Photos of first Indian Rafale fighter jet arrived. French planespotter JP Dewam handed over the photographs of India’s first Rafale Fighter Jet. Indian Air Force will be inducing its first batch of 4 Dassault Rafale jets into its fleet on 8th October, Tuesday.

India is currently in fierce need of modern Air Crafts. Currently, India is buying a fleet of a total of 36 Rafale Jets from France. 4 of which will be introduced to IAF’s fleet of fighter jets on 8th October. 

In photos send by Dewan, India’s first Dassault Rafale can be seen in action in Air. The first trainer jet contains the tail number “RB-001”. RB-001 is one of the first 4 Rafale jets to be inducted in IAF on 8th October. 

Why it is named RB-001?

The first trainer Daffault Rafel jet is named after the Air Marshal Rakesh Kumar Singh Bhadauria. Rakesh Bhadauria is the current Vice Chief of the Air Staff of the Indian Air Force. The story behind this is Air Marshal RKS Bhadauria was the deputy chief of the Indian negotiating team that finalised the deal with France to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets. He is the successor of Air Marshal Anil Khosla and assumed his office from 1 May 2019. Also, he is set to succeed Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa as the Indian Air Force chief on September 30.

What is Rafale & What is it’s Power?

Dassault Rafale is a French twin-engine, canard delta wing, multirole fighter aircraft designed and manufactured by French aerospace company ‘Dassault Aviation’. The word Rafale translates to ‘Gush of Wind’ or ‘Burst of Fire’ & comes from the French language. Rafale is a fighter aircraft equipped with a wide range of weaponry & intended to perform air supremacy, interdiction, aerial reconnaissance, ground support, in-depth strike, anti-ship strike and nuclear deterrence missions. It is touted to be a ‘4.5 generation’ fighter jet. It is considered to be the most advanced fighter aircraft in operation right now.

Rafale’s latest fleet will go on to replace the ageing fleet of vintage fighter jets of Mig series from Soviet era.

Famous for its agility, speed, weapon holding capacity & attack capabilities, Rafale has a delta wing design which makes it capable to face g-forces as high as 11g (in case of emergency). The jet manufacturer provides two variants viz single seater & dual seater. Of the 36 Indian Rafale’s, 28 are single-seater and 8 are dual seater. 

The plane is 15.27 metre long, 10.80 metres wide (wingspan) & 5.3 metres high. Its empty weight 9900 to 10600 kgs & can carry a total payload of total 24500 kgs. The two SNECMA M88 engines make it capable of providing up to 50 kilonewtons (11,000 pounds-forces) of dry thrust and 75 kN (17,000 pounds-force) with afterburners. 

The Rafale Jet is capable of carrying air-to-air missiles, air-to-ground missiles, air-to-surface missiles as well as Nuclear weapons and can attain the highest speed of up to 1912 km and a travel a range of more than 3700 km with 3 drop tanks. Coming to Avionics, it is equipped with AESA Radar (Active Electronically Scanned Array), SPECTRA Electronic Warfare System and IRST (Infrared Search & Track) System.

Combat Proven

India’s deal with France to supply Rafale needs no assurance of worth. The Dassault Rafale has proven its combat abilities already in many ways & combats in the last 13 years. The jets exhibited its competencies in a series of combat missions in Afghanistan between 2006 to 2011. Further, the year 2011 saw Rafale’s proficiency in coalition operations over Libya through the French Air Force and French Navy. Apart from this, Rafale’s fleet was the first to carry out air missions over Benghazi and Tripoli. French Air Forces have played a significant role in Mali to destroy enemy infrastructures & support ground-based troops and task forces with the help Rafale only.

Talking about the recent most display of abilities, Rafales jets were engaged in the Central African Republic to support peace-keeping operations being executed as part of a wide international coalition in Iraq.

Controversial Deal

The deal was originally incepted during the rule of UPA government when the then PM Manmohan Singh initiated an agreement where Indian would buy 126 Rafale jets, of which 108 were to be built in India. However, the order was cancelled by the Modi Government in 2015 due to continued delays. Within a few months, Indian & French government signed a new deal to buy 36 Rafale Jets ‘off the rack’. It means that none of the jets would be built in India and they would be directly supplied by Dassault. As the deal moved on, Dassault also agreed to invest in local partners in India.

The cancellation of the original deal by the Modi government’s was alleged by Congress party as crony capitalism and irregularities. The allegations were brought into the limelight by the opposition leaders during campaigning for 2019’s Lok Sabha election. However, Modi-led BJP made an easy victory in the elections.

Apart from this, recently IAF has introduced 8 new Apache Helicopters to its fleet. Some more members of the family are yet to come. Read about it here.

IAF gets 8 US-made Apache Attack Helicopters. Read about the power of the Game-Changing Choppers.