OK, you are right and I am wrong on this.

But as with Greece, France will be able to replace second-hand planes with new planes for its Air Force.

IF France one day sells Rafale to Ukraine...
But remember that they would have to be bought again by French taxpayers ontop of the credits line added to ease Ukraine buy. It's roughly another 4.5B€ in total that would have to be found somewhere else (1.5 for Ukr and 2*1.5 for new airframe).
 
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Something tells me the UK MoD has missed a trick by not selling off its Tranche 1 Typhoons instead of 'reducing to produce' (aka scrapping in non-management speak).
They would have loved the Typhoon: fastser interceptor they could reasonably get beyond Migs and Sukhois (remember that Ukraine is a big country where top Mach can make a difference) and plenty of customization to do for their local industries.
Why didn't they make an offer?
 
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OK, you are right and I am wrong on this.

But as with Greece, France will be able to replace second-hand planes with new planes for its Air Force.

IF France one day sells Rafale to Ukraine...
I appreciate that you stand up in the light of truth avoiding the easy path of obtuse denial.

But remember that they would have to be bought again by French taxpayers ontop of the credits line added to ease Ukraine buy. It's roughly another 4.5B€ in total that would have to be found somewhere else (1.5 for Ukr and 2*1.5 for new airframe).
"Obtuse denial", "remember" and "French taxpayers" ?
Please, would all participants here be gracious enough to discuss the Dassault
Rafale only, and not French arms policy, or maybe selling weapons to certain
customers at giveaway prices ? Probably interesting discussions, too, but as
the word "arms policy" already suggests, it would too easily stray into politics,
apart from the fact, that this thread principally still is a NEWS ONLY thread ...
For the usual suspects in this thread, this is a warning, the second for one of them.
For all others, who might be tempted to jump on this bandwagon, of course, too !
 
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But remember that they would have to be bought again by French taxpayers ontop of the credits line added to ease Ukraine buy. It's roughly another 4.5B€ in total that would have to be found somewhere else

As we discussed before, the economics of selling used airframes can’t be simplified that way.

It’s like happy hour at a restaurant: every discounted drink you « give away » at a « loss » generates a stream of additional cash flows from additional food, tips, and drink orders after happy hour. It’s great business, which is why it is so common in the business world.

Drinks = Rafales (used AND new)
Food = weapons (MBDA), simulators, ground equipment and other necessary gear
Tips = 30+ years of training and spare parts

Like any good mafia boss, the French government gets a 50% cut on all those cash flows through direct taxes and an additional cut of the indirect economic activity generated at nearby businesses (since this mafia boss also owns the cabs, movie theaters, night clubs... everything!). They even get a cut on the credit card lending fees paid by the consumer...

The matter of how much of this revenue stream makes it back to the French Air Force to keep it whole is a mere matter of paper accounting... this should not be seen as an expense per se, but as a simple reallocation of part of the cash surplus generated.

At the end of the day, the only thing that matters to ensure a profitable sale is the final bill paid by the Ukrainians... over 30 years this will be >> the cost of new Rafales, so the overall deal will be profitable.
 
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Unbelievable... ! :oops::oops:

God damn it, this more and more looks like a "Rafale's Black Friday"

Tout doit disparaitre ! Rabais de 80% ! Pour deux Rafales achetés, le troisième offert... et si vous trouvez moins cher, on vous rembourse la différence !

Sooner rather than later, second-hand Rafales will be offered as "bonus present" in washing powder packages (le cadeau bonus - LMAO) or cereals boxes ROTFL
If there is a fire sale we are buying. Pack another two dozen please. Same delivery address in Athens. :p
 
A lot of deals involve the seller nation's money.
For example, the recent UK Defence and Security Industrial Strategy published last week explicitly mentions that Qatar's 9 Hawks and 24 Typhoons were brought with a support package £5bn of UK Export Finance. UKEF has £50bn of loans and contract bonds (plus £10bn for Covid mitigation) to help support exports with access to finance or insurance when the private sector won't or can't take on the risks. UKEF operates at no net cost to the British taxpayer.

I am no expert on French government procurement, but I would assume that a similar fund would be in place. The money gets paid back eventually.
Dassault keeps its factory open and the French AF gets new aircraft and Dassault gains by getting rid of old Rafales off its hands (no worries about stripping for parts repair or scrapping costs) and better still gets nations like Greece and Ukraine to pay support contracts on airframes that otherwise would eventually be sitting idle stripped of bits. The French government gets an instant hit of diplomatic prestige ("Here are some new fighters to help you out" looks better than, "you'll get a delivery slot in 5 years time, hope you can hold on till then"). Looks like a win-win to me.

