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Saudi Arabia to buy Dassault Rafale jets-newspaper
Fri Apr 15, 2005 07:16 AM BST

PARIS, April 15 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has reached a memorandum of understanding with France to buy 48 Rafale aircraft from Dassault Aviation (AVMD.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) , with an option for a further 48, French business daily Les Echos said on Friday.
The deal for the multi-role fighters, estimated to be worth up to 6 billion euros ($7.72 billion), could be finalised by the end of the year, the newspaper said.

It was reached during a two-day visit to France this week by the heir to the Saudi's throne, Prince Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz.

Combat and corporate aircraft maker Dassault Aviation could not immediately be reached for comment. The Elysee presidential palace would not comment.

Commenting on the prospects for a deal with the Saudis, Jean-Francois Bureau, the spokesman for France's defence ministry, told reporters at a weekly briefing on Thursday:

"It's a discussion process that started a long time ago. I do not have the impression that we are in a final phase and if it was the case it would be up to the Saudi authorities to announce it."

If it is true then this is a signficant breakthrough for dassault .. B)

This is Bloomberg's version:

dassault-shares-update1 Dassault Rises After Report of Saudi
Jet-Order Plan (Update1)

(Adds analyst's comments from seventh paragraph)


c.2005 Bloomberg News By Andrea Rothman

April 15 (Bloomberg) -- Dassault Aviation SA shares rose as
much as 4.2 percent after Les Echos reported Saudi Arabia is
planning an order for as many as 96 of the company's Rafale combat
jets. Dassault denied the report.

Shares of Paris-based Dassault rose as much as 21 euros to 525
euros and were up 1.2 percent at 510 euros as of 10:54 a.m. in
Paris. Only 4 percent of Dassault stock is publicly traded. The
Dassault family controls 50.2 percent of the shares and European
Aeronautic, Defense & Space Co. owns 46 percent.

Saudi Arabia agreed to buy 48 Rafales, with options for another
48 planes, from Dassault for about 6 billion euros, Les Echos
reported today. The project would mark Dassault's first foreign
sale of Rafale jets. Dassault didn't confirm the report.

‘‘We've been having discussions with Saudi Arabia for years,
but there is no contract and nothing's been signed,'' said Gerard
David, a spokesman for Dassault, in a telephone interview.
Dassault has never sold any fighter planes to Saudi Arabia and has
provided about a dozen of its corporate jets to buyers in the
country.

Jerome Bonnafont, the spokesman for French President Jacques
Chirac, and Jean-Francois Bureau, a spokesman for France's Defense
Ministry, were in meetings and couldn't immediately be reached for
comment. Saudi government offices are closed on Fridays and
spokespeople weren't immediately available for comment.

Business Jets, Fighters

Dassault gets roughly half its sales from Falcon business jets
and also sells the Mirage fighter aircraft. Middle East countries
that have bought the include the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

The planemaker began building the Rafale in 2002 and has yet to
win a contract for the model outside of France, which now has 120
of the jets on order. The government, which provided funding for
the plane, has said it plans to order 294 of the aircraft.

Dassault in 2002 lost out to Boeing Co. in a contest to sell
fighter jets to South Korea. It's competing against Boeing's F-15
and the Eurofighter, built buy a venture of EADS, BAE Systems Plc
and Finmeccanica SpA, to sell 10 jets to Singapore.

‘‘If Dassault sells the Rafale to Saudi Arabia, that'll give
its export prospects a big boost, as an order from one country
outside the planemaker's home market builds confidence in the
plane,'' said Agnes Blazy, an analyst at CM-CIC Securities in
Paris.

Blazy said she cut her recommendation on Dassault shares last
February to ‘‘hold'' from ‘‘accumulate'' because of concerns about
poor prospects for military exports. Defense contracts accounted
only for 17 percent of Dassault's total order backlog, ‘‘the
lowest level in at least five years,'' Blazy said.

Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia will fly to Washington
next week, where U.S. officials may pressure the country to
withdraw from the preliminary agreement.

The Saudi government also agreed to buy radar, drones and
communications systems worth up to 7 billion euros from Thales SA,
a French aerospace supplier, the newspaper said. --With reporting
by Gabriele Parussini in Paris. Editor: Lavell. To contact the
reporter on this story: Andrea Rothman in Toulouse, France at (33)
(5) 6365-7668 or aerothman@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor
responsible for this story: Dan Stets at (49) (69) 92041 145 or
dstets@bloomberg.net. -0- Apr/15/2005 9:01 GMT

- ENDS -

then came the denial.....source reuters.....

Dassault no comment on Saudi defence deal report
Fri Apr 15, 2005 08:27 AM BST
Printer Friendly | Email Article | RSS
(Adds no comment, shares)
PARIS, April 15 (Reuters) - French planemaker Dassault Aviation declined comment on Friday on a report that Saudi Arabia had agreed to buy at least 48 Rafale combat jets in a deal worth up to 6 billion euros ($7.72 billion).

