"Military And Military Sub-Plane" by Jinghai Anlan
According to foreign media reports, recently, the French Dassault Group successfully won a large order from the UAE Air Force, and the UAE purchased 80 French Rafale fighter jets at a sky-high price of 14 billion euros, about 100.6 billion yuan. The unit price of 175 million euros is not bad, after all, India's unjust head was originally a Rafale fighter purchased at a unit price of 222 million euros. It was also the largest purchase order for the Rafale fighter jet since its inception.
▲ Rafale fighter
The Rafale fighter can be regarded as the epitome of French aviation technology. In terms of aerodynamic shape, Dassault still adopts the aerodynamic layout of its canard wing delta wing that it is best at. Thanks to a good aerodynamic layout design, with the front wing guided air flow down through the main wing to reduce eddy currents, the Rafale fighter has a very good low-speed performance, to put it bluntly, it has a strong dogfight ability. Therefore, the Rafale fighter has successfully "shot down" the F-22 fighter in the US Red Flag Exercise, although the rules of the time have certain restrictions on the performance of the F-22, but it also shows that the Rafale fighter's combat performance is excellent. At the same time, this aerodynamic layout is also very suitable for aircraft carrier take-off and landing, so the French Navy also chose rafale fighters as carrier-based fighters, equipped with the charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier.
▲ The French Navy equipped with a Rafale M carrier-based aircraft
The avionics system of the Rafale fighter is also very advanced, the most distinctive of which is its voice control function, the pilot can give instructions to the flight computer only need to speak, which greatly reduces the burden on the pilot and improves the response speed in emergency situations.
▲ Rafale fighter cockpit
As a third-and-a-half-generation fighter and the main fighter of the French Air Force, the Rafale naturally has good firepower. It can be hung on a full set of far, medium and near air-to-air missiles from "Meteor" to "Mika". In terms of ground attack, Rafale can carry a variety of ground attack weapons, from cruise missiles to guided bombs, and even the French Navy's Rafale M model can even carry nuclear missiles and carry nuclear strike missions. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Rafale is an all-round fighter.
▲ Rafale fighter has a strong mounting ability
However, the fighter with such excellent performance did not perform well in the initial export. The main reason is that the price of the Rafale fighter is high, the rafale production is not high, and the development cost of up to $32.4 billion is shared equally by each buyer. One cannot keep going back. After actual combat operations in Afghanistan, Libya, Mali, Iraq and Syria, the export of Rafale fighters has taken a turn for the better. In 2015, the Egyptian Air Force purchased 24 Rafale fighters, and although the number is small, it is also a good start.
▲ Rafale fighters equipped by the Egyptian Air Force
The Rafale then won an order for 36 aircraft from the Indian Air Force and 38 from the Qatari Air Force, which is not a lot, but it also brings only 20 billion euros in revenue to France. In early 2021, the Hellenic Air Force announced the purchase of 18 Rafale fighters.
▲ Rafale fighters of the Hellenic Air Force
Immediately afterwards, the Egyptian Air Force procured a second batch of 30 Rafale fighters. Now that the UAE Air Force has purchased 80 more aircraft, a total of 242 aircraft, a total amount of $45 billion, for a time, the Rafale fighter became the hottest three-and-a-half generation fighter on the international fighter market.
▲ Rafale fighter of the Indian Air Force
After the Arrival of the Rafale fighters purchased by India, they were quickly deployed to the Sino-Indian border area, intending to create a performance advantage for the Chinese Air Force. However, even if advanced fighters such as the J-20 and J-16 are not mentioned, the Chinese Air Force still has J-10C fighters.
▲The J-10C fighter of the Chinese Air Force
Also as a third-and-a-half-generation fighter, advanced active phased array radar plus PL-10 and PL-15 air-to-air missiles, the J-10C fighter is not timid in the face of the Rafale fighter.