In 2024, the Rafale will have everyone in agreement. This aircraft can do it all - it's "omni-role", as its designer, Dassault Aviation, calls it. Its pilots and mechanics in the French Navy and Air Force love it, as do those of five foreign armies, and soon three more. Airmen from other air forces also admire it.
However, when its design began in 1983, France's European allies, sceptical or uninterested by its stated ambitions, left it alone to jointly develop another aircraft. It has to be said that the Rafale was designed to carry out the missions previously carried out by... seven different aircraft.
This was the brief given by the French generals, armaments engineers and government to industrialist Marcel Dassault: To design a twin-engine supersonic aircraft for use by the French Air Force and the French Navy's naval air arm, capable of air defence, air superiority and air policing; reconnaissance; nuclear deterrence; precision air-to-ground strikes and interdiction missions; close air support; anti-ship warfare; and fighter-to-fighter in-flight refuelling. All with the ability to take off from and land on an aircraft carrier, of course.
BEFORE THE RAFALE, SEVEN AIRCRAFT CARRIED OUT THE SAME MISSIONS
In the early 1980s, all these missions were assigned by the French armed forces to several aircraft: Jaguar, F-8 Crusader, Mirage F1, Mirage 2000, Mirage IV, Étendard IV and Super-Étendard. "Other countries weren't interested in the aircraft carrier and ASMP dimensions," recalls mechanical engineer François Lemainque, who joined Dassault Aviation's pre-project design office in early 1983. In March of that year, the ACX programme (the future Rafale) got under way, and the ASMP ("air-ground medium-range") was a central aspect of it, this cruise missile being one of the vectors of the nuclear weapon, and therefore of the French policy of deterrence.
Hence the "schism" with the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy, who will jointly develop the Eurofighter Typhoon. To the uninitiated, the Eurofighter Typhoon looks a lot like the Rafale, with its delta wings and canard planes (mobile ailerons under the cockpit). "They are in fact very different," explains François Lemainque, who retired in 2020 after a full career with Dassault. "The Typhoon is very good at interception, air combat and air superiority. But this aircraft does not perform well in reconnaissance and cannot fire cruise missiles, for example.
A truly "multirole" aircraft, the Rafale excels "in all its missions", sums up the engineer who worked on its design: "Air-to-air, air-to-ground, reconnaissance, ground attack, cruise missile firing, ASMP firing...". More importantly, "it is capable of changing roles during the same flight", adds François Lemainque, who worked specifically on the "airframe" (geometry, weight, fuel, landing gear, aerodynamics, payload).
THE THREE VERSIONS SHARE UP TO 85% OF THEIR PARTS
Another advantage of the Rafale is its compactness. "At the time, at the Direction Générale de l'Armement and at Dassault, we had this saying: an aircraft is sold by weight", recalls the engineer. Before his death in 1986, Marcel Dassault asked his teams to slim down the aircraft, which went from 10 tonnes for the Rafale A to 9 tonnes (empty), and lost 80 centimetres.
From the outset, the three versions of the Rafale (single-seater, two-seater and naval) have shared the same proportions. Here again, François Lemainque lists a number of advantages: "The same centre of gravity, the same aerodynamics, the same flight controls, and therefore the same standards over the years.
The three versions share 80 to 85% of their parts, compared with 60 to 65% for competing aircraft. "The logistics package is much simpler and lighter to put together," sums up the engineer. A single A400M jumbo jet is enough to transport the equipment, compared with the three or four needed for other aircraft. The mechanics appreciate the very rapid engine changeover, and those on the Charles-de-Gaulle aircraft carrier that this operation is carried out vertically, which saves 5 to 6 metres of space behind the aircraft.
Only three and a half years after the start of the programme, the first test flight took place in July 1986. "Our Proto design office was designed to produce an aircraft every 1 to 1 ½ years," recalls François Lemainque:
"There were 150 of us, including a few gifted people who had experienced everything since the Mirage III", a 1950s aircraft that was the first European to exceed Mach 2 speed. They had just finished the Mirage 4000, so they kept up their pace. These people were capable of designing an aircraft in their sleep.
The first operational Rafales entered service in 2002 with the French Navy, followed by the French Air Force in 2006. But at the time, the French flagship was not being sold abroad. There were several reasons for this, according to François Lemainque, both commercial and geopolitical: "At the same time, we were manufacturing Mirage 2000s for France and for export, an aircraft that was already well proven.
"AS IF I'D SUDDENLY GOT COLOUR TV BACK", SAYS ONE PILOT.
Competition from the F-35 from the American manufacturer Lockheed Martin, financed by a dozen NATO countries, is already having an effect, even if it will not be partly operational until 2007. And since 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall has ushered in a period of "peace dividends", causing defence budgets around the world to plummet.
Everything will gradually change with the Rafale's commitments abroad, under the watchful eye of France's allies, and sometimes in interoperability with them. In Afghanistan from 2007 onwards, the air-to-ground missions alone are not yet sufficient to demonstrate the full potential of the aircraft.
