Who makes the Rafale?

The Rafale is designed and built by Dassault Aviation, the French company founded by Marcel Dassault and also responsible for the Mirage fighters and the Falcon business jets. Unlike the Eurofighter, born from a four-nation consortium, the Rafale is an exclusively French program: France left the European project in 1985 to develop a lighter, carrier-capable fighter, and the first Rafale A prototype flew in July 1986. Final assembly takes place at the Mérignac plant, near Bordeaux, while other Dassault factories in Argenteuil, Biarritz, Martignas and Seclin produce fuselage sections, the wing and composite material parts.

The fact that Dassault is the prime contractor doesn't mean it builds the aircraft alone. The M88 engine, an afterburning turbofan of about 75 kN, is produced by Safran Aircraft Engines; the RBE2 electronically scanned radar, the SPECTRA electronic warfare system and much of the avionics are supplied by Thales, and MBDA provides the Mica, Meteor and Scalp missiles. This trio, Dassault, Safran and Thales, always appears in export contracts, which usually include industrial offsets in the buying country.

There are three versions: the single-seat Rafale C and the two-seat Rafale B for the French Air and Space Force, and the Rafale M for the Navy, operated from the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. Besides France, it has been bought by Egypt, Qatar, India, Greece, Croatia, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia and Serbia, and in India a local production line for fuselage sections has been agreed with Tata Advanced Systems.