To analyse. A historic success and a regret. Friday, December 3, Dassault Aviation signed the largest military contract in its history by selling 80 Rafale to the United Arab Emirates. A week later, Friday December 10, in a brief communicated, the French aircraft manufacturer lamented that a European country, Finland, prefers to acquire 64 American fighter planes, rather than French planes. From the start, the competition leaned towards the Lockheed Martin F-35 to replace the Boeing F / A-18s. A geostrategic choice for Helsinki: these devices will monitor the 1,300 kilometers of borders with Russia.
The sale of fighter jets is above all a political act. While the United States dominates this market, France’s customers are countries that do not wish or cannot buy American, or those that wish to have a dual source of supply. This is the case of the United Arab Emirates. Since its creation fifty years ago, this State has equipped itself primarily with American planes, supplemented by Dassault Mirages.
The fact of seeing Joe Biden’s United States refocusing more on Asia-Pacific vis-à-vis China, to the detriment of other regions such as the Middle East, has helped accelerate the negotiations that have been under way for several months with France. . A way of transforming planes into a diplomatic weapon, as Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s Egypt had done in 2015 by buying Rafale to protest against Barack Obama’s abandonment of Egyptian President Mubarak at the time of the “springs”. Arabs ”.
Abu Dhabi’s decision to increase its initial request for 60 fighter jets to 80 is thus interpreted as a mark of preference against the Americans, the French order being greater in number than that of the 50 F-35s currently being negotiated by the United States. United with the Emiratis. This is also due to the cultivated proximity between Emmanuel Macron, his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian, and Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Zayed.
Guaranteed production
The fallout from this agreement benefits those involved in the negotiations, the General Directorate of Armaments, the Air Force, and the three Rafale industrialists, Dassault Aviation, as prime contractor, Safran, for the engine, and the electronic equipment supplier Thales. Not to mention the missile manufacturer MBDA.
This contract ensures the French air equipment program, the Emirates having ordered the most elaborate version of the Rafale, the F4 standard, which will equip the Air Force and the French Navy. By adding sales this year to Egypt and Greece, production is guaranteed for at least ten years. The share of French orders – 192 aircraft out of 404 new aircraft in the backlog – is now in the minority, although they represented all sales seven years ago. This then raised questions about the viability of the program.
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