Key Points: At a glance, France’s Rafale and the Eurofighter Typhoon look like siblings—twin engines, canards, serious thrust. Up close, they’re built for different fights.
-Rafale is France’s do-it-all “omnirole” workhorse, including a unique nuclear-deterrent mission from land and sea.
-Typhoon is a multinational sprinter: blistering acceleration, relaxed-stability agility, and long supercruise for air-policing and interception.
-Both are getting fresh money and weapons, but they’re products of the 1990s—and today’s threat set prizes low-observability and deep networking.
-As Europe ponders more self-reliance, Rafale’s deterrent role looms larger, while Typhoon doubles down on speed and reach. Similar silhouettes, very different futures.
Eurofighter Typhoon vs. Dassault Rafale
Perhaps no other European fighter jets are as immediately recognizable as Dassault’s Rafale and the Eurofighter Typhoon.
Both jets are outwardly similar in many respects: both feature a pair of canards on the forward sections of their fuselages and benefit from a high thrust-to-weight ratio, courtesy of the pair of jet engines that power each jet.
And while both jets are visually rather similar, their design and operational applications differ significantly.
With that said, is there a way to make a call on which fighter is truly better?
Origin Story: Typhoon and Rafale
The Rafale, manufactured by France’s aerospace heavyweight Dassault, was designed first and foremost for the French Air and Space Force — a single Rafale operator that allowed Dassault to tailor the aircraft for France specifically.
One variant of that jet, the Rafale M, is navalized, featuring airframe reinforcement and other modifications that enable the jet to withstand the rigors of takeoff and landing from aircraft carriers, as well as resist the corrosive effects of flight while at sea.
That fighter is, interestingly, the only foreign-built aircraft that is cleared for operations on and off United States Navy aircraft carriers.
In stark contrast to the singularity of purpose that Dassault’s aircraft represents is the Eurofighter Typhoon. That jet’s design and build process differs markedly from that of the Rafale: a true multi-national European project, it counts Italy, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom as Typhoon operators.
However, because the Eurofighter had to accommodate many aircraft for many pilots, it differs significantly from the French Rafale, and is more of a multi-purpose, multi-role aircraft by comparison.
Fast Flight
The Eurofighter is an incredibly agile aircraft, thanks in large part to its relaxed-stability design, which relies on the incredibly rapid and minute adjustments of its electronic fly-by-wire design to constantly adjust control surfaces and ensure smooth, level flight.
During high-speed flight maneuvers, the jet is incredibly responsive, capable of very tight turns and good dogfighting ability. One of the Eurofighter’s design requirements was interception missions, and to that end, the Typhoon can exceed Mach 2 speeds, or twice the speed of sound.
The jet’s supercruise ability can be sustained for longer periods of time than the Rafale, thanks to the jet’s favorable thrust-to-weight ratio and large power plants.
In contrast to the Eurofighter, the Rafale places less of a premium on pure agility in the air.
However, the French-made jet does incorporate canards into its design too: in its initial configuration, the Rafale was a multi-role platform that, leveraging its advanced sensor suite, could conduct electronic warfare missions, air-to-air, and air-to-ground missions too.
Increase in French Spending Toward Defense
Emmanuel Macron, the current French President, publicly announced that France would double down on Dassault’s Rafale fighter jet by investing roughly $1.6 billion toward refurbishing French air bases to support the Rafale’s nuclear deterrent mission ahead of anticipated upgrades to France’s nuclear weapons.
“We haven’t waited for 2022 or the turning point we’re seeing right now to discover that the world we live in is ever more dangerous, ever more uncertain, and that it implies to innovate, to bulk up and to become more autonomous,” Macron said.
“I will announce in the coming weeks new investments to go further than what was done over the past seven years,” the French president added. “We are going to increase and accelerate our orders for Rafales.”
But it is not just the French that are investing more in their Rafales. Other European partners are also making further investments in their Eurofighters.
Just last year, Rome put in an order for two dozen additional Eurofighter Typhoons, the latest version of the jet that will replace the older Tranche I versions that are in service with the Italian Air Force. Spain also placed an order for 25 additional Eurofighters.
With the threat of the United States withdrawing from the defense of the European continent against Russian aggression, leaving the Europeans to defend themselves, the question of France’s nuclear deterrent and its potential role in European defense has, not for the first time, resurfaced in European capitals. Would the French deploy — or use — nuclear weapons to save parts of Europe, even places far removed from the French capital?
One French official told The Telegraph, a British newspaper, that “deploying fighter jets would send a message to Vladimir Putin, while diplomats in Berlin suggested it would pressure Sir Keir Starmer to do the same.”
Postscript
Despite their superficial outward similarities, the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Dassault Rafale are distinct aircraft with specific mission sets.
While the Rafale balances France’s nuclear deterrent mission alongside other contingencies in which it could be called up, the Typhoon favors pure speed and extreme agility to achieve air superiority.
But both jets’ designs are firmly rooted in the technologies and threat environment of the 1990s.
Since their introductions into service, the threat picture has evolved significantly: not only are adversary air defense assets considerably more sophisticated than those of thirty years ago, but to survive today in a highly contested aerial environment, a robust stealth capability is an absolute necessity. This characteristic is the providence of fifth-generation stealth aircraft.
The build of both aircraft is ongoing, but those jets’ sunsets are on the horizon. So, perhaps in this matchup, there is only one real winner: Fathertime.
About the Author: Caleb Larson
Caleb Larson is an American multiformat journalist based in Berlin, Germany. His work covers the intersection of conflict and society, focusing on American foreign policy and European security. He has reported from Germany, Russia, and the United States. Most recently, he covered the war in Ukraine, reporting extensively on the war’s shifting battle lines from Donbas and writing on the war’s civilian and humanitarian toll. Previously, he worked as a Defense Reporter for POLITICO Europe. You can follow his latest work on X.
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