Business daily Les Echos reported that Saudia Arabia had signed a memorandum of understanding to buy 48 of the multi-role fighters with an option for a further 48 during a two-day visit to France this week by Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz.

"We have no comment on this article. We do not confirm it, we do not deny it," a Dassault spokesman said.

The French government also declined comment.

Dassault (AVMD.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) shares rose

Now why would the Saudis consider the Rafale? They've got the F15S already.

Hmmm, IIRC their Tornadoes would need replacements soon....

I do hope that the Saudi will buy some, perhaps Taiwan too, then I can see RSAF getting a few :)

quite true....

currently the biggest disadvantage of the rafael is the small number of in service units.... which would have serious economic cost in terms of maintainance and sourcing for spareparts as well as fundings availability for future developement.

i think F-15 would win...

if only we can make some structural enhancements to take into account the advances in airframe design like below...



if i remember... there is even an F-15 that comes with canard as well as vector thrust engines.... :lol:

but the RCS is still too large

well.... tell the americans to modify our F-15T to minimise its RCS... like more slopes and less 90degrees angle outer structure... give us the radar absorbent paint... and their best EW suite..... :P

load our F-15 with the most powerful radar and give us the AMRAAM C-7 with 180km range..... top it off with all their latest JSOWs.... :lol:

with the above... i think before the enemy fighters sees our F-15T, AMRAAM C-7s would be coming right at him.... :lol:

it was reported that typhoon was shortlisted as well......

is it just me or does the F15 in that picture NOT have thrust vectoring?
I was under the impression that all the test models had those hah

Why do that? You may as well turn that into a "poor-man's" Raptor and it will come at a cost not much from getting a brand new Raptor.

May as well just wait for F35.

For now, I think Rafale and Typhoon are the best choice.

oh... and just how much is that poor man's F-15? do you know?

to me... the question of RCS needs moderation by considering the relative power of radar and electronic warfare.... in modern air war.....

if i might remind you all... that EW was first developed for the purpose of messing the enemy radar... so that even if your ass is as big as a B-52 bomber... it doesnt really matter...

while the enemy may know that you are coming...or even here... so what? with their radars jammed up... all they got left is their mark 2 eyeball!

worst if it was in the dead of night... when the mark 2 eyeball also not working very welll in low light condition.

afterall... dont tell me the SU-30MKI got smaller RCS.... or our neighbours MIG-29A or future SU-30MKM... is stealth designed.

all i wanna say is... dont get too deep into matters of RCS... its only 1/3 of the equation... the other 2 parts are radar and EW.

and to top it off.... no matter how agile your fighters are... it can never pull as much G force as a AAM missile....

even newer generation high-off bore sight WVR missile are getting so agile and dangerous... it begs the relevance of high agility for fighter planes...

i think it might even be possible to arm our E-2C or F-50 MPA with AMRAAM and let those missile loose at any incoming enemy fighters as well as their missiles...

i heard that AMRAAM is capable of shooting down other AAMs... correct me if i am wrong.

by the way... just wanna add..... from the point of a AEW looking down from the top.... the RCS of even the EF-2000 and the rafale is still fairly big.... if not bigger then an F-15 when viewed head on....

i know i am not being fair in the above comparison... but hey... war is never fair... we got AEW... and if the enemy dont have... too bad for them..... :lol:

if you really want something stealth.... try F-117... but without saying... you can forget about dog fighting in that.... :P

oh.... worried about enemy ground radars? try HARM.... that's what the americans designed them for.

Listen to Joe Black. What he said was true. If you had followed the F-22 debate, you should know that your proposition has been proposed by F-22 detractors before. An AOA regarding the F-22 was done by the USAF as a result pressure put on them by Congress, and one of the possible alternatives considered was an F-15 that was given Raptor's engines, avionics and modified airframe to give it a lower RCS. It was found that the result cost as much as a Raptor without anywhere near the capability. RCS experts concluded that it wasn't practical to modify a non-LO optimised design to one that was. LO had to be built into the design from the beginning. Stealth isn't just slapping on 'radar absorbent paint' and 'more slopes and less 90degrees angle outer structure'. If it were that simple, LO designs would have popped up everywhere by now.

What I have said, was considered by USAF a while ago, about upgrading the Eagles with Raptors components. Furthermore, adding the 2D trust vectoring and the Canard requires a significant amount of rework on the Fly-by-wire algorithm. NASA only used the Eagles for experiement and the conclusion they gave to USAF was that the technology is best used for aircraft designed from scratch and not for retrofitting.... Otherwise we would have long gotten the MATV Vipers. That would be more capable than the 2D thrust vectoring as the MATV engine allowed mult axis 3D directional vectoring instead of 2D only like that of the experiemental eagle and Raptors... but more like the Sukhoi's SU-37.

