French Air Force Finally Gets Long Range Missiles: Meteor-Equipped Rafale Unit Makes First Operational Flight

The first ever unit of fighters in the French Air Force equipped with Meteor air to air missiles has officially performed its first operational flight, marking the beginning of what is expected to be a wider investment in integrating the missile onto squadrons of Rafale fighter jets in French service. The Rafale is a lightweight twin engine design which is one of just two fighter classes in French service, alongside the older Mirage 2000 from the same weight range which has been in service since the Cold War. The Meteor missile was developed jointly as a pan-European project to meet the needs of six countries including Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and France. The first four of these developed the Eurofighter jointly, while Sweden developed the much smaller Gripen with considerable American support and France developed the Rafale. The Meteor is the first European long rang air to air missile to be widely produced, with Eurofighter and Gripen units perviously having relied on using American AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles while French units used the much shorter ranged MICA missile. Neither the Rafale nor the MICA have seen any substantial deployments for air to air combat, and estimates of their actual performance have varied widely.

The French Air Force has long suffered from a lack of viable long range air to air missiles relative to the services other major powers, with the MICA missile it has relied on since the mid-1990s as its prime beyond visual range platform restricted to engaging at a modest range of approximately 80km. While mediocre for its time, this has left French fighter units terribly outranged relative to many of their rivals overseas and left the service unable to fully capitalise on the powerful new generation of sensors that began to be integrated onto its Rafale fighters from the mid-2010s. To place the MICA’s short range in perspective, the American AIM-120C widely used in NATO has a range of approximately 100km, as does China’s PL-12 and Russia’s R-77 which have been in service for around two decades. The Russian R-37 and R-37M meanwhile boast 400km ranges, the Chinese PL-15 a range estimated at between 250 and 300km, and the American AIM-120D a range estimated at between 160 and 180km. The integration of the Meteor will thus represent a very important boost for the French fleet, with the missile having an estimated range of approximately 180-250km and benefiting from very high manoeuvrability and high countermeasure resistance. Only a portion of the Rafale fleet have integrated modern AESA radars however, which are necessary to be able to make full use of the Meteor.