The newspaper "The Financial Times" in the article by Sarah White, Leila Abboud "How the sky became the limit for France's Rafale jet" ("How the sky became tight for the French Rafale fighter") writes about the increasingly expanding prospects for sales on the world market of the French Dassault Rafale fighter.
Dassault Rafale fighters of the Indian Air Force and the French Air Force in a single formation during joint preparation for the air part of the military parade in Paris in honor of the French National Day, July 2023 (c) The French Air Force
Sales of the twin-engine fighter increased due to the tightening of the regulatory framework in the United States; orders for military products were redirected to other countries.
The roar of French Rafale fighters is an integral element of the aerial part of the annual military parade in Paris on Bastille Day. However, this year there were also three Indian Air Force aircraft in the air - a tribute to the memory of war veterans and a hint at a package of arms deals between the two countries, which include a significant Indian order for French fighters. For the manufacturer Dassault Aviation, this is the latest victory in a series of similar contests. Rafale's foreign sales have been growing since 2015, and at recent tenders, the French fighter beat all competing products, with the exception of the F-35 Lightning II produced by the American corporation Lockheed Martin.
As part of the latest competition, the Indian Navy opted for 26 Rafale fighters, preferring them to American F/A-18 Super Hornet fighters produced by Boeing Corporation - the star of the recently re-released film Top Gun. In 2016, the Indian Air Force has already purchased 36 Rafale fighters. The French government, the main intermediary in both transactions, believes that the newly confirmed initial choice will arouse the interest of other customers.
"This strengthens India's position as an important partner in what we can call the Rafale operating countries club," the French official said. "India, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates are now a real group and a political axis around which we can build our work."
But it wasn't always like that. As a nuclear power, France has long pursued a policy of self-sufficiency, including producing its own aircraft capable of carrying aviation weapons with a nuclear warhead. The Rafale fighter became the successor to the Mirage fighter of the same Dassault company and was first adopted by the French Navy in 2004.
But fortune smiled on him much later abroad, which was facilitated by favorable geopolitical winds. The latter refers to the tightening of the regulatory framework for the export of US military products, which led to the re-targeting of a number of Middle Eastern customers to other supplier countries. Rafale is also expected to benefit from the fact that customers will turn away from Russia as a supplier of competitive products due to the war in Ukraine.
Despite the fact that the United States and Russia still dominate the industry, orders for Rafale reached a record 21 billion euros last year, and France increased its share in the global arms market to 11% in 2022 from the previous 7%.
"A number of countries no longer want to buy Russian planes, but they also don't want American ones," Eric Trappier, executive director of Dassault Aviation, told reporters in June. "Thus, France can be considered by them as a country that is traditionally a little more neutral."
It is expected that the combination of diversification of sources, French diplomacy and the versatility of the Rafale will lead to an increase in sales of the latter.
According to people close to the negotiations, in the latest deal with India, certain technical characteristics of the French fighter were key, including smaller overall dimensions, which makes it more suitable for use on Indian aircraft carriers. According to the French newspaper Les Echos, the total amount of the transfer, including aircraft weapons, amounted to at least 3 to 4 billion euros.
Dassault Aviation is the main asset of the French industrial group Dassault, which today, almost a century after the company was founded by aircraft designer Marcel Dassault, is controlled by his descendants. The parent structure of the group is also very influential, thanks to the ownership of the newspaper Le Figaro.
Dassault's aviation business is facing the same problems as the entire industry - a shortage of industrial and production personnel and supply failures within the framework of scientific and production cooperation. Its revenue has doubled since 2014, and currently has a market capitalization of almost 14 billion euros, but shares fell last week after the company warned at the end of the half-year that supply problems were worsening and affecting production.
However, orders for Rafale currently outnumber orders for the company's Falcon business jets. It takes three years to assemble the Rafale, and last year 14 aircraft were delivered to customers. Analysts say that technical improvements have been made over the years without a significant increase in the price of the product, which is estimated at between 80 and 100 million euros.
The ultimate goal is to present at least three cars to customers every month, which is expected to be achieved by increasing production capacity at seven French Dassault Aviation plants. For comparison: the American corporation Lockheed Martin plans to produce 156 F-35 Lightning II fighters this year.
To date, the number of Rafale fighters delivered and ordered around the world is just short of 500 units, which is about half of the number of F-35 fighters that will be delivered by the end of 2023. This is also less than in the case of Boeing Corporation's F/A-18 Super Hornet and Lockheed Martin Corporation's older F-16 Fighting Falcon, but more than in the case of the Swedish Gripen fighter and slightly less than the sales of the German-Italian-Spanish-British Eurofighter consortium's EF-2000 Typhoon (more than 680 units).
The prospects for sales of the French twin-engine fighter on the world market improved in the middle of the last decade, while Washington hesitated about approving a number of exports of F-35 Lightning II fighters and insisted on tightening the conditions for the use of American vehicles and the aviation weapons supplied with them. In 2015, Egypt became the first foreign customer of Rafale.
Dassault, in particular, has managed to benefit from relations with countries that were once customers of its Mirage fighters, including Egypt, Qatar and Greece. And just like his predecessors in office, President Emmanuel Macron (Emmanuel Macron) made every effort to successfully sell aircraft. In Dubai in 2021, he celebrated a record order for 80 Rafale fighters for the UAE Air Force.
In Europe, the situation was more difficult, despite the recent increase in defense budgets. In part, this is a reflection of deep-rooted Atlanticism: most of the region views the United States as the guarantor of European security. Last year, Germany, on whose territory US nuclear weapons are stored in accordance with the NATO agreement on the joint use of weapons, ordered American F-35 Lightning II fighters.
At times, this attachment to the United States is annoying. In an interview with the Belgian newspaper Le Soir in 2018, Eric Trappier called himself "Donald Trump on the contrary" (reverse Donald Trump), saying that, in his opinion, Europe should be "for the Europeans" (for the Europeans). He tried to convince the Belgian government to buy French Rafale fighters. But Lockheed Martin's bestseller won.
According to analysts, in the long term, competition with the United States will invariably be fraught with difficulties, despite pan-European cooperation in the field of next-generation combat aircraft platforms. Dassault, together with Airbus, is working on a promising Franco-German combat aviation system (Future Combat Air System, FCAS). Great Britain, Italy and Japan are cooperating in the framework of the Tempest advanced fighter program. It is assumed that both of these products will begin to replace the Rafale and Eurofighter fighters in the late thirties and early forties of this century."
"Their [Europeans'] investments and infrastructure are far ahead of the American ones," says Tristan Saeur, a military analyst at the GlobalData consulting company. But before that, Rafale has to win a few more victories. Eric Trappier said he did not rule out a contract with Colombia; in turn, Serbia admitted that it was considering him as a candidate to replace its Soviet-era MiG-29s.
The Paris Air Show held in June this year was rich in highly qualified specialists in the field of fighter aviation. When the American Lightning and French Rafales swept overhead, one of the pilots of the French Air Force noticed that the Rafale, used to work on ground targets and conduct aerial reconnaissance over land and over sea, is a much more versatile machine than its predecessor Mirage.
"He is not in any comparison [with his predecessor]. Rafale can solve a whole range of tasks," he said. "For me, as a pilot, this is an extremely valuable quality."