Now as to RCS... you know Eagle has 10x the RCS of Raptors, and Rafale/Typhoon are about 2x or 3x. So go figure how you think one can bring the Eagles RCS down to Rafale and Typhoon's figure, not to mention, but reshaping the eagle, you will have to do all the aero dynamic tests again in the wind tunnel labs, computer simulations, and actual flight tests, etc... would do you think would pay for all these? RSAF or Boeing?

That's assuming USAF would even allow us to sponsor such a modification. The existence of an Eagle in such form would be a threat to the Raptor. Not as much as in the past, but they would not allow anything to threaten the program right now, however small.

If we can't get mere source codes, I don't think we have any chance of getting Boeing to put into production a concept fighter just for us, and it's not as if we are going to get 300 planes. :D

Though having said that, the canards do look interesting on the Eagle.

Still, we can piggyback their upgrades to the E. They do have a slew of upgrades planned for the E considering how long they intend to use them, so I'm not concerned to the popular opinion about the purported 'obsolesence' of the plane.

Heck, they might project the lifespan to 2030, the same year as the Vipers.

Brazil - First export customer of the Rafale

February 19, 2010:

After a decade of effort, France finally has an export customer for its Rafale jet fighter. Again. Last year, it was believed that Brazil would buy 36 of them, for over $4 billion. The Rafale was more (in terms of performance and cost) than Brazil needed, but France prepared the way with a multi-billion dollar submarine and technology transfer deal. This included assistance in designing and building nuclear submarines. That also includes four non-nuclear, 1,400 ton Scorpene subs, three of them built in Brazil, with French technical assistance.
This would be part of the process by which Brazil would also build its first nuclear sub, based on the 4,700 ton French Barracuda. Then Brazil backed off, as several key military and political officials took seriously the fact that competing aircraft, especially the Swedish Gripen, were more suitable to Brazilian needs. But now France believes it has a solid opportunity with the UAE (United Arab Emirates), which wants to buy 60 Rafales. There's just one catch. The UAE wants the Rafales wired to use the American SLAM-ER air-to-ground missile, not the similar AM-39 (Exocet) that Rafale normally uses.

The AGM-84 SLAM ER is a 1,400 pound (636 kilogram) missile with a 280 kilometer range, a 500-pound warhead, and costing half a million dollars each. The AM-39 is similar in size, but has a shorter range. The UAE prefers the SLAM-ER, and it's believed that the French will adapt the Rafale for the American missile, rather than risk losing the sale.

These original SLAM missile was first used during the 1991 Gulf War, and was very similar to the Harpoon (which it shared many components and design features with). SLAM was originally designed for destroying ships. But because of its accuracy, it was found capable of taking out land targets as well. This is what the UAE wants for use against inland Iranian targets. Guidance is similar to JDAM (GPS and inertial guidance system), but with a heat seeker and final adjustments via a data link by the pilot any aircraft equipped with SLAM control equipment. In the past, the SLAM had to be programmed to fly a specific course before takeoff. Being able to reprogram the missile in flight is another capability required for weapons used via the battlefield Internet. This allows a satellite, aircraft or UAV to pick up a target (like an enemy ship hidden in a cove), and pass that data to an aircraft carrying a SLAM-ER.

France has had nothing but hard times trying to find export customers for its Rafale. Last year, the production rate the Rafale was reduced from 14 a year to 11 a year. This was to slow down the delivery of Rafales, mainly because the Defense Ministry has decided that other things were more important. The new emphasis (and spending) is on peacekeeping and anti-missile defenses. Another reason for slowing down Rafale production was the lack of export orders.

While one of the more modern combat aircraft in the world, development of the Rafale was delayed by technical problems, and shortages of money. Entering development just as the Cold War ended meant that there was little enthusiasm to spend billions on an aircraft that would face no real opposition. But, facing the need to eventually replace all those Mirage fighters, development did get restarted, creating an aircraft superior to the American F-15s and F-16s, very similar to the F-18F, but inferior to the F-22 and F-35.

The Eurofighter, and several other very competitive aircraft have made export sales scarce. By 2006, the French armed forces had only ordered 120 Rafales (82 for the air force, 38 for the navy). The 28 ton aircraft sell for about $100 million each, and it is hoped the Brazil sale will spur other nations to take a chance on France.
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairw/ar...s/20100219.aspx


Mods...Please consider to change title of this thread to "FRENCH RAFALE FIGHTER" ....So that we can post all discussions wrt Rafale fighter here

Is it true? The French are infamous for enforcing embargo on their own customers after the weapons are purchased. ;)

year, it was believed that Brazil