Dassault Rafale: The Fighter Jet Every Air Force Would Love to Buy

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Key Point: To understand the Dassault Rafale’s popularity, look at geography — and costs. 

-The French-built fighter jet’s broad appeal lies in its low operating costs and utility for air forces without a need for stealth capabilities. 

-These allow it to not only survive but thrive in an age increasingly dominated by 5th-generation platforms.

Why the Dassault Rafale Is So Popular in an F-35 Fighter World 

We live in an era where stealth technology dominates the conversation on modern and future airpower. 

America’s F-35, the F-22 Raptor, and the brand-new B-21 Raider bomber are all at the bleeding edge of stealth technology. 

China, too, is making inroads in the realm of stealth aircraft. 

How is it, then that Dassault’s Rafale remains a viable option for many countries around the world?

The Rafale’s continued longevity, even in a world where fighter design is moving toward incorporating low-observable aspects, is partly thanks to Dassault’s ability to source or manufacture components domestically, the jet’s relatively low operating costs, and filling a specific, non-stealthy market niche without the financial and logistical complications of steal aircraft programs.

Not every air force needs stealth capability, and Dassault can deliver minimally stealthy but still capable jets very quickly, thanks in part to the success of its domestic defense industrial base. 

A Fighter Built at Home 

Compare, for example, what is arguably the world’s most successful 5th-generation aircraft, the American F-35 program. 

While the F-35 is an American design, the program’s supply chains incorporate components built with global partners.

Seven partner countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands, Italy, and Denmark, produce, sustain, or otherwise contribute to F-35 development.

A distributed manufacturing strategy certainly has advantages, including sharing manufacturing costs, reinforcing strategic ties with partner nations, and boosting the program’s economic benefit for F-35 program participants. However, these sprawling supply chains risk longer manufacturing lead times and supply chain bottlenecks.

In contrast, Dassault has long touted its ability to deliver Rafale jets to customers three years from receiving signed order forms — an astoundingly rapid delivery timeframe for something as complex as a fighter jet.

Several countries have sized-up Dassault’s offering and signed up, including Egypt, India, Qatar, Greece, Croatia, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, and Serbia. Combined with Rafales in French service, Dassault has manufactured over 500 jets.

What Makes This Fighter Jet Special 

Dassault touts the Rafale as a highly flexible “omni-role” fighter capable of conventional air-to-air and air-to-ground combat, but one that can also perform nuclear deterrence while in French service, deep reconnaissance, and interestingly can also refuel other Rafales should the need arise.

Operating cost is another significant positive factor for the French fighter jet. The F-35 program costs approximately $42,000 per hour to fly, averaged across the three F-35 variants. In contrast, the Rafale is thought to cost about half that, or approximately €20,000, as it lacks the expensive maintenance inherent in maintaining the stealth capabilities of aircraft like the F-35.

Though the Rafale sports significantly fewer stealth-mitigation features than its more advanced counterparts, it incorporates several features that reduce its radar cross-section.

One of the most prominent features is the jet’s serpentine air intake inlets. Rather than simply siphoning air directly into the jet’s turbine engines, these curved air inlets “hide” turbine blades from detection and help to reduce radar bounce-back.

And while the Rafale lacks the carefully contoured airframe surfaces that are a staple of stealth aircraft, the Rafale’s fuselage does incorporate a number of serrations on the trailing edges of its wings, canards, near the rear of its engines and elsewhere that mitigate enemy radar to a certain extent. Extensive use of composite materials also factors into the Rafale’s reduced radar cross-section, the exact details of which are not publicly known.

Not Everything Needs to Be an F-22 or F-35 

Though somewhat contradictory at first blush, Dassault’s Rafale thrives in an aviation environment increasingly dominated by 5th-generation aircraft not despite but rather because of stealth technology.

This technology’s Cold War-era origin story reflects the threat the United States faced from its geopolitical rival and fellow superpower: the Soviet Union.

Echos of the Cold War can be seen in countries that count the F-35 in their inventories today. These include close American allies in Europe that have to respond to an increasingly revanchist Russia and countries with very close ties to the United States like Australia, Japan, and South Korea.

Like their European counterparts, Canberra, Tokyo, and Seoul have also chosen to gird their defenses against an increasingly belligerent neighbor with clear expansionist tendencies toward its near-abroad: China.

While Israel does not face the same geopolitical challenges that European or Indo-Pacific F-35 operators must respond to, their history is marked by their neighbor’s repeated attempts at annihilation, making the use-case for the F-35 a question of survival.

Procurement decisions on the F-35 program are, in essence, a distillation of the geopolitical rivals a country faces nearby — Russia and China first and foremost — as well as what those rivals bring to the table regarding capabilities. Russia, in particular, arguably has some of the world’s most capable air defense systems, like the S-400.

China, on the other hand, is making rapid advances in its indigenous 5th-generation aircraft, albeit largely aided by pilfered American technology.

Unless a country will likely face rivals on the bleeding edge of military technology, the argument for buying into a fifth-generation stealth fighter program is a hard sell. Dassault’s Rafale easily steps into this void.

Everyone Wants the Dassault Rafale Fighter 

However, it could be smoother sailing for Dassault. 

Given the Dassault Rafale’s broad appeal to customers who do not need a concerted stealth platform, orders have increased rapidly but without a corresponding production expansion.

According to an assessment earlier this year, Dassault may have an order backlog of as many as 228 Rafales, potentially harming the company’s previously sterling reputation for rapid, on-time delivery. Indeed, the company has reportedly struggled with supply chain problems after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Despite questions about the company’s future ability to manufacture Rafales according to its 36-month production timetable, the French jet remains an attractive option for air forces worldwide. 

The Rafale is a desirable option for countries with modest defense budgets that have no reason to take on some of the world’s more sophisticated opponents and, therefore, do not require stealth aircraft.

About the Author: Caleb Larson 

Caleb Larson is an American multiformat journalist based in Berlin, Germany. His work covers the intersection of conflict and society, focusing on American foreign policy and European security. He has reported from Germany, Russia, and the United States. Most recently, he covered the war in Ukraine, reporting extensively on the war’s shifting battle lines from Donbas and writing on the war’s civilian and humanitarian toll. Previously, he worked as a Defense Reporter for POLITICO Europe. You can follow his latest work on X.