to fly deep strike very low because we designed our strike aircrafts and trained our Pilots to do so . We have excellent satellite imagery , and second to none ground mapping/terrain following with sofware like Antilope-5 onboard M2000B/N/Ds . We can fly our Bombers at 90feet , at 500knt while using threat avoidance . Basically , you all know the deal : SEADs slightly ahead at around 10.000feet , Strikers in the middle at 90feet and Escort slightly behind at 30.000feet conserving speed and energy . It is exactly what the FAF and RAF did in GW1 . If you check an Egyptian map , you 'll see that we have different routes to choose from to conduct such strikes . Or whatever Tactic we decide to choose ... I might be a bit stubborn but I cannot see the EAF performing well against the FAF/FN . Look at GW1 , if I remember well the Coalition downed 43 Irakis Fighters with NO loss in the Air . France on Her own might not be able to score so heavyly but we would win the Air Campaign , no doubts . Cheers .

I have shown that we can strike Egypt WHEN WE WANT with 160 fighters at the same time (20 from CdG air refueled by Superetendard to keep carrier out of range of Egyptians) including more than 80 Rafale from location less than 2000 km. That 1000 tons or air refueling alow more than 7 tons per aircraft while Rafale has a 1000 miles radius of action and could do it without air refueling. That Apache of Scalp has 150 or 250 miles range which reduce distance for planes carrying them for first raids. That we have space, air reco, OTH to assess previously Egyptian order of battle even planes are dispersed on secondary airports or roads. That we have capacity to locate E2C real time, approcah them by surprise and unoticed for a sparhead raid of Rafales, and destroy them. That we will have AWAC and E2C to conduct battle while Egypt would be deprived of AWAC. That Egypt has only 500 AIM7 and even they get 200 Amraam in 2009 (more would be unlikely as Israelis are mad about it), we would have a great air superiority in air combat If you doubt that we can destroy Egyptian air focre in three months after first event because we would lack of tankers, add 6 months of a French crash program on tankers, and we can field dozen more using second hand A310 (247 available on market and a good number at airFrance), or A330/340, and air refueling system we already produce to convert them in tankers (for France, Oz, UK etc..). So with 60 tankers I guess we could more than double our strike numbers. It is only a matter of time and we don't need more than one year. After all US took 9 months for Iraq.

" When I talk about ~let 's say~ a 16 Aircrafts deep strike mission from Chad or Djibouti , I imagine most posters thinking "high and fast" . No , that 's not the case . FAF is known to fly deep strike very low because we designed our strike aircrafts and trained our Pilots to do so . We have excellent satellite imagery , and second to none ground mapping/terrain following with sofware like Antilope-5 onboard M2000B/N/Ds . We can fly our Bombers at 90feet , at 500knt while using threat avoidance . Basically , you all know the deal : SEADs slightly ahead at around 10.000feet , Strikers in the middle at 90feet and Escort slightly behind at 30.000feet conserving speed and energy . It is exactly what the FAF and RAF did in GW1" --BW ---BW, BW, BW. You are ignoring a huge fact. First you 16 Aircraft are flying into an alerted defense. Thats mistake #1. Mistake #2 is that at 90 feet or any low altitude flight profile you will use tremendous amounts of fuel. This is critical since most of the targets are in the North East which if you check a map is the furthest away from you. So now you will have to refuel north of Egypt or over Egypt itself! So now whos protecting the tankers? You and FS are simply ignoring the reality of this hypothetical conflict. FRANCE DOES NOT HAVE THE LOGISTICS OR THE NUMBERS TO WIN NOW OR IN 2009. Just accept this. Then accept the fact that Egypt will increase its capability and make preparations too.

"That we have capacity to locate E2C real time, approcah them by surprise and unoticed for a sparhead raid of Rafales, and destroy them." --FS --How are your Rafales going to do that? Magic? Please stop making blanket random baseless statements that you cant support.

I can support it and I have done it many time.I redo it: E2C in flight: -Under heavy jamming E2C radar range is reduced -We have sophisticated mission prepartion tools where masking trajectory can be computed at low level -Rafale ECM are outstanding and RCS low vs what have Egyptians (more other they don't have the best ECCM as US never export them even in NATO) When Egyptian would discover Rafale raid, Rafale would be well within than 100 miles of E2C in flight and I'm generous , so few minutes of flight.Escortng F16 even they are 30 would not prevent 20 Rafale with 160 mica IR/EW to do their job. -At the same time Apache antirunway start to crush runways for hours while stealth Scalp destroy armored shelters for aircraft, aircrafts, radar and command post and depots. -Then more conventional waves with PGM start to complete the job. No way Egypt F16 can take off in sufficient numbers under attack without runways and guidance. On ground: E2C in flight are tracked permanently by Elint and OTH so we know where they are located as F16, when they come on ground.Then reco satellites give their exact locations and airfield topography. Once half of F16 are destroy and all E2C, aerial battle is won. Then we need only few weeks to finish EAF then months at most to cripple their army at a point they don't move and they have only one third of their major modern assets.Then we can land safely in the less defended location. Whatever the scenario (3 or 9 months) we would do it and have the right number of tankers. Are you of bad faith?

NO Im not bad faith. Lets address things one by one shall we. Please no more equipment list or even talk of tactics for now as tactics vary second to second with conditions. Lets talk overall doctrine and strategy. Question #1. Jam E-2c with what FS?

Carbone French offensive jammer for example (or others).Work well against NATO patriot.Do you know that we have E2C software sell in our package unless Egypt to build our ECCM?We know it pretty well and much more than Egyptians! It is why we paid them twice normal price with spares for life and tools to modify them.A normal condition for French buying abroad.More other (and funny)US hire a french company in FMS (along a US one) to maintain Egyptian E2C.LOL.Check it!