Surprising Facts About The DASSAULT RAFALE Fighter Jet

Introduction :

The Rafale or Dassault Rafale is one absolute amazing fighter and is a favourite by many different countries and organizations around the world.

Here, we are gonna look at it and learn as much as we can about this fighter and get an understanding of how it works today we dive into some of its history of how it was made and how it performs in today's world France's greatest fighter the RAF felled assault is yes of course a French fighter meaning basically gust of wind or bursts of fire don't ask me which one is the actual translation because I don't really actually know pretty much.

This is a twin-engine fighter that ain't just an interceptor but like most modern generation fighters it can do multiple things such as interceptor as well as ground assault, reconnaissance and anything that a fighter needs.

The fighter itself was created by the Dassault Aviation Corporation which is a company has been around since 1929 and they pretty much basically, you know they know their fighters they ain't joking around similar to a lot of modern generation fighters.

 

It's also got its start back in the 1970s as always when it comes to a new fighter France specifically was looking for a new fighter to replace the old ones something that was more cost-effective maybe better in terms of combat those sort of things basically during that time France had what was known as the Dassault Mirage 4 which was a good aircraft a supersonic bomber as well they had the Mirage 3 which was their interceptor and the Mirage 5 which was classified not as an interceptor but as an attack craft and for them they were pretty much like I'm pretty sure we could get one fighter to do all these roles put into one and with that around that time there were a lot of other fighters that France was using for sample.

They had the Mirage F1 and the Dassault Dornier or better known as the alpha jet.

There was also the Mirage 2000 which is pretty much the first real multi-role aircraft for the country and its first flight was in 1978 with it first being introduced in 1984 now as much as the Mirage 2000 was a good fighter yes they did need to upgrade it as soon as it came out there was a lot of advancement with other aircrafts around the 1970s.

So,  Dassault ended up joining the European collaborative fighter program. With France joining in a program with Germany, UK, Spain and a few others which actually led to the Eurofighter Typhoon.

However Dassault wasn't really happy with what was going on within that program so they were like no, we're gonna leave we've got our own requirements and you guys just aren't meeting them so we're gonna make our own fighter now for the initial development they called this plane a technology demonstrator or the Avion de combat experimental.

Now it first flew on July 4th 1986, crazy part is although this prototype meant the beginning of production in 1986 interesting enough to know that the Dassault Rafale wasn't introduced until 2001.

It had a long long process in development one thing that I found really interesting in its development is that it originally used the F-18 General Electric (GM) F-404 engine.

The engine it uses now is known as the two Snecma M88 engines.

The thing with this engine was going to simply be used as a technology demonstration and had no intent to be used in this aircraft for the long term but however its initial tests unfortunately didn't have this engine within it simply because the engine wasn't ready it hadn't gone through enough trials to be deemed safe or reliable and although the Rafale had gone through multiple testing, it wasn't until 1990 that they replaced the left engine of this jet with the new 88 engine and it managed to get to speeds of Mach 1.4 and therefore from that point on they just decided yeah it's good enough engine we're gonna throw this in the fighter now the other thing are you may be wondering why did it take so long to introduce this aircraft I mean it's been in production since 1986 but 2001 yeah it took a while a long one long while well originally France had a deal of thirty billion dollars to have at least 330 fighters for 1996 but because of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union it changed where money was going within the country to add to that with these delays that made the fighter more expensive and France decided instead it would upgrade on some of its older planes instead of replaced them.

However, by 1991, this is where they brought in the B and the C prototypes the B was the two-seater and the C was a more stealthy version than the a there was also the M which was made for the Navy the funny part is with the M is that they wanted it to be tested to be able to handle the catapult launch system the downside is was France didn't have a testing facility for this so it had to be done at Lakehurst max Field in New Jersey.

Now by 1995 things were getting a little bit better for this fighter this is because France had many of its divisions planning to purchase this fighter but because of economic issues around that time it put the fighter on hold again this didn't pick up until 1997 when France was like yeah okay we'll purchase about 48 of these for the Navy and with that in mind the very first version to be delivered to France was the Navy variant which was delivered somewhere in 2001

As a matter of fact, the Air Force itself didn't get their versions until years later roughly around 2006 and a side note the first r-fl to ever have its engine replaced by a foreign navy at sea was on the American USS Truman and this happened in 2010 besides France you may be wondering who operates these aircraft well Egypt became the first international Buyer Qatar also jumped in buying these aircraft in 2015 now as for India, there's been a lot of back and forth with this country as a matter of fact there's a lot of controversy over the purchasing of this fighter but however, in 2019 they recently stated that they wanted them to be part of the against Pakistan's f-16s there's also been many bids from multiple other countries that weren't successful and some interests from other places around the world.

Although this aircraft has only been around since 2001 it has proved very effective in the field, for example, it's been a part of many modern operations such as Enduring Freedom which was in Afghanistan it's also been seen in Iraq and operations in the Arabian Sea even places like Libya, Mali, Syria and a few more.

Variants And Operators:

In terms of variants the Dassault rifle has 12 of them now yes there are some versions that are particularly made for certain countries such as India and Egypt for example in Egypt they have two major versions which are the single and two-seaters these are known as the e M and DM.

India also has its single and two seaters these are known as the D H and E H.

the main ones that are used now within France are the C version which is the single-seat and the B single-seat variant for the French Air Force on top of that, there is the M which is for the Navy.

There have been others which are prototypes or cancelled or future variants.

Specifications:

As for specifications, this is a single or two seater aircraft the length of this aircraft comes in at approximately 15.27 meters with a wingspan of 10.8 meters as for height, it's a little taller than some other aircrafts coming in at 5.34 meters.

When it comes to loaded weight however it can carry up to 33,000 pounds with a maximum takeoff weight of 54,000 pounds for the B, C and D variant.

Maximum speed now of course this changes depending on the altitude for high altitude it can go approximately Mach 1.8 which is roughly about 1912 KM/Hr  for low altitudes it comes in at Mach 1.1 which is roughly one thousand three hundred ninety km/h.

For the combat radius, it's obviously greater than 1852 kilometres however, this is based off of one penetration mission with two CTFs three tanks for service ceiling however it can go up to if not more than 50,000 feet nask for guns this is the best part basically automatically on it it has a 1 x 30 millimetre Giat autocannon with about 125 rounds for hardpoints though unlike some other aircraft depending on version it actually changes your standard air force variants can have up to 14 hardpoints whereas the Rafale AM navy version has 13.

These aircraft can fire air-to-air missiles AAM, air-to-ground AGM,  air to ship and  nuclear missiles and other things of that nature.

However when it comes to these fighters there has been only about a 175 of these made as of 2019 with more being built on the way.

And as for the whole thing when it comes to its production cost it comes in at approximately 45.9  billion euros or $92.7 billion dollars as of 2013 for your individual price tag.