France Signs Rafale Service Contract with Dassault

The French military aviation maintenance agency SIMMAD has signed a 10-year contract for an undisclosed amount with Dassault Aviation for the aircraft company to provide maintenance for the 120 Rafale aircraft ordered to date for the Air Force and Navy, Dassault said in a Dec. 12 statement.

“The state’s targets for fleet operational availability and reduction of Rafale maintenance costs have been satisfied, thanks to a global, long-term maintenance contract based on payment per flying hour,” Dassault said in the statement.
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Under the deal, the company committed to ensure the cost of flying hours would decline over the period.

The “Rafale Care” contract covers all the aircraft functions except the engine, radar, countermeasures and weapon systems.

Dassault CEO Charles Edelstenne has said the cost of a flight hour on the twin-engine Rafale was about 15 percent more than the single-engine Mirage 2000, a Dassault spokesman said.

An Air Force spokesman said no figures were available for the cost of flight hours on the Mirage or Rafale. The cost calculation was complicated by variables such as the profile of each mission flown.

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php…28&c=EUR&s=TOP

I would like to stress that the “first day of war” which some poster are speaking about to explain that the F35 stealth would be usefull only in the first hours is just whishful thinking…

The proliferation of modern SAM and the future democratisation of AESA radars along with modern jetfighters in the next years will make the stealth asset not only useful at the first day of a conflict but for a much longer period of time…

Also if you can’t manage to tackle the so called “first day” of war and your airforce has a huge loss ratio how would you think about winning the war ? In fact an airforce without this capability will diminish the political possibilities of a state against a ennemy.

Pure performance is now less important than stealth or other factors such as persistance. If you want kinetiks : let the missile do the job and don’t make painful arbitrages in aircraft design.

for me tawain mirages are among my favourite. It is rare to have pictures about it. Any link for a photo gallery ?

The F35 is clearely the best BVR platform : the combination of stealth, AESA radar and high level of sensor fusion will give him an assymetric advantage over the typhoon or other 4th gen fighters.

In a dogfight the Typhoon should have the edge but a F35 pilots will always try to remain in BVR combat he is not mad ! So in the end the F35 will have certainly the best kill ratio over the typhoon in a real combat situation.

But again if you look the broader picture, (and not focus on ATA performance only where I would rate the F35 better) the F35 offer a better package for an airforce.

Originally Posted by djcross
Both S-400 and S-300V are designed to destroy high flying supersonic missiles and TBMs.

This is only theorie. there is always a race between counter measures and counter counter measures, so it is impossible to make a conclusion in reality.

Originally Posted by Jackonicko
PFCEM

I’ve seldom seen so much error and disinformation in a single post.

You say: “THE MOST RECENT (public as of June 2008) FLY-AWAY PRICE FOR THE F-35A IS THE $58.7 MILLION (FY2008 dollars) OFFICIALLY STATED BY THE US DOD. That is the price quoted to Australia, Canada & Norway).”

George Standridge, Lockheed’s vice-president of business development for the JSF program, does not agree.

He made it very clear that that price was in FY2002 dollars (and is thus worth about $78 m today, allowing for defence sector inflation). Moreover, he also made it clear that the price was a short-term and conditional offer (available only to the JSF partners), and was dependent on all of the JSF Level 1 and 2 partners (Australia, Britain, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Turkey, Canada and Denmark) signing up within a very tight timescale (long before development is complete) and dependent on all signing for their full commitments (368 aircraft), with no reductions. Recent statements from the UK and the Netherlands (and from Norway) make it clear that these totals (and in Norway’s case, this timescale) cannot be met.

Moreover, that price is contradicted by the USAF budget book, the price quoted to Israel, and the newer prices ferreted out by Aviation Week.

No-one would deny the extraordinary capability of the F-35 as a ‘day one, kick down the door’ bomber, but when operating with external stores, the F-35 becomes a slow, draggy aircraft, with few advantages over Typhoon/Rafale/Gripen NG/F-15SG, etc., and some disadvantages.

You list a number of areas where you deny specific Typhoon advantages, using DOES NOT and WILL NOT in caps for emphasis. In every case you are wrong, despite your caps.

1) The Typhoon DOES offer better air defence capability.
It’s faster, faster climbing, quicker accelerating, with better supersonic agility, longer radar and missile range (especially at azimuth limits). It has a helmet sight, an excellent IRST, and better MMI, with DVI. There are, of course, scenarios, in which F-35 stealth would be a decider….

2) The Typhoon DOES offer greater combat persistence.
It carries more AAMs than F-35, and can stay on CAP longer.

3) The Typhoon IS more deployable.
The Typhoon requires a smaller logistics tail, fewer groundcrew, less ground support equipment, and does not require specialist kit to maintain/repair specialised surface coatings. Nor does it suffer from many repairs being impossible outside US facilities.

