Early Development
Initial studies for an Avion de Combat Tactique (ACT; Tactical Combat Aircraft) started at the French Ministry of Aviation as early as in 1975. At this early stage, the aircraft was to be a prospective supplement to the Mirage 2000, which first flew in 1978. The Mirage 2000 was to be a light fighter in the F-16 class, optimized for air defense and related tasks, while the ACT was to be a heavier and more capable aircraft, optimized for ground attack, reconnaissance, and air superiority. Among the authors of these early requirements, called ACT 92 (1992 was the year of expected service entry), was LtCol Vincent Lanata, later Chief of Staff of the French Air Force.
The UK and Germany initiated an international consortium to develop a future multirole aircraft in 1977. It was even agreed that the aircraft would be a two-engine, single-seat multirole fighter with a delta wing and front horizontal control surfaces (canards). The aerodynamic layout was actually proposed by France, which joined the consortium. However, due to conflicting requirements, cooperation ended in the spring of 1981. Germany wanted to build an air-defense and air-superiority fighter; the UK wanted to build a heavy multirole aircraft with an emphasis on air-to-air missions; while France wanted a lighter multirole fighter with the emphasis on air-to-ground missions. Finally, the common development effort split into the French ACT 92 and the German-British European Combat Fighter (ECF), resulting from the British Air Staff Target (AST) 403 and German Taktisches Kampfflugzeug (TKF) 90 requirements. The ECF finally evolved into the four-nation (with Italy and Spain) Eurofighter Typhoon, and France decided to proceed with ACT 92 on its own.
On Oct. 30, 1978, Avions Marcel Dassault-Breguet (presently Dassault Aviation, Paris, France) received an initial contract for the development of the ACT 92 project, supplemented on December 20 by a contract for its naval version. In 1979, more serious studies about possible configurations of the new aircraft were undertaken by the Office National d'Etudes de Recherches Aeronautiques (ONERA; the National Office for Aviation Studies and Research). The project was conducted under the codename Rapace--bird of prey. In March 1980, Dassault-Breguet started studying four aerodynamic configurations, all with canards and delta wings. Two had a single vertical tail fin, while the others had double vertical fins.
In October 1982, Charles Hernu, the French minister of defense, announced that Dassault-Breguet would build a technology demonstrator called the Avion de Combat Eperimental (ACX; Experimental Combat Aircraft), based on the ACT 92 study. On April 13, 1983, it was decided that the ACX would be built according to the project prepared at Dassault Technical Department and headed by Bruno Revellin-Falcoz. The design team was led by Jean-Jacques Samin and Claude Hironde. The Dassault-Breguet proposal was prepared in close cooperation with ONERA, the Ministry of the Air Force, and the Delegation Generale pour l'Armement (DGA; France's top military-procurement authority). In September 1984, the French government, acknowledging that other countries' requirements were too far apart from French operational needs, decided to build a combat version of the ACX with the newly designed Snecma M88 engines. The proposal totally eliminated any hope that France cold be lured back into the ECF program, since those specifications were not acceptable to Germany and the UK.
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Building of the Rafale A technology demonstrator started at Dassault's Saint-Cloud factory in March 1984, before a contract with the DGA was signed. It was temporarily powered by General Electric F404-GE-400 engines (68.8 kN of reheated thrust each). …
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