Overview
- On the night of March 16–17, the Air and Space Force ran Operation Poker, mobilizing roughly 40 Rafale and Mirage 2000 fighters, an AWACS and A330 MRTT tankers over much of France.
- Aircraft assembled over Brittany, refueled in flight, then flew along the Atlantic coast and the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean before a low-level dash to a simulated long-range missile release toward central France.
- Crews trained under degraded conditions with GPS and datalinks jammed, radio disruptions, adversary fighters and air-defense emitters mimicking systems such as Russia’s S-400, with notional losses kept confidential.
- Jets were armed for realism but did not carry actual nuclear warheads, consistent with legal and safety rules.
- This iteration aligned with President Emmanuel Macron’s early-March shift to expand warheads and enable limited partner participation under “dissuasion avancée,” with rare media access this week and British observers having attended the December drill.