F-35 Lightning II vs Dassault Rafale

[gta4]

So technically, Rafale costs more than F-35 and is under-performed compared to F-35.

[aasm]

Export prices are always different and very difficult to compute. Whatever, 670 crore values 92 million $ atm. anyway, it would be more accurate to compute the french official numbers (from french GAO), without export charges.

financial costs were capped at 3.1%. Fixed 3.5% was a figure from former UPA Gov. project.

[SpudmanWP]

Funny how FMS costs in the USA are exactly the same as the cost to its own services. There are FMS fees, but they are very small and administrative only. FMS fees are not profit.

The true cost of something is revealed when you sell it to a third party and cannot hide any costs in other government programs.

[icemaverick]

The Rafale has been operational since 2001. The French have been aggressively trying to sell the aircraft to just about anyone willing to cut them a check. They’ve sold 36 to India and India doesn’t seem extremely keen at this point to buy more (although that may change after they get the jets). They sold 24 to Egypt after Egypt’s relationships with the US soured and only with very generous financing. Then they sold 36 to Qatar and Qatar is simply hedging its bets by purchasing fighters from the US, Eurofighter Consortium and France.

Even charitably speaking, it’s a very modest order book. That about tells you what you need to know about how the Rafale stacks up against the F-35. The air forces (and navies) of the world have voted with their checkbooks. The Rafale routinely loses contracts to teen series jets. All the jets on the drawing board look more like the F-35 and the F-22.

The Rafale came a little too late to the game. While it is a very capable 4+ gen (arguably even the best), it is too expensive at a time when people are already trying to invest in the next generation. If it had come out 10-15 years earlier, it could have been a big success.

[usnvo]

Funny how FMS costs in the USA are exactly the same as the cost to its own services. There are FMS fees, but they are very small and administrative only. FMS fees are not profit.

True, but foreign sales prices are always difficult to gauge as they tend to include varying amounts of other things in the overall contract that are not aircraft, like pilot and maintenance training, language training, simulators, training devices, weapons, in-country training development, support equipment, spare parts, technical support, warranties, hangers, etc. All of which is often lumped into one large contract price which some people, most often lazy journalists and those with an agenda, have a bad habit of using to calculate unit cost by simply dividing by the number of aircraft purchased.

Having said that, the Rafale has always been relatively expensive compared to its competitors, both to buy and to maintain.

[marsavian]

An export order of 96 is relatively quite big against a total French order of 180 but at these quantities it is a niche product like Gripen. Eurofighter has more sales (600+) than both put together with more in the pipeline. Basically over a thousand Euro-Canards will be built which is in the same ballpark as the original Hornet and air superiority Eagle variants. However split among three designs it's always going to be more expensive than an F-16/F-35 produced in the many thousands and there has to be niche reasons for picking them either technical or political. The current Rafale production rate is 1 a month, the F-35 will be manufactured at an order of magnitude higher than this.

[hythelday]

Eurofightrer numbers are less impressive if one considers bulk of those is meant for original four partners (including some some overlap between Tranche 1 and later, replacement tranches).

I don't know why India buckled, but had that deal gone through in original numbers north of 120, Rafale would have beaten EF even by absolute export numbers, not only relative. It also has beaten EF in Swiss tender.

[aasm]

In all fairness, the huge investments already done by India in upgrade of infrastructures, tweaking of platform etc. speaks in favour of some more batches.

[ricnunes]

The Rafale has been operational since 2001. The French have been aggressively trying to sell the aircraft to just about anyone willing to cut them a check. They’ve sold 36 to India and India doesn’t seem extremely keen at this point to buy more (although that may change after they get the jets). They sold 24 to Egypt after Egypt’s relationships with the US soured and only with very generous financing. Then they sold 36 to Qatar and Qatar is simply hedging its bets by purchasing fighters from the US, Eurofighter Consortium and France.

Even charitably speaking, it’s a very modest order book. That about tells you what you need to know about how the Rafale stacks up against the F-35. The air forces (and navies) of the world have voted with their checkbooks. The Rafale routinely loses contracts to teen series jets. All the jets on the drawing board look more like the F-35 and the F-22.

The Rafale came a little too late to the game. While it is a very capable 4+ gen (arguably even the best), it is too expensive at a time when people are already trying to invest in the next generation. If it had come out 10-15 years earlier, it could have been a big success.

DITTO!

An export order of 96 is relatively quite big against a total French order of 180 but at these quantities it is a niche product like Gripen. Eurofighter has more sales (600+) than both put together with more in the pipeline.

What's funny is that even with a considerably higher number of manufactured/ordered EF Typhoons compared to the Rafale, the EF Typhoon is still and apparently more expensive than the Rafale while the Rafale is apparently more capable in many areas than the Typhoon such and namely as in having an AESA radar (and formerly PESA) or being a better multirole fighter...

[aasm]

Rare picture of RAfale A technology demonstrator.

https://www.facebook.com/10001197324298 ... 103353323/

[aasm]

Sniper Advanced qualified on Qatari Rafale

[aasm]

Optionally manned forklift for Rafale

http://www.air-cosmos.com/ads-show-un-c ... nes-115331

[magitsu]

Rafale has the nuclear role consideration and those kind of things tend to cost big bucks.

Also thumbs up to them for relying on it in every role after Mirage retires. Nobody besides Austria uses(/d) only Typhoon.

[aasm]

TBH, the production line of present forklifts is closed. As far as a replacemnt was needed, aswell doin something new. According to the builder it should allow faster loading. They would also like to qualify it for India and start a factory there.

[aasm]

Reco NG pod. Jsut because i like the photo...