I may have worked on the Typhoon/EF2000 in my younger days and have a strong affinity for that plane, but I have always appreciated its competitor from next door, the Dassault Rafale.  The Rafale is a very elegant-looking airframe, and it has recently started to sell very well on the export market.  One of those customers is India and the Indian Air Force brought some of its jets to Alaska for an exercise.  They routed across the US with an overnight stop at McChord AFB (JBLM) before continuing on to Alaska.

I went out with a bunch of friends to see them arrive.  They came in two waves and the first arrived in some quite poor conditions.  This resulted in them making straight in approaches to the field.  This was a bit of grey jets and a grey sky, but it was still worthwhile.  There was a fair time between them showing up and the second wave and, by that time, the weather had improved considerably.  This allowed them to do a run in and break to landing.  Four jets came in but one was clearly offset – presumably getting some shots of the others.  They tightened up before the break, though.

The final turns varied in how tight they were but, since the earlier jets had allowed me to get some more standard side-on shots, I decided to get closer to their approach path.  I moved in a way for the first jet and then proceeded to sprint closer between each arrival in order to try and vary the angles a bit.  If there had been more jets or time, I might have gone for directly on the centerline to get a head on shot but that wasn’t possible.  What fun catching something very different to the norm for this area.