When the military and political leadership of France was considering options for joining "aircraft coalition" to support Ukraine, French diplomats offered to provide Rafale aircraft to the Ukrainian military.
However, this decision was blocked by the Minister of the Armed Forces of France, Sébastien Lecornu. This was reported by Opex360 French portal with reference to Le Monde.
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It is noted that the essence of Sébastien Lecornu's arguments against transferring Rafale fighters to the Armed Forces of Ukraine seemed familiar: it could "undermine the combat capabilities of France's own armed forces."
To be more precise, in 2021, the French Air Force had 102 Rafale aircraft at its disposal, while this figure had dropped to 97 units by the beginning of 2024. In particular, this decrease was due to the need to fulfill contracts with Greece and Croatia, which provided for the supply of Rafale aircraft. Accordingly, due to the reduction of the Rafale fleet, the workload per aircraft increased from 147 to 164 flight hours per year.
At the same time, it is reported that if France did decide to transfer Rafale to Ukraine, it would not receive a replacement from "third" countries, as European states with F-16s in service have done. They handed over their fighter jets to Ukraine and are switching to F-35s instead.
At the same time, according to Opex360, the arguments in favor of the French diplomats' proposal to transfer the Rafale to Ukraine were as follows: before russia's full-scale invasion, Ukraine was making plans to purchase modern Western-made aircraft anyway, in order to finally abandon Soviet-made aircraft by the 2030s.
At the same time, the issue of a possible agreement on the supply of Rafale jets to Ukraine was allegedly discussed even as early as 2021, and it could have been included in the program of visit of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron to Ukraine.
As Defense Express, we note that the story described clearly illustrates the nuances that can accompany a particular aspect of the transfer of weapons to Ukraine.
Earlier Defense Express reported that France had sent its first domestically-made killer drones to Ukraine.
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