Since the late 2010s, the American F-35A and the French Rafale fighter jets have risen to prominence as the two most competitive Western combat aircraft for export contracts throughout much of the world. The two compete head-to-head in many of the same markets, from Belgium and Switzerland to the United Arab Emirates.
The two aircraft are radically different in their performances and design philosophies, despite being close in price and prized for a number of the same qualities. This reflects the significant differences in the nature of the defense sectors that developed them.
The production of the F-35 was part of a $1.7 trillion weapons program, the greatest in human history, which involved $55.5 billion in research and development before the plane even saw service.
By the time the program started and the Soviet Union fell, the United States had by far the largest defense industry in the world and was conducting research and development on a scale that was unrivaled. It was anticipated that this would allow it to further close the gap with rival European producers, who had started to lag rivals’ in the 1960s in terms of the combat aircraft’s performance.
With over 3000 aircraft projected to be manufactured, the F-35 program’s sheer size required significant investments that may have led to both a more technologically advanced product and lower unit costs as a result of economies of scale.
The Rafale was created as a fourth-generation fighter by a relatively tiny economy with a small portion of America’s defense industrial base, in contrast to the F-35.
Due to the constraints of the French industry, it is compelled to significantly rely on foreign technology that incorporates several American and other European components as well as to deploy weapons that were co-developed with other nations.
Given the significantly smaller scale of the Rafale program and France’s lesser purchasing power of the dollar in comparison to the US, it was virtually inevitable that the end product would be a less cost-effective aircraft that would find it difficult to compete with the F-35.
However, the Rafale program’s lack of ambition, which involved pursuing a non-stealthy fourth generation design at a time when the Soviet Union and the United States had already started their fifth generation programs, also led to an aircraft that had fewer performance problems and was more dependable than the F-35, whose design flaws were counted at 871 in 2021 while more were still being found.
The F-35, in comparison, has only a limited initial operating capability making it ill-suited for even medium-intensity combat. The Rafale, on the other hand, was regarded as fully operational immediately after entering service.
Due to persistent performance problems, the American fighter has yet to receive full-scale production certification from the Pentagon despite multiple years of delays. It is uncertain how many of these problems will be fixed during the next five years.
The operational readiness of the Rafale and the absence of F-35-related problems make it a superior choice for nations looking to launch a sophisticated combat capability quickly.
Given that France has supplied the Rafales second-hand and in some cases even as help, along with the advantage of its better degree of operational readiness, the fighter’s relatively low order volume makes delivery relatively swift.
Contrarily, the F-35 has a far wider potential for incorporating upgrades over multiple decades and is projected to see significantly more investment in upgrading its performance in the future because it is a generation ahead of the French fighter.
The U.S. has a long history of funding upgrade programs for its older fighters, with the F-16 being a notable example for which the F-16V package is currently being widely offered. In contrast, the French Mirage 2000, which competes with the F-16, has not seen any comparable packages offered, much to the dismay of a number of customers like Taiwan.
Both the F-35 and the Rafale have operated against targets that, even in the Cold War era, would be considered inadequately defended. This has given competitor designs like the F-15 and F-16 an advantage for customers that place a larger premium on the significance of combat testing.
Regarding their engines, the F-35 and the Rafale are particularly diametrically opposed, with the F-35’s F135 being the most potent fighter engine in the world and the Rafale’s M88 being the absolute least powerful.
The Rafale has two M88 engines, which enhances survivability and increases engine redundancy but also makes maintenance more challenging than with a single engine.
Both fighters are regarded as lightweights for their respective generations, which means that in comparison to heavyweights like the American F-22 and F-15, the Russian Su-57 and Su-35, or the Chinese J-20 and J-16, they are still constrained in terms of the size of sensors they can carry and their endurance.
The Mirage 4000 was France’s own program for a high-performance heavyweight fighter, but due to its high cost, it was canceled. Instead, France preferred developing the Rafale in its place. The F-35 was designed as a lighter, less expensive complement to the F-22 and F-15 with lower operational costs.
