The Rafale is slated to become the sole type of combat aircraft operated by the French Air and Space Force and French Navy. Everything that is necessary to maintain its combat relevance will be undertaken.
The policy underpinning the Rafale program is continuous development to adapt the aircraft to changing needs, through a succession of standards. In early 2019, the French Ministry of Defence announced the signature of the development contract of the new Rafale F4 standard. It is part of the on-going process to continuously improve the aircraft in line with operational requirements. Engineers from Dassault Aviation and its partners are now working on the Standard F5, which will take the Rafale operational capabilities even further, while guaranteeing military and technological sovereignty for customer countries.
Qualified by the DGA the French defence procurement agency, in March 2023, the F4.1 standard is now firmly in service with the French Air Force and Navy. It encompasses a whole range of new functionalities and equipment.
The deployment of the F4 standard is continuing, and new functions will appear over the course of the decade:
Over the next decade, the integration of ever more powerful artificial intelligence algorithms will further assist the pilot in managing the collaborative combat sphere, on increasingly complex missions, in the face of ever more elusive threats. As a result, the future Rafale F5 will have robust offensive and defensive capabilities beyond 2060
The Rafale Standard F5 will also be optimised to work with the UCAS being developed by Dassault Aviation after the award of a contract by the French Ministry of the Armed Forces in October 2024.
This UCAS will be complementary to the Rafale and suited to collaborative combat. It will incorporate stealth technologies, autonomous control (with man-in-the-loop), internal payload capacity, and more. It will be highly versatile and designed to evolve in line with future threats.
It will benefit from the achievements of the nEUROn* program, Europe’s first stealth UCAV demonstrator.
The Rafale F5 combined with the UCAS and their evolutions, will ensure France’s independence and capability superiority in the coming decades.