Couldn’t it be simply that they are carried as weight balance to dampen aeroelastic loads?

France Sets Stage for Trainer Competition

So, that has been confirmed ?

The service needs 290 fighter pilots, with each flying an annual 250 hours, of which 70 will be on a Rafale simulator. Of those pilots, 50 will fly an annual 40 hours in the Rafale and fly in the new trainer with a download of Rafale simulation in the cockpit, Mercier said.

290 pilots, among them 50 (low mix), will fly 70hrs in a static simulator, 150 hrs in a slow and low (to very low) G airframe and 40 in their Operational mount.
And of course, politic being what it is, the 50 will end-up soon 100+…

Does the time spent cycling b/w shelters count?

If a Turboprop is selected, it would be the most dramatic fall of cap in the late history of the FrAF.

What stands as mind boggling is the tempo. Why now when the T-X competition will cut cost of trainers drastically? Why not simply buy/lease a transitory aircraft like the M-345* and wait a little less than 5 years? I fail to see some logic here.

*the prestige gained in such a lease could lead Aermacchi to make a good offer in comparison to BAe.

It’s a lot of energy spent to swim with such hydro configuration (rigid body + wing span). Is that thing able to T.O again? Otherwise I fail to understand the purpose here.
If we get a closer look at the wing structure to sustain the impact with the sea, it’s probably a mono-block design to remain sturdy and cheap. Hence, If this thing was build to rejoin an immersed vessel, why not simply discard the entire wing prior to the impact (expendable) and use conventional propeller to augment undersea speed and range?

Something does not add-up here.

Un petit tour et puis s’en vont*: how the Fr administration grounded the Aerial search for potential plane’s debris

FAZSOI, the military forces operating the search plane said the CASA was grounded Saturday because there had been no order to fly from the Island’s Prefect.

The FAZSOI spokesperson however said foot-based beach patrols were being carried out by Gendarmerie police somewhere on the island. A specific location could not be given.

the search covers a 120 by 40 kilometre area over the south-eastern Indian Oc

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Fr Official website describes a single 4hr flight before the lack of administrative order grounded the search team.

Source:
The Sydney Morning Herald

*extract of a popular kid song (“…one more lap and then they went…”)

And in spite of the corruption scandals engulfing the government.

Engulfing? We don’t really know which way around this story goes.

Any official statement for that?

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Notice that it is probably designed to slide like on the F135/ ADVENT on bench test (video)

That is another mystery.

Also given the process that will be used by the DGA for analyzing the part, I fear that we might have another french prosecutor nose-diving on his own theory (explosive). French inquiry being leaded by an anti-terrorism Judge (magistrate investigator). See the beginning of a polemic surrounding some presumed (by Fr prosecutor) hidden information by the Malaysian inquiry…

Note this following the conference in Paris:

experts from Boeing and the National Transportation Safety Board who had seen the object, a piece of what is known as a flaperon, were not yet fully satisfied, and called for further analysis.

Their doubts were based on a modification to the flaperon part that did not appear to exactly match what they would expect from airline maintenance records

Source:
The New York Times

Not its a dead link for me aswell. But from the source code (HTML Tag metacontent):

BAE Systems has announced its intention to re-fly the Mantis UAS Concept Demonstrator; this time in UK airspace. This will be the first flight of a UAS (Unmanned Air System) of this class in UK airspace

I hope it helps.