The procurement by Greece of 18 French Rafale multi-role fighter jets has caused a rise in the confidence of the country’s Armed Forces, as the balance of power in the air, vis-a-vis Turkey appears to have shifted.

It was these highly effective lethal machines that sowed terror when they demolished a Turkish military base in Libya recently, without even as much as being detected by the Turkish ground forces.

The Turkish airbase Al-Watiya in Libya was devastated when their positions were bombed by unidentified French Rafale fighters.
The first wave of hell erupted with explosions dismantling buildings and facilities and air defence systems installed at the base.

The Hawk anti-aircraft missile system as well as the highly-touted Turkish Hisar found it impossible to withstand the wave of attacks launched last July by the ‘invisible’ French fighter jets. The deadly aircraft delivered a second blow after the first strike to finish the job from a distance of 90 to 100 kilometres.

The success of the Rafale mission is largely due to the powerful Spectra radar of the French fighters.

The core advantage of the SPECTRA is that it is an “offensive” radar that scrambles the opponent’s radar system without making its neutralisation apparent to the enemy. Even the radar of the state-of-the-art F-35 operates with the aim of making the fighter “invisible” with the stealth function and not by attacking the enemy radar.

The Rafale that took part in this Libyan operation belonged to the Egyptian Air Force since France did not want to take the lead in the mission, in order not to cause a rift in NATO.

The French intelligence services in their own way contributed to the not-so-risky mission that caught the Turkish air defence in Al Watiya literally by surprise when the Rafale struck.