While I hate to spoil the fun and drag this thread back on track, I do feel that it's appropriate to congratulate the SHar force on yesterday's mission, which proved that in the air to air role, they can still more than hold their own.
And perhaps we should commisserate with the F-15 pilots?
As to Rafale, though the unilateral focus did allow Dassault to escape some of the awful delays that have afflicted Typhoon, the aircraft is still not in full service. The nine F1 aircraft assigned to the Aéronavale's Flotille 12 act as an opeval unit and have only a limited operational capability, while the Armée de l'Air's CEAM is a test and evaluation unit (with sufficient conversion training capability to fulfil its own needs and seed the first 'proper' conversion unit). As such it's comparable to 17 Squadron - with an embedded flight from 29.
EC7, which will stand up with 8 jets in the summer, and which will become operational with 20 jets next year will be equivalent to 29 with an embedded 'op' flight from 3.
No.3 Squadron, the first operational RAF Typhoon squadron, stands up on 1 April, and in Italy the Typhoon is already operational, having stood Q since before Christmas.
Nor is Rafale immune from the kind of teething problems that afflict all new generation fighter programmes - though it does seem immune to the kind of national press hostility that Typhoon gets.