Dassault Rafale-B

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

Dassault describes the Rafale as anomnirole fighter, with a high level of agility, capable of simultaneously performing air supremacy, interdiction, reconnaissance, and airborne nuclear deterrent missions.

The Rafale is distinct from other European fighters of its era in that it is almost entirely built by one country, involving most of France's major defence contractors, such as Dassault, Thales and Safran.

The Rafale is fitted with the Snecma M88 engine, capable of providing up to 50 kN (11,250 lbf) of dry thrust and 75 kN (16,900 lbf) with afterburners.

The engines feature several advances, including a non-polluting combustion chamber, single-crystal turbine blades and powder metallurgy disks, and technology to reduce electromagnetic and infrared signatures; Dassault describe the engine as providing "exceptional controllability, especially during acceleration".

The M-88 enable the Rafale to supercruise at speeds of up to Mach 1.4 while carrying a loadout of six MBDA MICA air-to-air missiles.
Qualification of the M88-2 engine ended in 1996 and the first production engine was delivered by the end of the year.

Due to delays in engine production, some of the early Rafales were temporarily powered by the General Electric F404engine

In May 2010, a Rafale flew for the first time with the M88-4E engine, an upgraded variant with greater thrust and lower maintenance requirements than the preceding M88-2.

The engine is of a modular design for ease of construction and maintenance and to enable older engines to be retrofitted with improved subsections upon availability, such as existing M88-2s being upgraded to M88-4E standard.

There has been considerable interest in improved M88 engines by potential export customers, such as the United Arab Emirates. As of 2007, a thrust vectoring variant of the engine designated as M88-3D was also under development.