France Strikes First

PARIS — France recently announced it had conducted its first airstrike in Iraq and had destroyed a logistics depot held by the Islamic State group.

The office of President Francois Hollande said Rafale fighter jets struck the depot in northeastern Iraq on Friday morning and the target was “entirely destroyed.”

The Dassault Rafale  is a French twin-engine, canard delta-wing, multirole fighter aircraft aircraft  designed and built by Dassault Aviation.

Dassault describes the Rafale as one with a high level of agility, capable of simultaneously performing air supremacy, interdiction, reconnaissance, and airborne nuclear deterrent missions.

The Rafale is distinct from other European fighters of its era in that it is almost entirely built by one country, involving most of France's major defence contractors, such as Dassault, Thales, and Safran.

In the late 1970s, the French Air Force and Navy were seeking to replace and consolidate their current fleets of aircraft. In order to reduce development costs and boost prospective sales, France entered into an arrangement with four other European nations to produce an agile multi-purpose fighter.

Subsequent disagreements over work share and differing requirements led to France's pursuit of its own development program. Dassault built a technology demonstrator which first flew in July 1986 as part of an eight-year flight-test program, paving the way for the go-ahead of the project.

“Other operations will follow in the coming days,” said Hollande’s office in a statement. It did not elaborate on the type of material at the depot or its exact location.

At a news conference a day earlier, Hollande said France had agreed to “soon” conduct airstrikes requested by Iraq to bolster its fight against IS fighters who have captured swaths of the country.

He stressed that France wouldn’t go beyond airstrikes in support of the Iraqi military or Kurdish Peshmerga forces, and wouldn’t attack targets in Syria, where IS has also captured territory.

French jets on Monday began flying reconnaissance missions over Iraq involving Rafales and an ATL2 surveillance plane, military spokesman Col. Gilles Jaron said.