First Dassault Rafale F4 delivered to French Air and Space Force

Aviation Defense News March 2023
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Four years after the formalization of the development of the French Air Force’s Rafale F4, the CEAM (Centre d’expertise aérienne militaire, Military Air Expertise Center) has just received the first Rafale to the F4.1 standard on the air base 118 of Mont-de-Marsan, Victor Riou reports in Air & Cosmos.

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First Dassault Rafale F4 delivered to the French Air and Space Force 1 The CEAM (Centre d’expertise aérienne militaire, Military Air Expertise Center) has just received the first Rafale to the F4.1 standard on the air base 118 of Mont-de-Marsan  (Picture source: CEAM)

In 2019, the development of the Rafale F4 was officially announced by the former Minister of the Armies Florence Parly for a value of 2 billion euros. Recently, the Military Air Expertise Center (CEAM) announced that it had received the first of the F4.1 standard aircraft at Air Base 118 in Mont-de-Marsan, Victor Riou reports. Features of this upgraded fighter include the integration of a helmet sight and new 1,000 kg armament. The new standard also includes improvements to air-to-air and air-to-ground firing control systems, self-protection systems and the TALIOS pod (Targeting Long-range Identification Optronic System).

In January 2014, then-Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian announced that €1 billion was allocated to the development of the F3R standard. The standard would see the integration of the Meteor BVR missile, among other weapons and software updates. The standard was to be validated by 2018. From 26 to 29 April 2021, a first test campaign was carried out by aircraft configured with the new F4-1 standard. The Rafale is planned to be the French Air Force's primary combat aircraft until 2040 or later, until replacement by the Franco-German New Generation Fighter in the framework of the FCAS/Future Combat Aircraft System program.

The aircraft recently delivered to the CEAM is part of the Rafale to the F3R standard sent to the Flight Test Center of the Directorate General of Armaments in Istres for their software transformation to the F4.1 standard, Victor Riou reports. They will be joined within the fleet of French fighters by other aircraft straight out of Dassault's production lines.

Before that, several experimental steps await the newly delivered aircraft, the first of which is the adoption of the aircraft by the pilots of the 30th Fighter Wing during training missions, a crucial step to allow the appropriation of the Rafale F4.1 by the French Armed Forces, Victor Riou writes.