Dassault Rafale Rafale B

The Rafale B is the two-seat version for the French Air and Space Force, identical to the Rafale C apart from the second seat. The sole two-seat pre-production aircraft, B01, made its first flight on 30 April 1993 and served as a platform for testing weapons and fire-control systems, including the RBE2 radar and the SPECTRA electronic warfare suite. The first production Rafale B took its first flight on 24 November 1998.

The two-seater was originally meant to be a trainer only, but the experience of the Gulf War and Kosovo showed the value of a second crew member operating the defensive systems and radar, so more Rafale Bs were ordered in place of some of the planned single-seaters, to the point where 60 per cent of the Air Force aircraft were to be two-seaters. In April 2005 the Air Force received its first three F2-standard Rafale Bs at the Centre d'expertise aérienne militaire (CEAM) at Mont-de-Marsan; the F2 standard entered service that year from airframe B304. The two-seater carries 4,400 kg of internal fuel, slightly less than the single-seater, and weighs 10,300 kg empty.

The Rafale B has also opened the programme's recent chapters: B359, delivered in December 2022 at the F3R standard, was the first Rafale brought to F4.1 in 2023, with the software updates carried out by the DGA at the Istres flight test centre, and was handed over on 2 March 2023 to the CEAM at Air Base 118 Mont-de-Marsan to have its capabilities tested by squadron 1/30 Côte d'Argent. It is the basis of the DM (Egypt), DH (India), DQ (Qatar), DG (Greece) and DI (Indonesia) export two-seaters, and Croatia received two second-hand Rafale B F3-Rs.