Since both are limited to flying at below-average speeds and altitudes and have mediocre climb rates or mobility, primarily when armed, neither the F-35 nor the Rafale are exceptionally elite aircraft.
However, the F-35 has the distinction of being one of just two fighters of its generation that are being produced alongside the Chinese J-20 and fielded at squadron-level strength.
The Rafale’s lack of stealth capabilities classifies it as a “4+ generation” fighter and significantly lowers its survivability against both aircraft and enemy air defines, allowing it to be detected at a wide distance. This is thought to be its main performance shortcoming in comparison to the F-35.
The Rafale’s avionics, in particular its sensors, data links, and electronic warfare systems are superior to those of the earlier F-22 and comparable to those of the F-35, which significantly lessens its disadvantage and boosts its popularity on export markets despite its lower stealth capabilities.
The Rafale was notable for having no export contracts prior to the incorporation of an active electronically scanned array radar in 2013, which is a feature of all fifth-generation fighters. With the help of these cutting-edge avionics, it is able to engage in combat on contemporary network-centric battlefields and employ cutting-edge standoff weapons, such as the Scalp radar-evading cruise missile and the Meteor air-to-air missile.
One of the few performance advantages the Rafale has over the F-35 comes from access to the Meteor, which easily surpasses the AIM-120D thanks to better maneuverability, more potent seniors, and a projected 200–220km range as opposed to 160–180km for the American missile.
However, the more expensive missile has only been used in a very small number by the French Air Force, and it is anticipated that by the middle of the decade, the American AIM-260, which is being developed to catch up to the current market leaders—which, in addition to the Meteor include the 400km range Russian R-37M and the 200-300km range Chinese PL-15—will replace it.
The Rafale is a generation behind the F-35, therefore its main advantages over that aircraft are its simplicity and, on export markets, the conditions under which France is willing to sell the aircraft.
The lighter fighter has far reduced operational costs and upkeep requirements than the F-35, allowing for the maintenance of a fleet that is about 40% bigger than an equivalent F-35 fleet.
Theoretically, this enables the Rafale to have significantly higher operational readiness rates than the F-35s in the U.S. Air Force, albeit this is not the reality for the French Air Force, as readiness rates have remained extremely low and far below that level.
The F-35’s main drawback is that the United States limits not only which clients are allowed to buy the aircraft, but also how the aircraft can be used, particularly in the third world. These limitations can include restrictions on which bases the aircraft can be deployed to, where they can fly, and which nations they can engage in joint exercises with.
In the past, it was discovered that the F-35 was spying on its foreign operators and relaying this information back to the US, which has the power to render its fighters abroad useless by tightly controlling access to their operational codes.
A noteworthy recent example of this is the alleged demand that the United Arab Emirates halt its cooperation with the Chinese telecoms company Huawei and restrict connections to Beijing should it seek to purchase the F-35. The U.S. also attaches political and economic restrictions to its aircraft sales.
Due to France’s permissive restrictions on who may use its fighters or acquire them, Abu Dhabi decided to go with the Rafale instead. In the end, neither the Rafale nor the F-35 are particularly exceptional aircraft for their respective generations, but the F-35 is a more remarkable design because it is one of the few fifth-generation fighters produced, despite the fact that France’s small defense industry is unlikely to ever be able to produce a post-fourth generation fighter domestically.
The Rafale has sold for over $245 million per airframe, but because the Rafale contracts frequently include more armaments and services, the difference in the flyaway cost alone will be smaller. The F-35, on the other hand, has sold for over $140 million per airframe, making it less expensive to acquire despite being more sophisticated and slightly heavier.
The Rafale has an advantage in sales to the third world in particular because of American restrictions on the F-35’s sales and use, which if removed would likely further squeeze the Rafale out of its market share. The F-35 has been the target of every single contract in developed economies where the Rafale has competed against either the F-35 (Belgium, Switzerland, Finland) or the F-15 (South Korea, Singapore).
Over the following decades, as the American fighter becomes completely operational, is authorized for full-scale production, and has substantially more money put in refining it for a new age of combat, it is anticipated that the performance gap favoring the F-35 will widen quite significantly.