France Opens the Rafale F5's Combat-Drone Escort — an International RFI and a Fighter–CCA Trial in 2028
Paris, 27 October 2026
Key points
- Catherine Vautrin, the armed forces minister, told the Senate defence committee on 27 October that lessons from current wars had led the ministry "to explore all candidate drone concepts" to accompany the Rafale F5
- She described the nEUROn-derived UCAV as the project "whose purpose was to develop a stealthy combat drone to accompany the Rafale F5"
- The DGA issued an international request for information in 2026 and received industry answers in the summer; a study of operational value and use scenarios is to lead to an experimentation phase "involving a fighter and a CCA", a collaborative combat aircraft, "in 2028"
- None of the first Rafale F5 development contracts the DGA notified this summer covered the combat drone, Zone Militaire reports
France's armed forces minister has described the stealthy drone meant to fly with the Rafale F5 in the past tense, and opened its role to every candidate concept.
Sébastien Lecornu, then minister, launched the UCAV at Saint-Dizier on 8 October 2024, at the Strategic Air Forces' 60th anniversary. Dassault Aviation said it would build on nEUROn, Europe's stealth UCAV demonstrator, with stealth, autonomous control with a human in the loop and internal carriage, and its chief executive, Éric Trappier, said it would contribute to French air superiority "by 2033". Zone Militaire reports that she said nothing further on whether the project had been dropped or who would build the drone. The request for information was international, and the 2028 trial pairs a fighter with a CCA. General Jérôme Bellanger, the air force chief, has called the nEUROn-derived UCAV the very top of the CCA spectrum, according to Zone Militaire.
The Rafale F5 carries more weight since the joint fighter collapsed, and the drone beside it is no longer a named Dassault programme. After the fighter shared with Germany and Spain collapsed in June, Trappier offered the F5 as a Super-Rafale fallback; it is also the aircraft for the ASN4G nuclear missile from around 2035. A government that launched the UCAV in 2024 as the F5's partner now refers to it in the past tense and is exploring every candidate concept for the role, and an international request for information means the partner need not come from the aircraft's prime. The 2028 date is for a trial, not a programme. The hearing Signal No. 177 reported was on the 2027 budget; if that budget carries no combat-drone development line, the trial is, for now, the programme.
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