I afale. We review the aircraft and development programme before our 23 June flight test JL AN MOXON/PARIS : N DECEMBER, the first production two- seat Rafale was presented to French defence minister Alain Richard at Dassault Aviation's Bordeaux plant. He used the opportunity to a '.firm the government's first multi-year order for the Rafale, launching the production pro- gramme and the beginning of a new era in French military aviation. Standing before the onlookers before it took oft on a demonstration flight was almost cer- tamly the last of a long line ofcombat aircraft to be designed, tested and manufactured by D ssault Aviation alone. The Rafale will be around for at least 3 0 years in various guises, but Dassault's role as the sole supplier of France's fi: ! ners is already changing to one in which it works in co-operation with other European m mufacturers. The sheer cost of such pro- gr immes means that no single nation, apart fr m the USA, can afford to go it alone. France's need for a new combat aircraft began to materialise at the end of the 1970s, when p! lining began for a single type to replace the A rage Fl , Jaguar, Mirage III, Mirage TV r. onnaissance version, and the navy's Super E endard and Crusader. Further ahead, the A 'rage 2000 will also need replacing. n 1980/1 France joined the UK and Germany, and later Italy and Spain, in the F sropean Combat Aircraft (ECA) ini- ti tive. An integrated international tc im was formed, but there was lit- tl common ground, although in 1 (, 83 the five nations' air fi ces managed to agree on o outline European Dassault Aviation's exec- utive vice- president for engi- neering, research and operation, Bruno Revellin-Falcoz, remembers how it became clear that France's require- ment was not the same as that of the other four partners. "There were major differences in the aims and targets," he says. The problem centred on the partners' prefer- ence for an aircraft having long-range interception as its primary mission to replace their Panavia Tornado ADVs, McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantoms, and Lockheed F-104 Starfighters. This drove the weight up to around lOt, heavier than the smaller, 9t machine proposed by Dassault Aviation, which