"This way please: Our Rafale fighter is one hell of a Libyan killer ..."

"... Many commentators believe the Libya air strikes are a pre-election advert for President Nicolas Sarkozy. Some believe they are also an advert for France's badly-selling Rafale jet fighter. Several EU diplomats and even one foreign minister speaking off the record in Brussels in the run-up to the Libya campaign pointed to next year's French presidential elections as a big reason for Sarkozy's enthusiasm to take on Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi.

But looking in detail at French operations in Libya, military analysts have also said that France is using the war to promote its badly-selling €60-million-per-unit Rafale fighter.

Rafale jets fired the symbolic first shot against Gaddafi at 17.45 Libyan time on 19 March, destroying four tanks on the outskirts of Benghazi. The strike took place three hours before the US and UK began bombarding Gaddafi anti-aircraft bases, with the French ministry of defence swiftly posting a set of Rafale pictures on its website....

The Rafale fighter already got its 'battle proven' stamp in Afghanistan in 2007 and will have little chance to show off in air-to-air combat in Libya: the only Gaddafi plane it destroyed so far was an old Yugoslav-made Galeb hit while on the ground.

Jean-Pierre Maulny, the co-director of the Paris-based Institute for Strategic and International Relations (Iris), explained that Libya is better in promotional terms than Afghanistan, however.

...Rafale manufacturer, the Paris-based Dassault Aviation, has so far sold almost 300 of the planes to the French military but not a single one to another country. Dassault is in talks to sell 60 to the United Arab Emirates and 36 to Brazil. Up until late February, it was in talks to sell 14 to Gaddafi himself..."