It's a very picturesque area. :)

Yes, it really is, that's part of why I always enjoy to go there. That and the serinity that you feel once in those mountains (plus it's also an aerial training aera for both the Air Force and for the Civil Security! :P ).

I can understand that. :) How wonderful it is to combine the peace of nature with a few sights of aircraft flying by! Maybe that's where I've seen all the YouTube canyon runs in jets lol.

Well, yes it's, it's always great to have a place that combine an endless nature, history and aviation! I think I will always remember a hiking I did in the high plateaux two years ago, we've been overflown by two Mirage 2000D and, a bit later, by two CL-415. :)

D: Whoa! That's pretty exciting! Have the Mirage 2000 series receive avionics updates to keep them fighting for a while, or will the Raphial and the Typhoon replace them at some point?

I would have loved to see the CL-415

Well, normally, the Mirage 2000 series should remain, on the paper, operational until 2030 but only for the D variant, the C variant, the first fighter variant, is still used for air policing with maybe 2 dozens of aircrafts, the B variant, the twin-seater trainer, has still something like 5 airframes operational until 2025, I guess, for the 2000-5, the latest fighter variant I've no informations but they shouldn't last for a very long time I suppose and the N variant, the strategical bomber, have been withdrawn this year to let their entire role to the Rafale B. But in despite of being from the late 70s, the Mirage 2000 still shows a great potential in combat and can, at some moments, take the advantage on the Rafale.
As for the Typhoon, the French Air Force shall never buy any of them, it doesn't fit their bill of specifications, the Typhoon is only an interceptor even though it can drive some ground attack missions, but on the other side, the Rafale is a multi-role aircraft and can, in one flight, lead a reconnaissance and a ground attack mission while keeping its capacity for air superiority missions.

Ah, it is good to know that the Morning 2000 series should survive until 2030, but it looks like it will have a really small pool of airfriames to respond to missions with. Do you mean air policing as in a "National Guard"/ Sécurité Civile arrangement?

Maybe by the time we are old, we can buy the airframes and have our own Mirage. :) It's a much better fate than them turning into bolts and soup cans.

Can the Rafale deliver nuclear payloads as a strategic bomber?

Ah, that was a flaw in my thinking. I had thought that the Typhoon was supposed to be more mission-flexible than it is. The Rafale must have a special sensor pod to be able to handle the recon, ground attack and and weapons guidance missions all in one flight eh?

Supposedly, the aircraft being built will soon have the ability to network with each other. If I laser a target you can see it on your screen and drop a bomb toward the target. Something to that matter. It also is supposed to display threats. If I am 20km ahead of you and I see a MIG that is not on your radar, I am supposed to be able to relay that information to you in real time. It's quite futuristic to me.

Yes, it's a good thing we will be able to see them for a bit longer. And actually, for the moment there are approximately only 3 squadrons in the French Air Force with Mirage 2000s, one with the D variant, one with the 5 variant and one that has both the B and the C variants, so I'd estimate the current number of Mirage 2000 in activity to something around 90. And as in air policing, I was meaning that the aircrafts are used as interceptors, when an aircraft is seen approaching a restricted area, not responding on radio or leaving their scheduled road, they send the aircrafts on alert to intercept them, first to chack that everything is alright and then either to drive the intruder to a nearby airport where the Air Military Police take them in charge or to shoot them down if they refuse to cooperate. Happily, I've never heard of the latter case to have ever occured.
Actually, I'm not quite sure of the role of the ANG in the US, but they seems to be quite active and to go on war theater, isn't it? We've got nothing comparable over here. As for the Sécurité Civile, over here, its only role is the rescue since it's only constituted with firemen (considering than in France, firemen take the role of firefighters, EMTs as well as several other roles in which are included biological, nuclear and chemical protection and remediation) both civilian and military.

Yes, maybe one day, once they would be completly outdated, some will probably be bought by museums but I'm not quite optimistic as to ever seeing one in the civilian register, these things are quite expensive to get flying! :P

And yes, the Rafale is able to accomplish the role of strategic bomber, though, as a tradtion in the French Air Force, it's a role reserved to the twin-seaters variants, so only the B variant is able to carry the nuclear weapon.

Yes, it really is in the world of today, that's why France left the European fighter jet project in 80s-90s, leading to the adoption of the already existing prototype of Dassault Aviation, the Rafale. Actually, the Rafales has two special pods, the Damoclès targeting pod which is able, thanks to a thermographic camera, to lock and designate a target on a distance of 20 miles at most, and it also has the AREOS Reco NG reconnaissance pod which has two sensors, one for the high and medium altitudes which has the capability to photograph on a distance of 60 miles and another made for very low altitude flights which is able to take photographs on a limit altitude of 200ft at very high speed. And for air combat, the Rafales also includes an optronic sensor which give is the capacity to indentify, see and engage an aircraft on a distance of around 30 miles with a detection range given for 62 miles, and that without warning the enemy aircraft since it's a similar system to the Infra-red Search and Track. This optronic sensor also allows the Rafale to clearly indetify a naval or ground target on a distance of 6 km. And as a defense system, the Rafale also has a countermeasure system called SPECTRA which is composed of a RWR, a MAW, a radar jammer, a DDM NG, a laser warning and of an intelligent decoy releasing system as well as of a data fusion system of which I'll talk about a bit further.

Concerning this system you're talking about, it already exists, I think Russians were the firsts to develop it since the Su-27, MiG-29 and Ka-50 already have this system since the late 70s. It seems that the NATO only adopted it in the early 2000s, while the US introduced it in 1991, the name of the system depend on the source, it's either datalink or data fusion, as mentionned above, but the NATO code for it is L16. I think the NATO was more relying on the AWACs before to adopt this system. Though, I think this system, I'm not quite sure that what I'm writing is correct, can, at most, transmit the informations about aircrafts and ships, for laser targeting, you can always rely on other plateforms, either from the ground under the form of a JTAC or from the air with an another aircraft with a laser targeting pod.