Dassault Rafale NEWS ONLY

TomcatViP said:
when did Dassault-Aviation reached beyond 12 airframe per year for the Rafale, counting only new built airframe
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Bringing this in from the Gripen thread. Here is a great resource on Rafale deliveries.

FYI Dassault’s forecast for 2023 is 15 deliveries (though they may not achieve this as only 11 aircraft have flown as of mid-Oct 2023).

Livraisons-Rafale-Omnirole-Rafale-1999-a-nos-jours.jpg


omnirole-rafale.com

RAFALE : Livraisons et coûts - RAFALE : The omnirole fighter

Point de situation sur les livraisons et coûts des Rafale.
omnirole-rafale.com omnirole-rafale.com
 
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France enters talks with Saudi Arabia for potential sale of 54 Rafale fighter jets | Shephard

Saudi Arabia had officially requested a detailed quote from Dassault for 54 Rafale fighter jets, with a deadline of November 10 for a response. The estimated cost for the deal could rise to nearly US$8 billion.
www.shephardmedia.com

In my opinion, Saudi Arabia is doing this to force Germany to authorize the order, blocked for political reasons, for 48 Typhoons. We are still very far from a possible Rafale order by the Saudis.
 
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Wait a minute... Saudi Arabia cancels Typhoon l - > Dassault happy - > Saudi Arabia order Rafale - > Dassault ecstatic - > French gov declare peace with German Industry and rescind from their ridiculous stance toward legitimate German concerns -> Dassault complies with German angle on FCAS - > German industry consolidate their shares with better perspectives - > Brits & Bae get a little bit more toasted.

(Nearly) Just hacked this from BAe proprietary code from their finance projection software.
 
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TomcatViP said:
5.5B euro seems quite reasonable. How much did they pay for their Mig-29K?
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one news source says 2.2 billion USD for two orders of a total of 45 aircraft. but i am not sure if it is 2.2 billion for each order or for both. I assume its both
we also dont know if it included other things such as spares, missiles, etc.

number is also down to 41 due to 4 crashes
 
TomcatViP said:
Cheaper, obviously, but do they really fly often?
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given that it seems that IN seemingly wants to replace them already with Rafales and TEDBF (sp), I suspect they are not super thrilled about 29Ks.
Probably in hindsight, they would have avoided the whole deal with the Vikramaditya/Gorshkov if they knew how complicated and costly it became.
I'm also not entirely convinced on the STOBAR concept either. To me it represents the worst of both worlds (STOVL/Catobar) and I am not surprised that China is moving on to Cats on the Fujian, and that India is considering Cats on their 2nd carrier.
I am wondering how much of a load (weapons and fuel) will the Rafale M be able to do on the Vikrant. On the bright side, if the IN does go with cats for carrier 2, the Rafale M should have no problems on operating on either ship since it already is designed for catobar operations.
 
They could have squeezed much more power out of the M88s - up to 9 tons of thrust - but never did. Why ? it is beyond me. At least compared to a SuperBug the Rafale has correct aerodynamics. Only the underwing pylons mounted the right way, certainly help with drag...
 
Archibald said:
They could have squeezed much more power out of the M88s - up to 9 tons of thrust - but never did. Why ? it is beyond me. At least compared to a SuperBug the Rafale has correct aerodynamics. Only the underwing pylons mounted the right way, certainly help with drag...
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I think the new intakes and engines caused CoG issues that would be expensive to fix.

Wish we had an engine simulation of the M88-3
 
Ah yes, the air intakes. Think I heard about that one before. The CoG - nothing a digital FBW can't handle. Although the software would need an upgrade.
 
Archibald said:
They could have squeezed much more power out of the M88s - up to 9 tons of thrust - but never did. Why ? it is beyond me. At least compared to a SuperBug the Rafale has correct aerodynamics. Only the underwing pylons mounted the right way, certainly help with drag...
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As far as I remember (source ?), beyond 8,3 T, the Rafale frame needs changes, even if an enhanced M88 would be able of more. But, I think too that 16,6 T would be better than 15 T...
 
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French article from more than two weeks ago on the possible sale of Rafale to Saudi Arabia, but I only report for this paragraph:
In addition, this Rafale order could possibly support the ramp-up of production. This would also justify discussions about increasing production to 4 per month instead of the current planned maximum of 3 months (already effective in the early stages of production and expected to be reflected in rollouts from final assembly around 2026)"
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www.tradingsat.com

Dassault aviation : Une potentielle commande de 54 Rafale en Arabie saoudite porte Dassault Aviation en Bourse

(BFM Bourse) - Selon La Tribune, le royaume saoudien a demandé à l'avionneur de lui envoyer une proposition chiffrée pour une potentielle commande de 54 …
www.tradingsat.com www.tradingsat.com
 
Until 2015, there were only French orders for the Rafale. Even with the three orders in 2015 (Egypt, India, Qatar), there was no big interest in increasing the rate of 11 aircraft per year (staff holidays in August), at the risk of discontinuity of the production line.

