Egypt’s additional batch of Rafale fighters
Egypt ← 
FranceDeal progress
Current status: Delivered — latest milestone in 2025. Not every deal goes through every stage; a government sale approval, for example, applies only in some supplier countries.
Deal details
The deal covers an additional batch of Rafale fighters for Egypt, supplied by France; Dassault Aviation is listed as the manufacturer. It is classed under fighter aircraft. The announced quantity is 30 aircraft, and the value is put at about €4 billion (reported).
The deal has reached the delivery or in-service stage, with its most recent major milestone in 2025.
Details: Contract signed in May 2021; deliveries of aircraft under this contract began in October 2025 and are proceeding in batches.
What is the Dassault Rafale?
The Rafale is a French twin-engine fighter built by Dassault Aviation, which calls it “omnirole” because it can fly different missions in the same sortie: air superiority, land and maritime strike, reconnaissance, and nuclear deterrence with the French Air and Space Force. The demonstrator first flew in July 1986, and the aircraft entered service with the French Navy in 2004 and the air force in 2006.
It is built in three closely related versions: the single-seat Rafale C and two-seat Rafale B for the air force, and the strengthened Rafale M for operations from the carrier Charles de Gaulle. It has seen combat in Afghanistan, Libya, Mali, Iraq and Syria. On the export side, Egypt, Qatar, India, Greece, Croatia, the UAE, Indonesia and Serbia have signed for it, and the UAE’s order for 80 aircraft to the F4 standard is the largest in the programme’s history.
Capabilities and armament
The Rafale combines a delta wing with canards just behind the cockpit and digital fly-by-wire controls, and is powered by two Safran M88-2 engines. It carries more than 9 tonnes of external stores on 14 hardpoints in the air force version and 13 on the naval model. Detection relies on the Thales RBE2 radar, whose active electronically scanned array version entered service in 2011, together with the SPECTRA electronic warfare suite, which combines radar, missile and laser warning with jammers. The arsenal includes the Meteor long-range air-to-air missile, MICA missiles, the SCALP cruise missile, the Exocet anti-ship missile and AASM Hammer guidance kits, plus an internal 30 mm cannon. Dassault is now working on the F4 standard and then F5 to improve networking and survivability against dense air defences.
Key specifications
| Role | Multirole fighter |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Dassault Aviation (France) |
| First flight | July 1986 (demonstrator) |
| Entered service | 2004 (French Navy), 2006 (air force) |
| Crew | 1 pilot (C and M) or 2 (B) |
| Engines | 2 × Safran M88-2, 75 kN each with afterburner |
| Hardpoints | 14 (13 on the naval version) |
| External load | More than 9 tonnes |
| Gun | 30 mm |
