The Dassault Rafale is a French jet combat aircraft capable of carrying out a wide range of short and long range missions in day and night-time and in all weather conditions, previously carried out by a number of different aircraft. The missions include ground and sea attack, air defence and air superiority, reconnaissance and high accuracy strike or nuclear strike deterrence. The Rafale is produced in three variants, M, B and C. The Rafale M variant is a single seater carrier based version for the navy, B and C are a two seater and a single seater for the French Air Force. The Rafale can carry payloads of over nine tons on 14 hard points for the air force version and 13 for the naval version. The range of weapons includes Mica, Magic, Sidewinder, ASRAAM and AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, Apache, AS30L, ALARM, HARM, Maverick and PGM100 air-to-ground missiles and the Exocet/ AM39, Penguin 3, and Harpoon anti-ship missile. For a strategic mission the Rafale can deliver the Aerospatiale ASMP standoff nuclear missile. The Rafale has a twin
gun pod and a GIAT 30 mm DEFA 791B cannon The
Rafale is equipped with laser designation pods for laser guidance of air-to-ground missiles. The Rafale is powered by two SNECMA M88-2 turbofans providing a top speed of Mach 2 and a maximum range of 1850 km with four drop-tanks. Research Rafale
The Charles De Gaulle is a 38000 ton, nuclear powered French aircraft carrier launched in May 1994 The ship operates a fleet of 40 Rafale M combat aircraft, the Super Etendard and three E-2 Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft. The ship also supports the Aerospatiale SA 565 Panther helicopter. There are two lifts, measuring 19 x 13 m, which have a load capacity of 36 tons. The hangar has a floor area of 140 x 30 metres and a height 6.1 metres. It accommodates 20 to 25 aircraft. The main deck consists of a main runway angled at 8.5 degrees to the ship's axis and an aircraft launch area forward of the island. The runway and the forward launch area are each quipped with a USN Type C13 catapult rated to handle aircraft up to 22 tonnes and capable of launching one aircraft per minute. The runway is 195 metres long and the whole deck measures 260 x 64 metres.
The ship's weapons are managed by a Senit Combat Management System, CMS Model 8. The system has the capacity to track up to 2,000 friendly and hostile targets. The weapon control system consists of two Sagem Vigy 105 optronic directors. The ship has two Sagem Vampir search and track systems. The ship is fitted with the Aster 15 surface-to-air missile launchers, Sylver vertical launch systems, installed on the edge of the deck, with two launchers (16 cells) on the starboard side forward of the bridge and two launchers on the port side aft of the bridge. The ship has two six-cell Sadral launching systems for the Mistral missile positioned on the edges of the main deck about 45 metres (starboard side) and 36 metres (port side) aft of the Aster missile launchers. The ship is also equipped with eight Giat 20F2 guns and four decoy launchers are installed, two on either side of the ship firing chaff to 8 km and infra-red flares to a range of 3 km. Research Charles De Gaulle
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Abbreviations
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