French top fighter ; the Rafale

i made some research on this plane and it seems that it's one of the 3 best fighters in the world.

no doubts that the F-22 is the best fighter, then comes the Eurofighter Typhoon and then the Rafale.

The Rafale is born after France retired from the Eurofighter project and France managed to make this wonderful plane alone!













here are some figures :

Role Multi-role fighter aircraft

Crew 1 or 2

First Flight 1986 (demonstrator)

Entered Service 2002

Manufacturer Dassault Aviation


Length 15.30 m 50 ft 2 in

Wingspan 10.90 m 35 ft 9 in

Height 5.34 m 17 ft 6 in

Wing area 46 m² ft²

Empty 9,060 kg 19,975 lb

Loaded 14,710 kg 32,430 lb

Maximum takeoff 19,500 kg 42,990 lb

Maximum speed 2125 km/h 1321 mph

Combat range 1850 km 1150 miles


Service ceiling 16,750 m 55,000 ft


Wing loading 320 kg/m² 65.6 lb/ft²

Thrust/Weight 5.96 N/kg 0.608 lbf/lb




i also took a look at a comparison between some fighters and here's what's said:

The Typhoon, the Rafale and, even more so, the F-22, have a considerable performance advantage over the other craft in the list in that they have the ability to travel at supersonic speeds without the use of afterburners

The Rafale and Typhoon are not ground-up stealth designs, but since the disclosure of the F-22 and earlier stealthy bomber designs they have undergone substantial detail refinement to reduce their radar cross section.

There are some reports that the Rafale's avionics, the Thales Spectra, includes "stealthy" radar jamming technology, a radar cancellation systems analogous to the acoustic noise suppression systems on the De Havilland Canada Dash 8. Conventional jammers make locating an aircraft more difficult, but their operation is itself detectable; the French system is hypothesised to interfere with detection without revealing that jamming is in operation. In effect, such a system could potentially offer the stealth advantages similar in effect to (but likely lesser in degree than) the F-22 and JSF

A Rafale plane costs 50 million euros and its thrust-to-weight ratio is 1.13

yea, but it's french

and it is probly one of the best interceptors out there