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Dassault Rafale M |
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Name: Rafale M
Rafale M BackgroundDassault RafaleLast revised December 1, 2002 In the final years of the Cold War, in the belief that the USSR was developing improved fighter aircraft, a number of Western nations began their own efforts to develop advanced ""fourth generation"" fighters to counter the Soviet threat. The French entry into this field was the Dassault ""Rafale"". Although the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that the threat the Western fourth-generation fighters were built to face didn't materialize, air forces still need improved fighters to replace aging existing aircraft, and the Rafale is now going into service. This document provides a short survey of the Rafale. [1] RAFALE ORIGINSDifferent Western nations had slightly different specific motives for developing a fourth-generation fighter. In the late 1970s, the Armee de l'Air (AdA, the French air force) was already fielding their new Dassault Mirage 2000 multirole fighter, and was thinking of what its next-generation successor would look like. The AdA also was faced over the next two decades with the obsolescence of many of their current first-line aircraft, including the Dassault Mirage III, 5 and F1 fighters; the Dassault Mirage IV bomber; and particularly the SEPECAT Jaguar strike aircraft. The AdA requirement for a replacement emerged as the ""Avion de Combat Tactique (ACT / Tactical Combat Aircraft)"". Similarly, the Aeronavale (the French naval air arm) needed a replacement for their Dassault Etendard and Super Etendard strike aircraft, and in particular their US-built Vought F-8 Crusader fighters. The Aeronavale requirement emerged as the ""Avion de Combat Marine (ACM / Naval Combat Aircraft). There were many areas of convergence between the AdA and Aeronavale requirements, and so the two services were able to agree to develop a single multirole fighter to meet their needs. This agreement emerged in the form of a requirement for a demonstrator, designated the ""Avion de Combat Experimental (ACX / Experimental Combat Aircraft)"", as a first step towards an operational aircraft. The ACX requirement specified an aircraft with a weight of about 9 tonnes (10 tons) that could carry at least six air-to-air missiles (AAMs) in the air combat role, and up to 3,500 kilograms (7,715 pounds) of ordnance over a combat radius of 650 kilometers (405 miles) in the attack role. This would turn out to be a relatively modest capability in comparison to the aircraft that finally emerged. Dassault was authorized to begin full development of an ACX demonstrator in early 1983, naming the machine the ""Rafale (Squall)"", while SNECMA began work on a new afterburning turbofan for the ACX, the ""M88"". Two Rafale demonstrators were actually specified at the outset, but the order was later cut to one. There were discussions with other potential European partners before and after this decision, but the French were insistent on developing a machine tailored to their own requirements, with France firmly in the driver's seat, and were not inclined to compromise. Their position was a ""nonstarter"" and the British, Germans, Italians, and Spanish moved off in 1985 to develop their own fourth generation fighter, the ""EuroFighter"", in parallel with the Rafale. The French went it almost completely alone in building the Rafale, not even leveraging major subsystems off of foreign technology, as the Swedes did with their Gripen fourth-generation fighter. Dassault began work on a ""Rafale A"" technology demonstrator effort in March 1984, with the machine rolled out on 14 December 1985. It was a sleek, single-seat, canard delta machine, fitted with two General Electric F404-GE-400 afterburning turbofans as used by the US F-18 Hornet, since the SNECMA M88 was not ready at that time. The demonstrator performed its first flight on 4 July 1986. It exceeded Mach 1.3 on its first flight and Mach 1.8 a few days later. The Rafale A made its first formal public debut in September 1986. The demonstrator's capabilities were impressive enough to encourage the French Ministry of Defense to place a production order for the Rafale in April 1988. The Rafale A continued to perform test flights in support of the development program. Although not capable of carrier operations, its flight test program included approaches and ""touch and go"" landings on the carriers CLEMENCEAU and FOCH to see if the design had any inherent ""show stoppers"" for carrier operations. As it turned out, the Rafale A's approach speed was even lower than that of the Super Etendard and the Crusader. In May 1990, the Rafale A was refitted with one SNECMA M88 afterburning turbofan, intended for production Rafales, replacing the left-side GE F404. The Rafale A was finally retired in 1994, with prototypes for operational Rafales taking its place in the flight test program. The Rafale A ended up on display at EPNER, the French test pilot school in Istres, but was later moved to the Dassault plant at Saint-Cloud. It remained on display there until the local authorities claimed that it was causing an unusual number of traffic accidents on the road outside the plant. Dassault was forced to remove it. The production order envisioned three versions of the Rafale:
Due to the defense shufflings that followed the end of the Cold War, the Rafale program encountered repeated delays but still managed to go forward. The black-painted ""C01"" prototype of the Rafale C performed its first flight in May 1991. Although two Rafale C prototypes had been planned, the second was judged redundant, but two prototypes, numbers ""M01"" and ""M02"", were built for the Rafale M. M01 took to the air in December 1991 and M02 followed in November 1993. The prototype for the Rafale B two-seater, ""B01"", performed its initial flight in April 1993, before the flight of M02. M01 took a trip to the US in the summer of 1992 to perform initial carrier
catapult trials at a land-based facility at US Naval Air Station Lakehurst in
New Jersey, Europe having no comparable facility. M01 performed its first true
carrier landing, on the FOCH, in April 1993.
DimensionsWing Span: 35.43 ft. / 10.80 M
Power & PerformancePowerplant(s): 2x SNECMA M88-3 turbofan
Armament1x30mm DEFA 719B cannon, 8 MICA AR or IR homers UsersFrance |
