Good luck trying to replicate the success of the Russian intervention in Syria considering the disastrous state of our army.

er, our army, or aviation shoudl I say, has dropped probably more ordnance and flown more missions than the russians (we’ve been there for something like three years while the russians no more than a year).. where the difference lays is in the fact that our “dear president” (some call him “flamby” not without reason) spent his time, as others from the western part of the world trying to destabilize Assad while fighting islamists, but not too much as islamists also fought Assad.. Had the westerners (or even only french) decided to go on and strike without other political concerns, ISIS would’ve been wiped out long before the russians even bothered to come down there. Putin has no such problems.. he has an ally that called him for help, he went there with a few aircraft and missiles and bombed the hell out of anything and anyone coming close to not being with him, period… Reminds you somewhat of american problem in Vietnam.. when every action needed the approval from Washington instead of being fought and decided in theater, they’ve wasted their time and many of their soldiers’ lives to, finally, loose the war

You really should see someone for your problem, you know?

The point is (the one you obviously do not want to admit) : France has the capability to intervene if it chooses to where it chooses to (weapons AND logistics). And it does have an interventionist policy second only to the USA. like it or not, that’s the way it is. They possess territories all around the planet and have an independant nuclear deterrence policy… All of which, Belgium has not.. like it or not, that’s the way it is as well.

Could coalitions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Balkans and so on, do without the french? yes, they could have, it doesn’t change the fact that the french do have an international policy that is different from the belgian one. Belgium is a small country, pretty recently made (as we know it today, it exists independently since less than 200 years), and pretty much minded its own business ever since …

Which also makes every claim about the Rafale’s current superiority over the EF, SH & SV nothing but thin air, since there’s been no genuine flight trial of the aircraft as they stand today

every claim based on papers only yes just like for any other aircraft.. factual data from trials or live operations, on the other hand, speak for themselves

There was a potential SAM threat in Syria: Russian S-400.

er, unless you were up to attacking the russians, you were pretty much safe from the S400… I thought you said the idea was to attack ISIS…

So the obvious corollary to your argument – is that claims of the Rafale’s superiority over the EF, SH, SV are equally specious.. and you’ve hardly shied away from making them. (The Indian & Swiss evaluations are about a decade old – functionally obsolete.)

the only thing said in my statement is that they evaluation from papers only is nothing but thin air. You dismiss the Swiss and Indian evaluations, but they are based on real thing and definitely more current than anything promised by manufacturers be it now or 20 years ago

except that: what business do they have to go around the globe in the first place?

I mean simply that an evaluation when no real aircraft is evaluated means little as the guys doing the evaluation estimate how much they believe the documents provided by manufacturers instead of doing the job with the real aircraft and taking into consideration real data.

From there on, if they don’t want one type, they can just say “the data provided isn’t reliable enough, we devalue it by xx%” and they can disqualify it… just as they can embellish the score of the bird you want to choose so it wins no matter what

Imagine flying into East German airspace in an F-117 without stealth… would have been interesting.

nah, just short :p :p :p