The famous military port of Toulon is not only the largest military port of the French Navy, but also the heart of the French Navy's equipment manufacturing, where the shipyard where the Dai ship was built. This facilitates the maintenance of the ship, after all, the ship spends more than half of the year in the shipyard.

France's defense industry research and development system is the most complete in European countries, especially after Dai Jian came out, the French have very strong self-confidence in this regard. After all, the British and Germans couldn't do it, and they did it.

What are they awesome about?

In the 80s of the last century, several other major European countries engaged in Eurofighter fighters, that is, the current Typhoon fighters, because the French needed to be on ships and have nuclear strike capabilities, so they withdrew halfway and started anew, and later developed Rafale fighters, which are better than Typhoon fighters in some aspects.

Therefore, it is not possible for this country to fight a war, but there is still a set of national defense weapons and equipment development.

The carrier-based aircraft training base to which the naval base belongs is not large, and in terms of area, it is the size of an ordinary second-class air force airfield in China, but Li Zhan and others quickly saw the difference. The Fertile Ground Navy Flight Training Base gives people the feeling that it is very empty, and there is a feeling that fighters and pilots are being trained in a big wasteland, while the Toulon Carrier-based Aircraft Training Base, although it is small in area, gives people the feeling that it is like a small but well-run precision instrument, and all the work follows the plan, which looks very messy but is actually very organized.

Several two-seater carrier-based fighters of the Rafale M are in flight training, while carrier-based helicopters are constantly taking off and landing on the side, apparently conducting their own training at the same time. With so many planes crammed into one small place, the training program is carried out in an orderly manner, and the capabilities of the individual units are very important.

The command and coordination capability alone can be seen, reflecting the rich experience of the officers and men of the French Navy. It's hard to be so smooth without decades of accumulation.

Sitting in an open-top light bus, Monet introduced the training base and the Rafale M carrier-based fighter that they wanted to show off the most, in heavily accented English. Rafale, Typhoon, and Gripen are known as the three strongest of the three generations of European aircraft, and the French believe that their Rafale is the first, so they naturally want to brag about it.

"Our Rafale is an all-round fighter, air combat, ground strikes, and dropping nuclear bombs, as long as the fighter can do it, it can do it, and it can do what the fighter can't. Typhoon fighters are not good, they are too focused on air superiority performance, and they are completely inferior to our Rafale in terms of application development. ”

"Egypt, Qatar and India have expressed their willingness to purchase a total of 100 Rafale fighters, which fully shows that the performance of our Rafale fighters has been recognized and sought after by many countries."

……

Monet bragged vigorously, and those who didn't know thought he was a sales representative of Dassault. It is impossible for China to buy the Rafale, especially after the J-10C, which is not inferior to the Rafale, comes out, in fact, even if it wants to buy the French, it is not very daring to sell it. Helicopters can also be said to be used for non-combat missions such as commuting, but no matter how much you change the fighter, it cannot change the essence of combat.

"Today we have a group of young men who have just flown solo in the air combat training, we will take a turn first, and later go to the control tower to watch their training, maybe this will be of some help to the fledgling Chinese Navy." Monet didn't hide it, he said it directly, this is the difference between front-line military personnel and diplomats.

Li Zhan glanced at Mo Ren'an, Mo Ren'an blinked, Li Zhan said confidently and boldly, "Colonel Monet, we clearly mentioned in the requirements for learning and exchange that we hope to be able to contact the Rafale fighter, as you said, the Rafale M fighter is a very good carrier-based fighter, and the combat capability of the aircraft may completely surpass that of the Super Hornet, but it is certain that the Rafale M may not be as good as the Russians......

"No, no, no! Major Lee, this is not right. Monet was quite happy when he heard Li Zhan's previous words, and he couldn't help it when he raised it to the last sentence, this is completely disregarding the evaluation of the facts, how can our Rafale M not be as stupid as the Russians' stupid and thick sea guards!

Monet waved his hand very seriously and said, "Yes, your second point is very incorrect. Of course I know you've built the Sea Flanker, but trust me, the Rafale M is the best carrier-based fighter in the world. ”

"As you have learned, we are the flanks of the open sea, and practice is the only criterion for testing the truth, and the understanding of Rafale M, except for the instruction book in your hand, is only through your verbal introduction, which I think is very insufficient." Li Zhan raised the thin instruction book in his hand introducing the Rafale series fighters, and said with a smile, "We hope to fly the Rafale M fighter for a few laps to increase our understanding of the aircraft, and at the same time, it is also a kind of in-depth learning of your very mature training mode." ”

Monet is over forty years old and has never encountered anything, and such a request is not a temporary intention of the Chinese side, they have already submitted the request, but the attitude above has not yet been clarified.

He blinked his eyes and said, "Gentlemen, let's go to the conning tower first, and then there will be a wonderful aerial confrontation practice, and I believe you will be able to learn the Rafale M's unparalleled mobility." ”

This old boy is obviously not a simple-minded person, and he can be specifically responsible for entertaining foreign teams, so he naturally has a city government.

