CHRISTINA MACKENZIE / PARIS
Strategic transport, bad-weather targeting and communication with allies also difficulties
The French air force says the principal lesson it learned from coalition operations in Afghanistan is that it must improve its capacity to acquire and handle intelligence.
Gen Patrice Klein, French air force deputy head of operations, says although France has an independent strategic reconnaissance capability with its Dassault Mirage IVP, "we must shorten the cycle from obtaining the intelligence to acting on it". The navy's Dassault Super Etendards also provided a capability during the campaign.
Klein says Afghanistan highlighted the importance of medium- altitude long-endurance (MALE) unmanned air vehicles (UAV) in obtaining intelligence. The French air force is due to receive an EADS Eagle system with three MALE UAVs before year-end.
Gen Herv‚ Longuet, air combat force commander, says: "The principal gap with the USA is in the speed and handling of intelligence data, notably with satellites and UAVs." He says, however, that until France receives its Airbus Military A400M transports there will also be a strategic transport shortfall.
Gen Fran‡ois Beck, air projection force commander, says the need for the short-term lease of transports, which usually takes a minimum of four days, "has a negative influence on our reactivity". France leased nine Antonov An-124s for its Afghanistan deployment.
Lt-Col Patrick Joubert, commander of 1/3 Sqn, a Dassault Mirage 2000D operator, says the seven- month operation – during which six aircraft flew 4,500h - saw emerge three areas requiring near-term solutions: weapons, communications and allied co-operation.
Target acquisition is the main weapons problem. "Laser-guided weapons are useless when you have cloud cover," says Joubert, "so GPS-guided weapons would be better."
He says another problem in Afghanistan was the lack of common radio standards. "We use the NATO Have Quick 2 system, which is an electronic countermeasure to ensure transmission security and works by frequency hopping. This is also used by the US Marine Corps. But the US Air Force and part of the Royal Air Force use a Mode Secure system which is a communications security system which works in bursts and causes very high pitch whine overlaying on the NATO system…which is extremely unpleasant."
Source: Flight International
