Another Stunning Selfie: French Rafale fighter pilot

January 14, 2014 Military Aviation, Selfies
David Cenciotti

Here’s a self-portrait photo taken by a pilot of the French Air Force’s Escadron de Chasse 1/7 Provence, based at Saint-Dizier.

The fighter jocks depicted in the “selfie” is flying a Rafale C “omnirole” plane at very high altitude, with condensation trail clearly visible behind the jet.

Rafales of the Armée de l’Air have been involved in Libya and Mali air wars.

A further iterative development of the warplane has been recently announced: the new F3R standard will include the integration of MBDA’s Meteor BVR (beyond visual range) air-to-air missile, the latest version of the Sagem AASM Hammer air-to-surface guided munition and the newer version of the Thales’s PDL-NG laser designation pod.

Image credit: EC1/7

 

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About David Cenciotti
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David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.

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9 Comments

  1. The Rafale F3R version is unlikely to survive against a Russian Flanker type equipped with AESA and R-77 or equivalent missile. Hollande is mainly to blame for this sad state of affairs affecting the Rafale.

    • Says who? The Flanker will be detected at close to maximum range even if the Rafale used the RBE-2 PESA given the Russian bird’s huge size. The Meteor is significantly better than the R-77 in all respects barring cost.

    • “hollande is mainly to blame”?
      really? how interesting, given the plane first flew in the mid eighties, and it has been in service for more than ten years, and that hollande was elected in may 2012…
      i believe that if you’re looking for culprits, both chirac and sarkozy would be better suspects.
      but of course, they’re from your political party, so it can’t be, right?
      furthermore: this website is for plane lovers, keep your political beliefs for yourself.

    • Wow, you didn’t know that the delivery of Rafales with an AESA radar to the French Air Force had already started in… October 2012 (making the Rafale the first operational European aircraft with an AESA radar)?!

  2. The Aviationist is a rich website with wonderful articles and splendid photography of professional quality. Now can we just drop the utterly unintelligent term “selfie” from its vocabulary?

  4. In fact the picture is taken from the back seat of a Rafale B. You can guess mainly by the position of the WSO who is sitting between the canards.

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