On 19 March 2011, Rafales were the first aircraft to fly over Libyan territory as part of the international military intervention decided by the United Nations, along with Mirage 2000s. "We really appreciated the technological and capability leap that the Rafale had made," recalls Captain Grégory. A qualified pilot in 2006, this officer from air base 113 at Saint-Dizier-Robinson (Haute-Marne) first flew the Mirage 2000N before switching to the Rafale in 2011 (except for four years with the Patrouille de France, on the AlphaJet):
"It was like getting colour TV back in one fell swoop! They're really two different operational prisms, that of the XXth century and that of the XXth century.e century and the 21ste century. We used the Mirage 2000 to 110, 120% of its capacity, we knew it by heart. We use the Rafale very well, but it's stronger than man, it's too powerful.
On 13 January 2013, as part of France's Operation Serval against jihadists in the Sahel at the request of the Malian government, four Rafales took off from Saint-Dizier, flew over Spain, Morocco and Senegal, bombed Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) infrastructure in Mali before landing in N'Djamena, Chad. In all, the French Air Force flew almost 6,000 kilometres in 9 hours and 35 minutes (including 5 refuelling stops), making it the longest mission it has ever flown. "In the Rafale, just because I take off on a ground attack mission doesn't mean I can't do aerial combat afterwards," says the captain. "With a Mirage, I would need several different aircraft.
GENERAL LAVIGNE: "THE INCREDIBLE THING IS THAT IT IS NATIVELY MULTI-ROLE".
Chief of Staff of the French Air Force from 2018 to 2021, Air Force General Philippe Lavigne was in the front row of a trilateral exercise with the United States and the United Kingdom, Atlantic-Trident, in spring 2021 at Mont-de-Marsan (Landes) and then at Langley (Virginia). The other two armies were flying Lockheed Martin F-35s and Eurofighter Typhoons.
"Our allies are blown away by this complete and agile aircraft, by its multi-role capabilities and its exceptional flight controls", says the general, who laughs at a truth known to pilots:
"When an aircraft is beautiful, it's good. The Rafale, with its shape, its balance, its size, its general look, people feel it. What's incredible is that it's natively versatile.
The same impression was given by these same two allies, but this time under operational conditions, during Operation Hamilton carried out in Syria on 14 April 2018 in retaliation for the chemical attack in Douma perpetrated by the Al-Assad regime:
"Five Rafales demonstrated their ability to penetrate a territory in depth, maintain air superiority at least for a given period, and produce effects (capture information, deliver weapons)," explains General Lavigne, himself a pilot. "All in a complex, international environment, with the need for stealth and a high level of survivability" (the ability to continue operating despite adverse conditions).
Captain Grégory, who has clocked up 3,300 flying hours (including more than 1,000 on Rafale) and has carried out "around fifty" war missions in Libya, Mali, the Central African Republic, Iraq and Syria, often talks about this with his foreign colleagues:
"They praise the Rafale's ergonomics, and in particular its central screen, which enables a total fusion of data (radio, radar, data link, countermeasures, etc.). The great strength of this aircraft is that it synthesises everything on a single screen, making it easier to understand the tactical situation, especially when flying in a squadron. It clearly meets the highest operational standards of our allies, and probably of our competitors.
After an initial contract signed in 2015 with Egypt, the Rafale was purchased by Qatar, India, Greece, Croatia, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia and Serbia. Egypt and Greece have placed further orders, while a dozen other countries on every continent have expressed interest.
IN OPERATION UNTIL 2050, OR EVEN 2060
Over the last ten years or so, the Rafale has also demonstrated its interoperability capabilities within NATO for air policing missions in Eastern Europe. General Lavigne, who was Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation (SACT) of the Atlantic Alliance from 2021 to September 2024, stresses the relevance of the Rafale "tool" in this context:
"In the coming years, we will be able to work even better within NATO by following its standards, on two issues that are becoming increasingly important: mass and speed. The speed of data transmission, with satellite communication and connectivity for networking, taking into account the risk of cyber attacks. Weight, for example, means that a combat aircraft and a combat drone must complement each other. The Rafale already has these capabilities, and will expand them. We are going to take greater account of the tactical level between surveillance and action, and develop the multi-domain concept. It has the capacity to go further, such as suppressing air defences, even with an increasingly complex electromagnetic spectrum.
At the same time, of course, the Rafale is continuing its purely French missions. In 2021, the HEIFARA-WAKEA exercise demonstrated its ability to reach French Polynesia from mainland France (16,000 km) in less than 48 hours, assuming an air defence alert posture as soon as it arrived.
Every three or four years, the aircraft is updated to a new standard (currently the F4-1), which excites Captain Grégory :
"It's exciting, it opens up new tactical dimensions every time, with new systems to deal with, new weapons and new modes of communication.
The pilot is "looking forward to discovering what the brilliant engineers of our DTIB (Defence Technological and Industrial Base) have in store for us". By 2030, the F5 standard will mark a milestone, as the Rafale will be paired with a stealth combat drone and carry a hypersonic nuclear missile.
Its successor, the "new generation fighter", is already being developed by Dassault Aviation and Airbus Defence and Space, with entry into service scheduled for around 2040. The Rafale could remain in service until 2050, or even 2060.