It was only from 2021 orders that there was no longer any risk of discontinuity in the production line. With the orders obtained since then, and if new ones arrive, it becomes possible to increase this rate.

In addition, the table provided by H_K above shows that deliveries sometimes exceeded eleven devices per year in certain years, which necessarily implies an increase in production rates, even if slight::
Livraisons-Rafale-Omnirole-Rafale-1999-a-nos-jours.jpg

We have a delivery rate of 6 in 2004 (start of delivery of Rafale F2, after deliveries of 10 Rafale F1 to the French Navy between 1999 and 2003), 10 in 2005, 15 in 2006, 13 in 2007, 14 in 2008 and 2009, before dropping back to the normal rate of 11 from 2010 to 2014, then dropping to 8 in 2015, 9 in 2016 and 2017, and then go up to 12 in 2018, 26 in 2019, 13 in 2020, 25 in 2021 and 14 in 2022.

And as we can see, without a doubling of production, it would have been impossible for Dassault to ensure such a quantity of deliveries in 2019 and 2021...
 
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-2018 : 3 new for France + 9 new for Egypt = 12 new deliveries no used delivery for Greece or Croatia...

-2019 : 21 new for Qatar + 4 new for India + 1 new for Egypt = 26 new deliveries There is no mistake and no used delivery to Greece or Croatia...

-2020 : 11 new for India + 2 new for Qatar = 13 new deliveries no used delivery for Greece or Croatia...

-2021 : 18 new for India + 7 new for Qatar = 25 new deliveries There is no mistake and with the 6 used delivered to Greece it gives 31

-2022 : 1 new for France + 6 new for Qatar + 3 new for Inda + 4 NEW for Greece = 14 There is no mistake as no used delivered to Croatia and as, for Greece, the 2 last new of the first batch of 6 new and the second batch of 6 used must be delivered in 2023. (for the moment, the table does not show the delivery period for the order of the second batch of 6 new)

Then, as said before: without a doubling of production, it would have been impossible for Dassault to ensure such a quantity of NEW deliveries in 2019 and 2021...
 
India:there were kept in Bordeaux for IAF training!

Quatar: not sure (it's Saturday night) but probably the same (testing and training).

New squadron is Rafale prize for Qatar | Times Aerospace

Qatar originally signed a €6.3 billion ($6.92bn) memorandum of understanding covering the supply of 24 Rafales (six of them two-seat trainers) in May 2015, on the opening day of the Doha International Maritime Defence Exhibition and Conference (DIMDEX). Its purchase of the Rafale follows earlier...
www.timesaerospace.aero www.timesaerospace.aero
 
TomcatViP said:
Ramp up from Dassault have been announced a dozen of times before without effect.
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Ramp up is based on customer orders, with the usual 3-4 year production lag before one sees results in terms of deliveries

So surge in orders in 2021-22 (Egypt, Greece, UAE, Indonesia)
-> Ramp up production 2022-2023
-> Deliveries increase starting 2024+

The above has been explained many times in official Dassault statements and in industry reports, for example:
www.flightglobal.com

Dassault plans Rafale rate rise to cope with export success

Output of Rafale fighters will increase to three per month by the middle of the decade on the back of export sales success for Dassault Aviation.
www.flightglobal.com www.flightglobal.com
 
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Once again, you still include deliveries of a/c that were used for training before being released to customers (hence produced earlier than the year of release). This cumulation trumps the picture.

We are discussing manufacturing rate and you two still provide erroneous/non-relevant data.
 
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TomcatViP said:
deliveries of a/c that were used for training before being released to customers (hence produced earlier than the year of release).

We are discussing manufacturing rate
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To unpack the difference between delivery dates and actual production roll out, I looked at spotter data (Scramble, DeltaReflex etc). They have a very good track record of spotting new aircraft at Merignac. Still it’s a fairly manual exercise as one has to look at the history of each individual serial.

This is what I found, looking specifically at the peak delivery years of 2019 and 2021:

- 6 of the 21 Qatari deliveries in 2019 actually flew in 2017/2018 (2017: DQ01 trials aircraft, 2018: DQ02/03 and EQ01/02/03).

- 5 of the 18 Indian deliveries in 2021 actually flew in 2020 (BS009/010/011/012/013). In addition, trials aircraft RB008 delivered in 2022 actually first flew in 2018.

