Beautiful fighter: the French Dassault Rafale M (Marine version), NATO Tigermeet 2014.
In 1985, Dassault began developing the Rafale on behalf of the French government, after France withdrew from the development of what would later become the Eurofighter Typhoon. In the early 80s, France had held talks with Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain to build a fighter which could compete with the then new MiG-29 and SU-27 fighter planes of the Soviet Union. It would be cheaper for all countries to design and build an aircraft together, but after disagreements about the division of labor and operational requirements, France decided to go alone and designed the Rafale.
I am Jaap van den Berg and photography has become a great passion of mine since 2010. Since then I travel all over the world to take pictures of military aircrafts. But besides aircraft I also love to photograph other subjects like landscapes, architecture, flowers, animals, .. Read more…