India is moving closer in signing the much-awaited deal of purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets from France. As per news reports, work is going on over the Inter-Governmental Agreement. Once that is done, the documents would be reviewed by the Cabinet Committee on Security for final approval.

With this Euro 7.87 billion contract, India’s air force strength would improve significantly as several news reports and defence related websites talk highly about the probable features the jet would carry. Here’s a look at what all the Rafale would hold:

• Rafale is said to be equipped with missile Meteor that can hit the enemy aircraft and its missiles from more than 100 km away.

• One of the most advanced air-to-air missiles, Meteor is designed to be propelled at a speed of Mach 4 (four times the speed of sound).

• Another missile which is close to the caliber of Meteor is the AIM-120D AMRAAM (or Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile) of the US. That too is designed to hit targets more than 100 km away but it is being said that the Metoer has a ‘no-escape zone’ much larger than that of the AIM 120D. If an aircraft comes in the ‘no-escape zone’ of the missile launched by the enemy aircraft, it cannot escape just by a manoeuver. Then, it either has to jam the seeker of the enemy’s missile or deceive it by firing chaff (a countermeasure by releasing small, thin pieces of aluminium, metallised glass fibre or plastic, to distract the incoming missile).