The Rafale has claimed F-22 kills, but also consider that the competition here isn’t a straight up war against the United States but rather against Russia. As w

The Rafale has claimed F-22 kills, but also consider that the competition here isn’t a straight up war against the United States but rather against Russia. As we’ve seen in the invasion of Ukraine, they don’t need advanced 6th generation fighters to handily best Russian forces using Soviet-era technology, and drones are FAR more significant in that kind of combat. Even if the F-35 was better at those types of missions, the high cost of the aircraft and support suggest that this might simply accelerate the shift away from human-piloted aircraft. If your threat model did include a war within former NATO members, the F-35 is the worst possible choice so another way of thinking about this is that they should pick the best option which is actually available. That would mean things like swarm attacks and strikes on the airfields where those stealthy but extremely fragile planes are housed. Even if the public range is significantly low, they’d need a base closer than Greenland to strike European targets.