French Rafale on Strategic Nuclear Mission

[rickshaw]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Acxj1DNBqe0 - in French but interesting video - look for the effort to pixelate the ASMP missile under the aircraft.  

[Old Wombat]

I, personally, think they've done a brilliant job of concealing not only the nature of the weapon but the nature of the plane.

[Hobbes]

[eatthis]

seen it before but it made me chuckle anyway 

[rickshaw]

Oops, wrong link, now fixed.   

[Weaver]

Why on Earth are they pixellating the ASMP? Everybody and his dog knows what they look like....

Note that one of the Rafales turned into a Mirage 2000N at 8:40 ......

[PR19_Kit]

What Weaver said. 

I even scratchbuilt an ASMP to hang under a Mirage IVP, naturally just before Heller bought out their 2000N with one included. 

I thought the second Rafale had had an identity switch too, but it's such a short glimpse I didn't ID it exactly. One supposes their penetration route (route de penetration?) was the French equivalent of the Mach Loop?

[Nick]

The village seen at 7:55 with the giant Cross of Lorraine is Colombey-Les-Deux-Eglises, where Charles de Gaulle lived and his house is now a museum.
Curiously this means the Rafales are flying towards directly at Germany... 

[rickshaw]

Why on Earth are they pixellating the ASMP? Everybody and his dog knows what they look like....

They more than likely pixellated the ASMP because they didn't want to confirm they had a nuclear missile out and about.  More than likely just the whole secrecy thing about not wanting to, "Confirm or Deny" the existence of nukes.   Silly, really as the entire point of the video is to show the nuclear mission being trained for but typical of the thinking of defence security services ("This has been ordered 40 years ago, therefore we will continue to obey this outdated order").

What I found interesting was the colour of the missile - polished bare metal, whereas I've always associated it with grey for some reason (I'm sure I've seen a picture of one painted grey).

[PR19_Kit]

What I found interesting was the colour of the missile - polished bare metal, whereas I've always associated it with grey for some reason (I'm sure I've seen a picture of one painted grey).

If you Google images of the ASMP it seems to be available in every colour except black! Certainly various greys abound, but silver, natural metal and white are common too. It's not helped by the fact that most aircraft that carried it are deltas and it's very dark underneath that big wing much of the time.

[Gondor]

What I found interesting was the colour of the missile - polished bare metal, whereas I've always associated it with grey for some reason (I'm sure I've seen a picture of one painted grey).

If you consider the number of times such a device will actually be used, training included, it would not be an everyday item that is carried under the aircraft so the need for them to blend in with the aircraft's camouflage doesn't exist. Saying that, training rounds are often painted a different colour to standard operational rounds or have been in the past dependant on weapon type, Air Force and period.

Gondor