Of course there is a balance between not selling the old stuff faster than you can build replacements and stumping up some loan cash up front. But hey, that's the reality of defence procurement. Hardly anyone is in a position where they can sell their stuff without stumping up some kind of credit deal. Still sounds a better deal than selling Sukhois for barrels of palm oil.
 
@Hood: you have to read fully what is written before embarking other in lengthy discussions.
First, the budgetary line is now needed since earlier Rafale sales generously compensated have dried down export financing mechanisms that generally are used for less onerous products (export industries have complained that those funds being not available anymore they've lost some of their competitive edge in their segments). You then have to understand that using those extensively backed funds for what they have no purpose generate profit losses and deprive French state from direct revenue.

Then the second aspect you've seemingly missed is the financial guarantee: 85%
Ukraine being at war, it is dubious than refinancing the portion of the loan that is guaranteed would be a priority if the situation locally worsen.
France is then increasing their own risk level in financing such sale.
It wouldn't be much of a problem if the risk was one time. But by requiring France to buy again new planes afterward, and this is my third point, it's, as exposed already very conversly (see post above) it's the dynamic of generating long term debts for private profit today that has a dubious meaning.
As written, this simply weaken future generations in their own right to then build a proper defense.

Last but not least, it's all the French defense posture that has to endure the brunt shock of such sales: lack of airframe, lack of training, loss of hard to source expertise (less airplane would invariably lead to reduced maintenance infrastructures), missed international objectives (see the situation in Mali with an under equipped projected forces - 30 helicopters in total with a large portion of the fleet having below 50% availability)), delayed programs leading to an increased lethality in opex, less reactivity with an over stretched AdlAE due to the lack of airframe...

Fourth, such financial backing of an export through divesting in-service assets amount to a subsidy to hide the lack of competitive pricing of Dassault-Aviation products. That could IMOHO could well be exposed to litigation.

Last but not least, as observed earlier, what would be the equipments that will then flow away from AdLAE inventory? How many more of those already scarce AESA radars? How much delay before the new sensors are fleetwide available? How many truncated pilot yearly flight hours resulting from the lack of airframe(remember that the last fatal Rafale crash was imparted on the lack of training)?



Less is less. There is no win win in losses.
 
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Last batch of Rafale arrived in India (3 airframe) :

 
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according to this, 4 Greek pilots begin training on the Rafale
3 Mirage 2000 pilots
1 F-16 pilot

with all these Rafale operators also operating advanced American, Russian, and multi-European aircrafts, when can we expect pilot testimonies soon? :cool:


on a light hearted note,
what do you guys and girls think is the best looking French fighter aircraft?
The Mirage 2000
or the
Rafale?
 
M2K ;)

Also rumors around Dassault's CEO, Mr Trappier, taking the head of l'UIMM (metal worker association), leaving the GIFAS (French syndicate of military industries) and, my take only, the executive direction of Dassault.

 
Greece may buy 6 more Rafales

and a Whatif photoshop because we all like whatifs

hmm my ranking of French beauties goes

Rafale single seat > Mirage 2000 twin seat > Mirage 2000 single seat > Rafale twin seat
Ehuv0hBWAAI-2HC.jpg
 
Notice that >=120M a piece is now aknowledged to be the official price of the Rafale (here we've got 133M) in contrary to what is way too often quoted on internet.

The camo is stunningly beautiful.
 
It would be nice if it could be 40 or 400 instead of a paltry 4 - since the F-35 is now charging ahead for 3000 airframes...
 
It would be nice if it could be 40 or 400 instead of a paltry 4 - since the F-35 is now charging ahead for 3000 airframes...
It's only a batch of 4 among the indian order of 36.

And the internal market of France (between 200 and 225 Rafale, maybe) is not the internal market of USA (2456 F-35, at least for now).

For the Rafale export, there are 102 news and 12 used. There are 84 optional too. There are too possibilities in other markets.
At the end, more than 400 cannot be ruled out.
 
