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The Paris air show will see the long-

c vaited first multi-year order for the


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

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