French Air and Space Force Mirage 2000-5F and Rafale fighters shot down “nearly a dozen drones” in recent combat operations over and around the Red Sea, the head of that service has confirmed. The announcement comes soon after the first French-supplied Mirage 2000-5Fs arrived in Ukraine, where they will be expected to face similar threats, in the form of Russian-operated long-range one-way attack drones.
“In the Air and Space Force, both the Mirage 2000-5 and the Rafale recently demonstrated their effectiveness against Shahed-type suicide drones, against which Ukrainian pilots will have to fight,” Jérôme Bellanger, the Chief of Staff of the French Air and Space Force wrote on LinkedIn yesterday.
Bellanger continued: “I salute our combat crews engaged in operations, who recently destroyed nearly a dozen drones, notably in the Red Sea. The quality of our weapons systems and the expertise of our crews have once again demonstrated their operational effectiveness.”
Bellanger also posted a brief video from the head-up display of a French Rafale, showing the close-range interception and engagement of a Houthi drone using an air-to-air missile. (Note that in the caption for the video below, the fighter is misidentified as a Mirage 2000, but the electro-optical sensor characteristic to the Rafale is visible when illuminated by the missile’s motor).
The exact total of Houthi drones that were downed by the French fighters was not disclosed and TWZ has approached the French Ministry of Defense for more details, including the dates of these incidents.
The French Air and Space Force has a permanent detachment of Mirage 2000-5F fighters in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, from where they would be ideally positioned to intercept drones over the Red Sea. Meanwhile, Rafales have been deployed on a rotational basis at Prince Hassan Air Base in Jordan, as well as at Al Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates, both of these primarily in support of Operation Chammal, the French contribution to the anti-ISIS mission in Iraq and Syria.
Both the Mirage 2000-5 and the Rafale are primarily armed with MBDA MICA air-to-air missiles for air defense, with these beyond-visual-range weapons being available with optional radar-homing or infrared seeker heads. Both fighters also have cannon armament, with the Mirage having a pair of 30mm DEFA weapons and the Rafale being armed with a single GIAT weapon of the same caliber.
The Iranian-backed Houthis began launching drone, missile, and other attacks against foreign warships and commercial vessels in and around the Red Sea, as well as targets in Israel, in October 2023, and fighters from various nations have been prominently involved in tackling some of these threats.
The fact that French fighters had been involved in shooting down Houthi drones over and around the Red Sea had been disclosed before, although the French Ministry of Defense provided very few details.
During a large-scale Houthi attack on ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden on March 9, 2024, the French Armed Forces stated that one of its warships and undisclosed French fighters shot down four combat drones that were advancing toward naval vessels belonging to the European Aspides mission in the region.
A video showing the French Navy Aquitaine class frigate Lorraine during a Red Sea deployment last year:
The drones presented “an imminent threat to merchant vessels, U.S. Navy, and coalition ships in the region,” the French Ministry of Defense said in a post on social media platform X.
Later the same month, the French Armed Forces released a video showing the downing of a Houthi drone over the Red Sea by a French Navy helicopter, using machine gun fire.
“On March 20, while conducting close protection under EUNAVFOR Aspides in the Red Sea, the embarked helicopter of a French destroyer shot down a Houthi UAV threatening the commercial navigation,” the official Aspides account said on X.
Aside from these actions involving aircraft, the French Navy has also shot down multiple Houthi drones within these same waters since becoming an active player in the Red Sea in December of 2023. For a time, France was part of the international, U.S.-led task force Operation Prosperity Guardian (OPG), launched in that same month to combat the threat of Houthi missiles and drones on commercial shipping.
France subsequently said it would not operate under U.S. command, amid possible strains in the relationship, as we reported previously. Since then, France has conducted its mission in the region as part of the Aspides task force. Unlike OPG, Aspides was set up as a purely defensive task force.
Returning to fighters being used to counter Houthi drones, TWZ recently broke the news that U.S. Air Force F-16s have been using 70mm laser-guided rockets to down these during operations in and around the Red Sea in the past year. This involves the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II (APKWS II) rockets, originally developed to engage targets on the ground, but now also employed as lower-cost, more numerous air-to-air weapons. So far, officials have not confirmed how many of the rockets have been used in this manner, how many Houthi drones have been shot down as a result, or when this capability was first used in combat.
The extent of the Houthis’ mass drone and missile attacks has, on occasion, seen fighters having to land to reload with missiles while threats were still flying overhead. With primary air-to-air weapons being rapidly expended, the crew of at least one U.S. Air Force F-15E was forced to switch to guns after running out of missiles but did not succeed in downing any targets.
For the French Mirage 2000-5F, the combat employment against the Houthi drone threat has provided something of a proving ground for the next stage of the type’s career in Ukraine.
As you can read about here, the first Mirage 2000-5Fs, taken from French stocks, arrived in Ukraine last week. The delta-winged jet is the second Western-made fighter type for Ukraine, following the arrival of the F-16, the first of which arrived in Ukraine last summer.
Three photos showing unmarked Mirage 2000-5Fs over Poland, apparently on their delivery flight to Ukraine:
The Ukrainian Mirages are receiving new air-to-ground capabilities before being delivered, but the aircraft was primarily developed for air defense. The Mirage 2000 can take off in a relatively short distance and has a very impressive rate of climb, as well as a top speed of Mach 1.6 even when carrying missiles and a fuel tank. With a single external fuel tank, the Mirage 2000-5F can also patrol for 1 hour and 45 minutes, provided use of the afterburner is limited.
With these qualities in mind, it’s expected that the fighters will help contribute to the protection of Ukrainian cities and infrastructure against Russian drone and cruise missile attacks. In these missions, they will face Iranian-designed Shahed long-range one-way attack drones and derivatives, very similar to at least some of the drones that have been used by the Houthis.
“The Ukrainian Air Force has new, combat-proven capabilities to carry out this air combat,” Bellanger, the Chief of Staff of the French Air and Space Force, commented, in relation to the Mirage 2000-5F transfer.
While the Mirage 2000-5F continues to complement the Rafale with the French Air and Space Force and appears to have found something of a niche for itself intercepting drones in the Red Sea region, we surely won’t have to wait too long for the first reports of the venerable fighter flying combat missions with the Ukrainian Air Force, too.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com