May I wish all Rafale fans a very Happy Christmas, congratulate team Rafale on their aircraft’s performance in Libya and wish you good news in Brazil in the not-too-distant future.

Admit to total ignorance over this. How did Oman look after its Hunters (albeit a long time ago) and its Jaguars, if you would like to explain. Did it arrange contracts for third party maintenance, for example?

Yes, in short. And in these days of availability based incentivised support it would be able to do so to an even greater degree. It also made extensive use of ‘loan’, ‘exchange’ and contract personnel, including pilots. What it didn’t do was invest heavily in either support or training infrastructure.

And for Oman, the Hunter era isn’t that long ago.

Has Oman already ordered Typhoon?

The order has not been officially announced, but the RAF is already working around the implications of the Omani order, and already knows that the 12 aircraft will not be replaced.

They are supposed to go 2013.

Not since the re-winging.

They won’t order Typhoons. Oman has a GNP roughly equivalent to the small Qatar but ,compared to its neighbors, has low reserves of oil and gas; its production will start to decline. Oman has not the means to buy expensive Typhoons in addition of its F16.

Oman has been discovering more oil than it produces for ages. Exploitation is more challenging, but will become increasingly viable as oil prices rise. In addition, the country has an estimated 18 trillion ft³ (510 km³) of natural gas reserves. Furthermore, because it is less ‘oil rich’ than its neighbours, Oman has made greater and more fruitful efforts to reduce its dependence on oil and expatriate labour, and now represents a more balanced and sustainable economy – Qaboos has never lent his weight to the kind of over-the-top vanity projects that we see in Dubai, for example.

As a result Oman has a healthy trade surplus, exporting $33 Bn and importing $13 Bn in 2008, for example, and having a $68 Bn GDP, which is growing at more than 6%. It’s not a Qatar, but then Qatar is the world’s wealthiest Muslim country.

It can certainly afford a dozen Typhoons, and it can do so without breaking sweat.

Well yes, but we don’t know what that announcement will be. The rumours may be right, or they could be wrong. We don’t know.

I know……

Sorry TMor, I was just astonished at the prices, and in the light of some of the more strident ‘That quadrinational aeroplane is so much more expensive posts’ on here, I thought that posting them was interesting, especially after the Les Temps claims in Switzerland (that Rafale was the most expensive option).

I suppose that it starkly shows that while having been a one nation programme was great for Rafale’s progress (especially early on), the reliance on a single source of funding (which has seen the production rate drop below what is normally viewed as being economically viable) also brings with it disadvantages.

And at those very low rates, unlike Spitfire 9, I’m not surprised that it costs more to produce a Rafale than an aircraft being built at industry’s preferred, sustainable rate.

And hopefully, faced with the facts that you so kindly provided, we’ll have a more intelligent debate, that will remain focused on Rafale, and won’t be derailed by provocative and ridiculous claims about the cost of a particular rival.

You’ll note, I hope, that I haven’t used the T-word in this post.

I unreservedly applaud the French for being so open and transparent about weapons numbers. The UK MoD have been much less helpful.

“Be kind enough to explain why in your opinion it is “mediocre”.

That’s not my opinion, it’s the opinion of people who’ve used it.

Eagle goes some of the way with his explanation, but my impression is that it’s laser isn’t great either, with many of the same problems that afflicted TIALD (and worse), and with no greater range than Litening 3 or Sniper.

Even with a high resolution TV channel added, the consensus seems to be that you’d still have an inferior pod to Litening or Sniper.

Which is, I guess, why the AdlA are looking at Sniper.

The Saudis had to buy it for Tornado TSP, as the Israeli Litening pod was not a goer, and the US were being ‘difficult’ wrt Sniper.

I would suggest that Gripen is the European fighter offering the best bang for the buck.

How much does each Rafale cost the French MoD, now? Unit production cost and unit programme cost….

This is not the Eurofighter Typhoon thread but the entire “NAO management_of_typhoon_project” document went **** up two weeks ago when the “Ministry of Defence: The Major Projects Report 2011” was released.

The NAO management_of_typhoon_project” document was entirely based on another document, the “Ministry of Defence: The Major Projects Report 2010“, including numbers, when the “”Ministry of Defence: The Major Projects Report 2011” was released a few days ago it was discovered that the entire program had gone +10% cheaper (roughly 2,5 billion pounds cheaper).
The entire program, to develop and build 160 Typhoons will cost 18159 million Pounds to the British tax payer.

My own take on this was that the Saudi payment for the T2 slots to the British Government had just entered.

Interestingly enough, i am still waiting for the British press to make a story out of this one, if i was a British journo specialised in Defense that would interest me, but…

I don’t think so, Sintra.

If £2.5 Bn were the Saudi receipts, then they’d have cost just £34.7 m each. That’s about £20 m less, per jet, than you’d expect. It could, conceivably be the receipts from the first 24, plus from training and support contracts, but in my view, it’s more likely down to currency exchange changes, and to changes to the contract scope – eg cancellation of plans to integrate certain obsolescent weapons systems, and perhaps reflect Saudi funding for certain key upgrade packages.