Quote:
|
distasteful if they just used it for PR and left however. But even here iirc, the French did deploy some 10 Mirage 2000-5s for strike over Afghanistan since ISAF went in. And the Rafales would just add to that. It'd be interesting to see how many aircraft they still have in theater...
|
Quote:
|
Three fighters is a bit too less imho, for France to have contributed. Are there any French members of WAB who could comment?
|
No Mirage 2000-5Cs were sent. They used to have 6 Mirage 2000Ds flying out of Manas (with Duchanbe in Tajikistan as a divert field) back in late February2002. On March 4th they conducted their first CAS missions. Within 2 months they had conducted 220 combat sorties over Afghanistan including dropping bombs in support of Operation Anaconda. They dropped 47 GBU-12 laser guided bombs up until October.
Three Mirage-2000Ds is better then nothing and if needed they can get quite busy. The planes are making use of LGBs and are able to operate with NATO G-FACs.
Still would be nice to have one or two Mirage 2000D squads and a couple of combat regiments from the Legion and Marines along with teams from the COS; but France is stretched as well.