Storm warning: the Dassault Rafale is poised to become Europe's premier fighter-bomber.(Cover Story)

France's Rafale is the most capable aircraft of the three new-generation fighters developed in Europe over the last two decades. Although the Dassault Rafale, Eurofighter Typhoon, and Saab Gripen are all currently being developed as multirole aircraft, only in the case of the first were strike capabilities made a priority from the very beginning of the program. The remaining two were initially optimized for air-to-air missions, with attack capabilities added later. When current conflicts demand mainly air-to-ground capabilities, the Rafale (the name means "squall") better fits those requirements, being a true strike fighter by its very nature, and it is not any worse in air combat than its two European competitors. Various circumstances dictated that that Rafale would be fully multirole, while the Gripen and Typhoon are fighters with strike capabilities. Dassault goes even farther and calls its aircraft "omni-role," which means that Rafale can perform ground-attack and air-combat tasks in one sortie.

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This is not to say that the Rafale's superiority as a European air-combat platform is absolute. There are many factors that weigh against the aircraft, chiefly complexity and cost. Moreover, not every nation has the same requirements for its air arm, and there are many qualities to recommend the Typhoon and Gripen, not to mention comparable candidates from Russia and the US. To date, no foreign customer for the Rafale has been found, while Saab already has three export customers for Gripen--the Czech Republic, Hungary, and South Africa--and even Eurofighter has found an export sale outside of its consortium membership--as of now, though, only to Austria. One could ask why such a capable and technically successful aircraft as the Rafale has had such a difficult road. Perhaps the Rafale is "over qualified," and potential customers, including France, do not wish to pay for capabilities that they do not need.

Nevertheless, as we shall see, a combination of good planning and good fortune has conspired to place the Rafale at the forefront of European tactical aircraft.

Early Development

Initial studies for an Avion de Combat Tactique (ACT; Tactical Combat Aircraft) started at the French Ministry of Aviation as early as in 1975. At this early stage, the aircraft was to be a prospective supplement to the Mirage 2000, which first flew in 1978. The Mirage 2000 was to be a light fighter in the F-16 class, optimized for air defense and related tasks, while the ACT was to be a heavier and more capable aircraft, optimized for ground attack, reconnaissance, and air superiority. Among the authors of these early requirements, called ACT 92 (1992 was the year of expected service entry), was LtCol Vincent Lanata, later Chief of Staff of the French Air Force.

The UK and Germany initiated an international consortium to develop a future multirole aircraft in 1977. It was even agreed that the aircraft would be a two-engine, single-seat multirole fighter with a delta wing and front horizontal control surfaces (canards). The aerodynamic layout was actually proposed by France, which joined the consortium. However, due to conflicting requirements, cooperation ended in the spring of 1981. Germany wanted to build an air-defense and air-superiority fighter; the UK wanted to build a heavy multirole aircraft with an emphasis on air-to-air missions; while France wanted a lighter multirole fighter with the emphasis on air-to-ground missions. Finally, the common development effort split into the French ACT 92 and the German-British European Combat Fighter (ECF), resulting from the British Air Staff Target (AST) 403 and German Taktisches Kampfflugzeug (TKF) 90 requirements. The ECF finally evolved into the four-nation (with Italy and Spain) Eurofighter Typhoon, and France decided to proceed with ACT 92 on its own.

On Oct. 30, 1978, Avions Marcel Dassault-Breguet (presently Dassault Aviation, Paris, France) received an initial contract for the development of the ACT 92 project, supplemented on December 20 by a contract for its naval version. In 1979, more serious studies about possible configurations of the new aircraft were undertaken by the Office National d'Etudes de Recherches Aeronautiques (ONERA; the National Office for Aviation Studies and Research). The project was conducted under the codename Rapace--bird of prey. In March 1980, Dassault-Breguet started studying four aerodynamic configurations, all with canards and delta wings. Two had a single vertical tail fin, while the others had double vertical fins.

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In October 1982, Charles Hernu, the French minister of defense, announced that Dassault-Breguet would build a technology demonstrator called the Avion de Combat Eperimental (ACX; Experimental Combat Aircraft), based on the ACT 92 study. On April 13, 1983, it was decided that the ACX would be built according to the project prepared at Dassault Technical Department and headed by Bruno Revellin-Falcoz. The design team was led by Jean-Jacques Samin and Claude Hironde. The Dassault-Breguet proposal was prepared in close cooperation with ONERA, the Ministry of the Air Force, and the Delegation Generale pour l'Armement (DGA; France's top military-procurement authority). In September 1984, the French government, acknowledging that other countries' requirements were too far apart from French operational needs, decided to build a combat version of the ACX with the newly designed Snecma M88 engines. The proposal totally eliminated any hope that France cold be lured back into the ECF program, since those specifications were not acceptable to Germany and the UK.

The new aircraft was named the Rafale by Dassault, and the ACX technology demonstrator became Rafale A. Among the requirements for the new aircraft, three elements were especially interesting; the decision to design the aircraft with the use of available stealth technologies, while keeping the accepted aerodynamic lay-out, including radar-absorbing materials (RAMs), shaping of some features (such as the fuselage, inlets, etc.), and extensive use of composite materials; the decision to equip the aircraft with a glass cockpit and employ a hands-on throttle and stick (HOTAS) and fly-by-wire controls; and the decision to integrate all of the avionics, navigation, fire-control, and self-protection equipment into a single system controlled by a central mission computer.

The requirement for stealth led to redesigning the fuselage, which produced the Rafale's present characteristic shape. A single air intake was split into two side-mounted intakes that were carefully shaped to prevent an enemy's radar from observing Rafale from the front hemisphere by getting returns off the moving parts of compressors. The vertical fin was made of electromagnetic (EM) transparent composites. The RAMs initially used caused the black color of the Rafale C prototype, but special EM-transparent paints were later developed so the aircraft could receive any color scheme. All of those undertakings dramatically reduced the radar cross-section (RCS) of the Rafale, especially from the front. It is very difficult to assess the Rafale's RCS due to the high level of classification, but sources have unofficially said that Rafale has a much lower RCS than the Typhoon, a fighter of roughly the same size.

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Initially, a more stealthy version of Rafale was to be developed. It was named Rafale D (D for "discret," or stealth) and was to be built in land-based and naval versions. But it was later decided that the serial Rafale would be of reduced overall size and that, with the end of the Cold War, such high levels of stealthiness would not be required.

Building of the Rafale A technology demonstrator started at Dassault's Saint-Cloud factory in March 1984, before a contract with the DGA was signed. It was temporarily powered by General Electric F404-GE-400 engines (68.8 kN …