COBI Rafale C Set 5901

COBI's Rafale C is a 1:48 model built from 551 blocks, 31 cm long, in French Air Force colours. The cockpit opens, the controls move, the wheels detach for the included display stand with its French-flag plate, and MICA, Meteor and AASM Hammer weapons are fitted. A new brick was designed for the vertical stabiliser.

France walked out

In the early 1980s France was part of the European fighter project that became the Eurofighter. In 1985 it left.

The disagreement was about two things. France wanted an aircraft that could operate from an aircraft carrier, which requires a heavier structure and a different landing gear, and the other partners did not. France also wanted design leadership and the larger industrial share, and the other partners did not agree to that either.

So France built the Rafale alone, and paid for the whole programme itself. It is the more expensive way to do it, and it produced the one European fighter that operates from a carrier, carries the country's nuclear weapons, and has no foreign veto over who it can be sold to.

That last point turned out to matter commercially. Rafale sales to Egypt, Qatar, India, Greece, Croatia, the UAE and Indonesia were possible partly because no other government could block them.

The C is the single-seat air force version; the M is the naval one and the B the two-seater. All three are close to identical from outside.

In the COBI range

Set 5931 is the Rafale A technology demonstrator, the prototype that preceded it.

Specifications

Pieces: 551 · Scale: 1:48 · Display stand and plate included
Model dimensions: 31 × 25.5 × 12 cm (12.2 × 10.0 × 4.7 in)