4) The Typhoon IS cheaper.
We know that the actual flyaway cost for an RAF Tranche 2 Typhoon is £37.76 m. We know this because we know that the Tranche Two global production contract was was “worth €13 Bn” for al 236 Tranche 2 aircraft. That’s €55.08 m each. On 17 December 2004, when that contract was signed, the €/£ rate was 0.68545, so €55.08 = £37.76 m. For interest, that was then equivalent to $73 m (you can look up the exchange rates for that day at: http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h10/20041220/).

Except that the cost in Euros was fixed, so you should use current €/$ exchange rates, which make a Tranche 2 Typhoon $69.498 in today’s money.

And guess what, that’s cheaper than $96.8 m! It’s less than $83 m. It’s even less than the over optimistic, stabilised, post FY2013 prediction of $79 m……

5) The Typhoon DOES promise lower support & sustainment costs.
EF GmbH will contractually guarantee their support costs, and MMH/FH figures, which are lower than what JSF aim to provide, but haven’t so far offered to guarantee.

6) The Typhoon WILL be better networked.
It doesn’t rely on stealthy datalinks that are useless outside the bubble, and can communicate directly with AWACS and all other players, not only receiving the SRAP (Secure Recognised Air Picture) but also contributing to it. F-22 and F-35 can’t, and there’s no technology or contracts in place to ensure that they will be able to.

7) Because of 6 above, the TyphoonWILL be better suited to CAS and BAI missions, and to any mission when being integrated into the Global Information Grid is essential – eg complex scenarios where you can’t afford to have ‘loose cannon’ flights of F-22s stooging around unable to communicate fully with friendly forces, or eg real time recce/ISTAR, etc.

F-22 and F-35 will have formidable ISTAR capabilities, but if they can’t transmit their intelligence ‘take’ to the network, such capabilities are of little use.

8) The Typhoon carries more useful mixed loads, and has a better A-A capability, and so WILL promise better swing role capability.

9) The Typhoon WILL carry a large number of weapons that JSF can not carry internally, and so cannot carry in the only configuration where it offers any advantage over non-stealthy platforms.

The Typhoon WILL be able to defeat the threat of a developed ‘Flanker’ more often, with a better exchange ratio than JSF.

Apart from that, good post!

Jackoniko,

I would like to point out that despite what you are often claiming you are a big Typhoon fan ! No issue with that, but please have the honesty to admit it and stop hidding behind an alleged an hypocrite neutrality !! You are always defending the typhoon..! And most of your claim here are pure speculation…

personaly I see the F35 one class above in terms of design concept…A more versatile, more survivable more persistent platform (common to different branch of the army) thant the typhoon or other 4th generation fighters (although the rafale come close in concept exept the full around stealth)…

Can someone explain how the F35 would be less connected than the typhoon ?

Ok rob, so lets focus on the industrial aspect since we agree that the rafale is technically a success for its customer and in technical evaluations.

In terms of costs the rafale is still profitable for dassault they manage to have a very flexible assembly line with workers which can work either for the rafale or the falcon jets. So it is not an industrial failure for Dassault or the french government. At least on a financial point of view.

I think that you implyed that it is a failure because of the lack of exports and it could lead dassault to exit the market. It is true that the rafale is behind and it was unlucky. All reports from indepent medias as well as official sources like dassauly or the french government tell that the rafale performed very well in technical evaluations.
The rafale is still running in swiss, greece, india, lybia and brazil. So don’t you think it is a bit early to claim anything ? You will perhaps be right here in the long run but it is too soon to claim anything.

I don’t think dassault will exit the fighter market soon. Certainly Dassault will not lead alone a new fighter programme but it will still participate in this market in the same way as BAE does.

In terms of know how, the Neuron is here to maintain that plus it is the same engineers which are working on the businness jets. Another factor is that dassault still attracts some of the best french engineers and enjoys a very low turn over. Another purpose of the Neuron is to develop a partneship for a possible new fighter jet programme. It wants to create a new partnership governance because for them the typhoon programme organization and management were a failure.

Last but not least, the ability to design and produce a fighter jet is viewed by the french government as a strategic orientation like for the nuclear detterence…So we shouldn’t overlook political will here.

And I don’t like your attitude…to speak on an aviation forum just to hope that an aircraft will fail is despisable.

EDIT : And you forget one thing, producing one rafale for dassault represents much more volume of activity than producing one typhoon for BAE. So to be fair you can’t compare directly the numbers of aircrafts produced in industrial terms.

…And since pirate has no TV/laser range finder I don’t see how it could be an as comprhensive AtG testing as the OSF. So I am quite skeptik about your claim.

the OSF and Damocles have both laser designating capabilities so it makes sens to test them in different modes, but PIRATE and lightening I don’t know…I am not an expert though.

I don’t see the frenchmen lying…What would have been the interest for them ??? don’t see liars everywhere ! It is almost as if you were seeing a plot conspiracy from the french…