Is the Rafale M really inferior to the J-15 as Li Zhan said? Obviously not, Li Zhan and the others were quite shocked when they saw this fighter with their own eyes, you really can't deny the scientific research ability of the French. Dassault, which is unconventional at every turn, has not been able to settle down on the Rafale series fighter program, and can still see some designs that are very different from other fighters.

For example, the cockpit canopy that opens to the right side, this design is in the eyes of Chinese pilots who are accustomed to opening the cockpit canopy backwards - what kind of hell is this design?

There are also air intakes, which seem to have moved the air intakes of the Mirage-2000 downward, and then pinched out two sleek grooves in the cylindrical fuselage, and then pinched the semicircular air intakes into an oval shape and stuffed into the grooves, which looks like they are integrated with the fuselage, but don't the French know that this will not help at all to reduce the frontal RCS area of the fighter? However, the aerodynamic shape must have been optimized.

The most important thing is that the air intake is still an ordinary air intake, not a clam-type air intake.

From the perspective of aerodynamic layout, the Rafale series and the J-10 series are the same, both are canard aerodynamic layouts, so it looks much more coordinated than the Mirage-2000 with a pure delta wing aerodynamic layout. However, the Rafale series is a twin-engine medium fighter, and the maximum take-off weight of the C type used by the Air Force is close to 25 tons, while the J-10 is a single-engine medium fighter with a maximum take-off weight of only 19 tons.

The biggest interest of Li Zhan and others stems from the Rafale M-based carrier-based fighter, because this fighter may become the main carrier-based fighter of the Indian Navy in the future. Therefore, everyone unanimously put the experience of the Rafale M carrier-based fighter in the first important position of the exchange, and some other learning and exchange contents, including the training mode, were put in the second place.

After arriving at the control tower, Mo Ren'an pulled Monet to the side to talk, Mo Ren'an studied at the Tri-Service Defense College in France that year, and he was fluent in French, and he was familiar with many officials of the Tri-Service Defense College, so he began to talk about friendship at this time. If you can help the pilots experience the Rafale M carrier-based fighter, this trip will not be in vain.

After chatting for a while, Mo Ren'an, the military attache and Monet left together, probably to coordinate the implementation, which made Li Zhan, who was secretly observing, secretly happy for a while, so that he looked at the blonde and blue-eyed female captain who was in charge of the commentary and was very tall and taller than Li Zhan, and the female captain who was close to 1.8 meters convex and backward gave Li Zhan a wink, making Li Zhan feel that the French were so frivolous.

法军中的女军人比例蛮高，指挥塔里就有一小半的岗位是女军人担任，其中还有一位估计有四十多岁的黑人胖大妈，而且还是进近管制席位，指挥起来有条不紊干脆利落得很。

The person in charge of the command is a white-haired lieutenant colonel, although he is white-haired but about the same age as Monet, the rank promotion of the French army is not based on the number of years, it is similar to the US army, it is possible that the captain will still be a captain for the rest of his life, the significance of their military rank is very important, and there will definitely be no phenomenon of low-level officers commanding high-ranking officers. The rank of our army has no presence, and it is not uncommon for a major to command a lieutenant colonel, because a major can be a deputy regiment and a lieutenant colonel may only be a battalion.

The white-haired lieutenant colonel attached great importance to Li Zhan and them, obviously he had already received orders from his superiors, and even asked Zhang Xueyang very politely, if there were no other questions, they would start the air confrontation training of new pilots, Zhang Xueyang's military rank was the highest among Li Zhan's four.

This made Li Zhan and the others feel flattered, and they also deeply felt the most direct impact brought about by the rapid development of the army after the country became strong.

In recent years, France has increased its cooperation with China in the economic field, so the economy is developing well, so their military spending can still be guaranteed, after all, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers are not so easy to maintain, and the country that claims that the sun never sets can't even afford to raise a conventional aircraft carrier, and has made a "Queen Elizabeth" class nondescript, claiming to be multi-purpose is actually an amphibious assault ship. No, there is a shortage of funds when the second ship has just started.

With sufficient military spending to ensure that national defense capabilities can continue to develop, this is a clear proof in front of us -- where else would any country dare to train carrier-based fighter pilots on such a large scale except China and the United States? The French counted one, at this time they were still thinking about building a follow-up ship to the Dai ship, because the Dai ship problem was frequent, and they sought to build a new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to replace the Dai ship.

However, despite this, Li Zhan still noticed some details of the decline of the French army's strength, such as the large-scale flight training in their opinion, but in fact, it was the training of four Rafale M two-seat carrier-based fighters, which was simply a routine operation in the Chinese Air Force and Navy.

In 2011, the intensity of flight training of the air force and naval aviation suddenly increased to a very terrifying level.

It seems that life in a capitalist society is not easy.

(End of chapter)