According to information published by Reuters on April 12, 2022, Serbia could acquire twelve French Rafale fighter jets, said the Serbian President, Aleksandar Vucic.

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 Dassault Rafale fighter aircraft (Picture source: Dassault)

The Dassault Rafale is a French twin-engine, canard delta wing, multirole fighter aircraft designed and built by Dassault Aviation.

Equipped with a wide range of weapons, the Rafale is intended to perform air supremacy, interdiction, aerial reconnaissance, ground support, in-depth strike, anti-ship strike, and nuclear deterrence missions. The Rafale is referred to as an "omnirole" aircraft by Dassault.

The Rafale was developed as a modern jet fighter with a very high level of agility; Dassault chose to combine a delta wing with an active close-coupled canard to maximize maneuverability.

The aircraft's canards also act to reduce the minimum landing speed to 115 knots (213 km/h; 132 mph); while in flight, airspeeds as low as 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph) have been observed during training missions.

The Rafale core avionics systems employ integrated modular avionics (IMA), called MDPU (modular data processing unit). This architecture hosts all the main aircraft functions such as the flight management system, data fusion, fire control, and the man-machine interface.

On November 25, 2021, the CEO of Dassault Aviation, Eric Trappier, signed in Zagreb, with the Croatian Minister of Defense Mario Banozic, two contracts for the acquisition of 12 Rafale fighters and associated logistics support.