So that leads to the following corrections to the deliveries table to give us Dassault’s actual production volumes:

# Rafales Delivered -> Produced
2017: 9 -> 10
2018: 12 -> 18
2019: 26 -> 20
2020: 13 -> 18
2021: 25 -> 20
2022: 14 -> 13

One observes a smoothing of production rates (which makes sense from a production efficiency perspective), with 2018-2021 production running at 18-20 Rafales/year, roughly doubling prior production rates to meet the surge in orders.
 
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Recently at France Fight On forum I did some (very basic, pas taper) calculations related to the previous Dassault fighters.
I mean,
-1400 Mirage III (extended family) from 1960 to 1980 (N.B: Mirage 50 flew in 1979 but did not sold very well)
-720 Mirage F1s, 1972-1992
-600 Mirage 2000s, 1982 - 2007

End results
- 70 Mirage III per year
- 36 Mirage F1 per year
- 24 Mirage 2000 per year

So the Rafale ain't too far from its illustrious ancestors. Since 1998 (25 years) 259 have been build so 10 per year, average.

Takes those numbers with a HUGE grain of salt.

One think must be constant: the size of Mérignac plant (with the assembly lines inside). And Rafale is not much bigger than a Mirage.

I think somebody told me that Rafale production could surge to 24 to 36 a year, if needed and - most importantly (because: No bucks, no Buck Rogers) - if FUNDED.
 
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H_K said:
To unpack the difference between delivery dates and actual production roll out, I looked at spotter data and (Scramble, DeltaReflex etc). They have a very good track record of spotting new aircraft at Merignac. Still it’s a fairly manual exercise as one has to look at the history of each individual serial.

This is what I found, looking specifically at the peak delivery years of 2019 and 2021:

- 6 of the 21 Qatari deliveries in 2019 actually flew in 2017/2018 (2017: DQ01 trials aircraft, 2018: DQ02/03 and EQ01/02/03).

- 5 of the 18 Indian deliveries in 2021 actually flew in 2020 (BS009/010/011/012/013). In addition, trials aircraft RB008 delivered in 2022 actually first flew in 2018.

So that leads to the following corrections to the deliveries table to give us Dassault’s actual production volumes:

# Rafales Delivered -> Produced
2017: 9 -> 10
2018: 12 -> 18
2019: 26 -> 20
2020: 13 -> 18
2021: 25 -> 20
2022: 14 -> 13

One observes a smoothing of production rates (which makes sense from a production efficiency perspective), with 2018-2021 production running at 18-20 Rafales/year, roughly doubling prior production rates to meet the surge in orders.
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Thanks a lot H_K.

It's logic. To be able to deliver for a year, even if the deliveries were made in France, even for a foreing customer, it was necessary to produce at a given time. But it's very interesting to have the details. I keep these items for my personal file. :)
 
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TomcatViP said:
Wait a minute... Saudi Arabia cancels Typhoon l - > Dassault happy - > Saudi Arabia order Rafale - > Dassault ecstatic - > French gov declare peace with German Industry and rescind from their ridiculous stance toward legitimate German concerns -> Dassault complies with German angle on FCAS - > German industry consolidate their shares with better perspectives - > Brits & Bae get a little bit more toasted.

(Nearly) Just hacked this from BAe proprietary code from their finance projection software.
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Nah that would mean that the German goverments could do smart move for the future...

But then again they also say MAWS is still a thing.
 
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big news if true. perhaps the first ex Soviet republic that would operate a French combat aircraft?

I thought it would replace the MiG-29s.. but seeing as how Uzbek MiG-29s have been overhauled and are sporting a new gray scheme, as well as the Su-25s.. I am guessing it might be replacing the Su-27s, which seem to be rusting away.
 

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Does anyone have more precise information on the content of this article (reserved for subscribers), in particular for Armenia?

Serbian interest is known (in particular through declarations to this effect from the Serbian president), even if its realization seems unlikely at this stage (Serbia-Russia links and Serbia-Kosovo tensions).

Ukraine war: Armenia, Serbia will purchase Rafale jets and air defense system from France
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www.globaldefensecorp.com

Ukraine war: Armenia, Serbia will purchase Rafale jets and air defense system from France

On December 11, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić announced that his country's military spending would increase by $600 million in 2022 to bring it to $1.1 billion. “It is clear that Serbia needs to strengthen its defense capabilities” due to “international tensions”, he argued. This...
www.globaldefensecorp.com www.globaldefensecorp.com
 
F.L. said:
And Armenia ? They have already some Su-30.
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Possibly only short-range Mistral anti-aircraft missiles. Armenia had already made declarations to this effect at the end of October.

Someone who had access to the article could confirm this for us.
 
I imagine Armenia is in fairly dire need to boost its defense capabilities quickly.
 

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