Ukraine is extremely interested in resolving the issue of what the country’s Air Force will fly in the 2030s-2080s. The answer to this should be 100-150 Swedish Gripen and/or 100 French Rafale aircraft. But in order to have a reasonable hope for the implementation of such plans, it is necessary to resolve the issue of what Ukrainian pilots should fly in the 2020s.
If it is quite possible to count on receiving used Gripen C/Ds from Sweden as early as 2026, then it would be fair to ask whether there are any chances of receiving used Rafale aircraft. It should be noted that France has already allowed itself to sell these used fighters.
Read more: Who Localized the Rafale Fighters, How It Was Done, and What Ukraine Can Expect
In particular, 12 Rafales from the French Air and Space Force were purchased by Greece and Croatia in 2020 and 2021. At the same time, the Croats purchased only used aircraft for 1.15 billion euros, with the condition that these fighters should be no older than 10 years and modernized to the F3R version. But both contracts were signed before 2022, which reshaped the ideas of all countries about their own defense needs.
The question of whether the French armed forces are ready to part with their combat fighters in order to implement export contracts was actually answered by the Chief of the French General Staff, Jérôme Bellanger, on November 6 of this year during his speech at an event dedicated to the presentation of the capabilities of the French Air and Space Force.
According to him, the number of fighters in the French Air and Space Force should not be 185 units, but 230. Let us recall that the current fleet of French fighters consists of about 100 Rafale and about 85 Mirage 2000 in the French Air and Space Force. In addition, 42 Rafale-M carrier-based are in the French Navy as well as another 20 Rafale in a special version - in the French Deterrence Force as carriers of nuclear weapons.
Moreover, France already has a shortage of combat aircraft, which is being compensated by a more active operation of the existing Rafale aircraft by 15%, which Jérôme Bellanger spoke about even earlier in the French parliament.
Earlier, the then Minister of Defense Sébastien Lecornu spoke about the need to purchase 20 additional Rafale aircraft for the French Air and Space Force as well as another 10 for the French Navy, but the draft budget for 2026 does not provide for this.
It should be noted that Dassault Aviation’s production capacity is limited. According to the plan for 2025, the company should produce 25 fighters, while it has a current order for 233 Rafales. Dassault Aviation also has an ambitious plan to increase the production rate of these aircraft to 36 units in 2026 and to 48 in 2028-2029.
Thus, if the decision on the possibility of transferring used Rafale aircraft to Ukraine to make at the level of the French General Staff, it will be very difficult to get a positive answer there due to the shortage of aircraft in France itself. Given the limited capacity to produce new fighters, this shortage cannot be covered in the short term.
It seems more realistic for Ukraine to continue receiving used Mirage 2000-5F aircraft from France, which the French plan to decommission by 2030.This, of course, does not exclude the possibility of Paris making exclusively political decisions regarding the transfer of Rafale fighters to Ukraine.
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