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The final four of 18 Rafale fighters needed to complete the IAF’s No 17 ‘Golden Arrow’ Squadron at Ambala AFS arrived in India on 21 April. Delivery of 18 additional aircraft to equip the IAF’s second Rafale is expected to begin within the next few weeks. (Via Embassy of India in France)

The final four of 18 Rafale fighters needed to complete the IAF’s No 17 ‘Golden Arrow’ Squadron at Ambala AFS arrived in India on 21 April. Delivery of 18 additional aircraft to equip the IAF’s second Rafale [squadron] is expected to begin within the next few weeks. (Via Embassy of India in France)


* I am wondering what explains the sudden apparent increase in output delivery (3+4 in April and some (unspecified) expected in May)?!
 
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Nice to see the Rafale selling so well. It took the best part of two decades to happen, but now it's under way.
 
Nice to see the Rafale selling so well. It took the best part of two decades to happen, but now it's under way.

I remember for a decade, there were all these articles about why the Rafale isnt selling and has no exports
and would end up being like the Viggen.

in the end it got quite a few customers.

that said, I wonder how well if it sold had it been a lighter single engined fighter.
rather than compete with Eurofighter, it would compete with Gripen. France always made really popular single engined aircraft

i imagine a single engined rafale would look like this

novi-avion-8f6c4f47-30b1-43da-adac-9c6e4cac1be-resize-750.jpg
 
A single engined Rafale exists already: it's called the Gripen E. Before that we had the 2K, gone with wind.
I don't think that Rafale is suddenly successful. I think it's more its market that has adapted to the lack of alternatives (French alternatives mainly). The cost equation also have been greatly improved. The cost is now stable, public and realistically dealt with through original financial offers backed from the French Gov. It's obviously a bit borderline when it comes to potential risks of litigation in democratic countries but effective in all other cases (and better than throwing national assets to hide the lack of competitive pricing).
The greatest risk however is the same one France had to face in the early 90's when Irak was freed from Saddam... 4.5B$ @85% makes for a lot money ontop of other things if it goes awry.
 
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Nice to see the Rafale selling so well. It took the best part of two decades to happen, but now it's under way.

I remember for a decade, there were all these articles about why the Rafale isnt selling and has no exports
and would end up being like the Viggen.

in the end it got quite a few customers.

that said, I wonder how well if it sold had it been a lighter single engined fighter.
rather than compete with Eurofighter, it would compete with Gripen. France always made really popular single engined aircraft

i imagine a single engined rafale would look like this

novi-avion-8f6c4f47-30b1-43da-adac-9c6e4cac1be-resize-750.jpg
At the beginning of the Rafale programme it was a one engined (Rapace program, 1979)



Otherwise, yes, the last studies of the Yugoslavian Novi Avion (your drawing), with the help of Dassault aviation, before the war in Yugoslavia, showed what could have been a (more little) one engined Rafale :
 

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You learn something every day ! Thanks a lot for sharing that. Blew my mind.
Well, one thing is sure: there is still a LOT to be learned and discovered about the 4000-ACX-Rafale transition era; from 1977 to 1985.
I was aware of the Novi Avion, Mirage 4000, early 4000-Rafale hybrid with the different, "not-Mirage-anymore-intakes" (ACT-92 !) ; but RAPACE, now that's whole new to me.
When you think about it... Typhoon immediate ancestor - BAe P.110 - also had a little brother called P.106 that is loosely related to early Grippen history.
Well, that's RAPACE is exactly the same thing: RAFALE's very own P.106. How about that.

It also makes the single-engine Mirage 2000 more relevant to the 4000-ACX-Rafale transition era...

It never dawned on me that Dassault could have studied single-engine Rafale variants that were not Novi Avion (LMAO).
 
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You learn something every day ! Thanks a lot for sharing that. Blew my mind.
Well, one thing is sure: there is still a LOT to be learned and discovered about the 4000-ACX-Rafale transition era; from 1977 to 1985.
I was aware of the Novi Avion, Mirage 4000, early 4000-Rafale hybrid with the different, "not-Mirage-anymore-intakes"; but RAPACE, now that's whole new to me.
When you think about it... Typhoon immediate ancestor - BAe P.110 - also had a little brother called P.106 that is loosely related to early Grippen history.
Well, that's RAPACE is exactly the same thing: RAFALE's very own P.106. How about that.

It also makes the single-engine Mirage 2000 more relevant to the 4000-ACX-Rafale transition era...

It never dawned on me that Dassault could have studied single-engine Rafale variants that were not Novi Avion (LMAO).
At that time, the successor to the M53 was to be the 12T thrust DEXTRE engine (old reading of an issue of Air & Cosmos or Aviation Magazine from this period). But in the end, the choice turned towards a twin-jet engine and the M88 of 7.5T of thrust (even if with DEXTRE technology).
 

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