The French Air Force (Armée de l'Air) concluded its Projection d’un dispositif aérien d’Envegure en Asia du Sud-Est (Projection of a large air force in Southeast Asia) mission with the return of three Dassault Rafale B fighter jets to France on September 18.
Under the acronym Pegase (Pegasus), the French Air Force deployed the three Rafales, two Airbus A330 MRTT Phénix and two A400M Atlas aircraft from St Dizier in northern France to New Caledonia in less than 72 hours on August 10, demonstrating its ability and willingness to project power into the region.
Pegase 2022 was conducted in three phases, the second of which saw the Rafales, a single Phénix and a New Caledonia-based Airbus CN235-200M transport participate in the RAAF’s Pitch Black air combat exercise.
The force departed France on August 10 and deployed to New Caledonia via India and Australia. After arrival in Tontouta, it combined with the French Armed Forces of New Caledonia (FANC) for the local Mission Henry Brown exercise, named after a local who fought for the Free French SAS during the Second World War.
The three Rafales then deployed to Darwin and the Phénix and CN235 to Amberley and Tindal respectively for Pitch Black. After the exercise concluded, the aircraft returned home via Indonesia, Singapore and Al Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates.
“After the incident related to the sale of French submarines to Australia, Pitch Black 2022 is here to relaunch air cooperation between the two nations,” the French Ministry of Defence said in a statement. “The military dialogue already restarted in January 2022.”
The Rafale fighters were from the 1/ 4 “Gascogne” and 2/4 “La Fayatte” squadrons, based at San Dizier, but crews from all four of France’s Rafale wings participated in Pitch Black and in total 170 personnel were spread between Amberley, Darwin and Tindal.
Speaking to ADM during the second (Large Force Employment) week of the exercise, Detachment Commander Colonel Franck Bottero said that the French forces were flying both Red Air and Blue Air missions each day and night.
“I think it’s a very, very good exercise because of the size of the training area, which is almost half of France,” COL Bottero said. “But France has more than 10,000 civilian movements a day, so there's no way we have sufficient airspace to train in. Actually, all the Rafale operational squadrons are represented here (Darwin) in order to take all the experience we can get from this exercise and share it inside the different units – so, we have pilots from the four different Rafale squadrons in France.”
The single A330 Phénix was from Air Refuelling Squadron 1/31 “Bretagne” and flew its missions from Amberley during the course of Pitch Black, due to the number of aircraft based in Darwin. At Amberley it was joined by an RAAF KC-30A and Republic of Korea Air Force (ROKAF) A330 Cygnus tanker.
Lastly the CN235, from Transport Squadron ET-52 “La Tontouta” was based at RAAF Tindal and was the only airlift asset in Pitch Black 2022 – there being no significant Air/Land integration in the exercise. The single aircraft flew daily missions representing a high-value asset that needed protection as it nominally inserted Special Forces into the training area.
