India’s Rafale Bet Is France’s Best Chance to Go Global

The Fighter Jet for a Post-American World

The Rafale was born from France’s refusal to play second fiddle in a European consortium. While Britain, Germany, and Italy moved forward with what became the Eurofighter, France went solo—staking its pride and billions on a fighter jet that would do it all: air superiority, ground strike, nuclear delivery, and carrier ops.

Technologically, they nailed it.

The Rafale was stealth-shaped, electronic warfare-capable, and brutally efficient in combat. But Dassault didn’t want to sell just an aircraft—it wanted to sell sovereignty. And that’s where things got complicated. France refused to bend to U.S.-led or even European-led defense ecosystems. That stubborn independence turned every export pitch into a geopolitical maze.

Add to that sky-high costs, complex offset demands, and a global market already saturated with F-16s, F35s and Eurofighters—and the Rafale spent a decade in the shadows: admired, respected, but mostly unsold.

It wasn’t until the mid-2010s that the dam broke. India’s long, tortured procurment process finally ordered 36 jets, and that cracked the door open. Egypt came next. Then Qatar. The UAE signed on for 80. Indonesia followed.