Accidental cause confirmed by the Fr president Himself after his defense speaker acknowledged earlier the shot down. I guess that some were not happy to let go a Sa7 claims for a SOF helicopter with its extended sophisticated defense suite.
Probably another MGB failure hence (Fr armed force still fly their Puma and Cougar despite 80% of the world fleet being grounded.

Edit:

“It was due to technical failure and was not shot down,” said a Libyan soldier allied with the Bedya faction. The soldier, who is part of a tank brigade fighting in Benghazi, said the chopper was heading toward the front-line but crashed shortly after takeoff.

A witness on the ground

And how it was reported to the AFP that was the first to release the news:

Un membre des forces spéciales du général Khalifa Haftar a affirmé à l’AFP que les soldats français tués étaient des “conseillers”. Les combattants qui ont visé l’hélicoptère M17 “essaient de nous attaquer depuis l’ouest de Benghazi afin de pénétrer dans la ville et d’y stopper notre avancée”, a ajouté un autre commandant opérant sous les ordres du général Haftar.

I understand M17 as designating a Mi17.

EDIT2:
However, the next day, FrAF went on an alleged retaliation strike (read here).

two Libyan officials said the French bombings were in retaliation for the deaths of the French special forces. The bombings targeted a district called al-Magrun and its surroundings east of Benghazi, where Hifter has been fighting the Islamic militias known as Benghazi Defense Brigade, they said.
[…]
France did not immediately confirm the bombings, which the two Libyan officials said forced the militias to retreat toward the town of Ajdabiya, west of Benghazi.

Source:
The Washington Post

This is 2016 and not 1968! Aircraft have considerably grown in complexity and require a lot of support equipment these days. Flight line and second line maintenance is still performed at unit level, anything beyond that is either performed by industry or at specific locations (depots). On an F-4 you bolted on a metal sheet when the airframe was damaged that’s not going to happen on an F-35 or any other modern combat aircraft anymore. And there is still a difference between operating from an airbase somewhere in the desert and from some remote locations somewhere in nowhere.

Your are making a confusion b/w complex and difficult. Soldering a plate on an aircraft wing is a difficult thing to do. You need knowledge, know how and aptitude. Fulfilling the maintenance tasks of a fighter jet like the F35 is a complex process where certainly thousands of variables and options are at stake. It is not a difficult thing to do thanks to automation at software level and the the maintenance chain that provide resources, predictive action and knowledge.
The goal of an asset like ALIS is not to make you feel lost in the machine but to enhance your diagnostic to let you do the right thing at the right time. This to cut cost and down time and increase your operation tempo (less plane needed)
.
I am sorry but I still see a Thunderjet or even a Phantom something more difficult to turn around in the stressful situation like a conflict. And I am not the only one. The race for automated diagnosis, embedded maintenance software, data link and commune shared knowledge is a sign of this 😉

In other words, complex but not difficult is the new norm (as opposed to difficult but not complex in the old ages).

Now the Marines plan to operate their Bees with minimal support on FOB with only vertical airlift as support. That says a lot. In the context of Israel, or as discussed way before, Switzerland, I have no doubt that desert location (or local plateau) will offer an even more favorable context of operations.

Audio from the flight recorder of crashed EgyptAir flight MS804 mentions a fire on board the plane in its final moments, the investigation committee said on Saturday, confirming what sources on the committee had previously told Reuters.

There are still no explanation of why the recorders stopped at 37000 ft. More than 5 min before splash down.

Source:
Reuters.com

i think googling ‘f-4 incredible sortie generation’ is a non-starter, so just link if you stumbled on it.
who mentioned saving a buck btw ? i’m talking about a potential logistic bottleneck,
its not the first time war machines stand down due to lack of fuel, fuel trucks are not exempted from attrition,
did you know germans in ww2 used oxes to pull fighters around on the ground to save fuel ?
it wasnt to save a deutsche mark, it was there wasnt any fuel.
a generic nation probably has enough fuel stockpiled for 3 month of war or so, after that, sortie generation my ****,
make it a few weeks for an F-35 air force

First Nazi Germany is a very bad example if we are measuring logistics (see the BoB and Barbarossa).
Secondly, what burns more fuel: 36 planes of various mission or a single package of 8 identical fighter jet? Think logistics. One pound of fuel in a fighter jet tank weight much more in term what brings it there in the first place. There is the amount of fuel, the fuel needed to bring that fuel and the amount of oil expanded to make that pound of fuel fly and fulfill the mission objectives (parts, operator and sustainment for each day of operation).
Last but not least, see the mission planning resources, the maintenance, the logistic and understand how all this unified can save an awful lot of money.

Now, have a look at the non UK fighter offer in Eu. You’ve got your hands on this shiny canard and want to wage war on your neighbor. Sadly, the war last more than one day and you are under strain to get resupplied. … Some up there have even no transport airplane. It’s sea shipping or covert resupply via airliner (or whatever)…
Good luck. War is all about planing. From the inception of a procurement process… To each day you expect to have your feet stuck in the mud.

My own. Sry. Inspired by the VTOL performances, the bulky fuselage and the denomination letter. 😉

Ok. let’s stop the rabbit hunt. This is a little bit too much garbage in / rubbish out with all my due respect 😉

We missed the aspect of the Mil industry cooperating on foreign project like, and especially, Bae in Turkey. I known that with the recent events, things are really controversial and I can see like you all that we have here a very unpredictable situation but, if we bypass this problem and bet on normalization, we now have BAe cooperating on the TFX without any risk of being politically pressured by the Eu.
This is a very favorable position for BAe on this project and on any future fighter jet program (refit or new).

The answer is readily accessible in the video “Making of du Chasseur Rafale” which seems not to be accessible anymore on the web…
Anyone for an upload?

Anyhow:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]247120[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]247121[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]247123[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]247122[/ATTACH]
the last one is not the wing but the transparent Steathy surface

Don’t take me wrong, at the time the size and quick time of assembly were top notch. It took half a dozen of guys and 1 day to set the skin on the structure (or something like that 😉 ).

Source:
Dassault-Aviation