Air-to-ground weapons: Europe prepares next generation

French aircraft have carried out around 1,400 strikes during three years of operations in the Levant region, starting in September 2014. These strikes followed those carried out aduring multiple operations involving French forces over the past 10 years in Afghanistan, Libya and the Sahel, in the course of which French aircraft have dropped thousands of bombs and dozens of cruise missiles. Feedback from these missions constitutes the basis for defining requirements for the next generation of air-to-ground weapons for French combat aircraft in general and the Rafale in particular.