Dassault Rafale, tender | News & Discussions

[nomi007]

UAE is considering alternating jet fighter because Rafael cost is twice f-16 block-60

 

[SQ8]

Considering the reported snub by Sarkozy to MMS at the recent hello hi..
I think the Rafale may lose it again.
Moreover, the EF's distributed manufacturer base.. and the fact that it even involves the US to a large degree may give it the upper hand.
Unless the Rafale gives a much lower price, the EF may take this as well.

 

[ramu]

Considering the reported snub by Sarkozy to MMS at the recent hello hi..
I think the Rafale may lose it again.
Moreover, the EF's distributed manufacturer base.. and the fact that it even involves the US to a large degree may give it the upper hand.
Unless the Rafale gives a much lower price, the EF may take this as well.

On the contrary I have heard that EF is cheaper on a per unit basis as compared to Rafale. So EF is now clearly leading the competition. Price, yes but it wont just be a lower cost that will work for MoD. Unless Rafale comes up with a discout of 15+% added with sweeteners for Mirage and missiles, the deal is headed EF's way.

 

[Windjammer]

In last months AFM magazine, there was an interesting comparative article under the headiung, "Typhoon vs Rafale which will win in India", however in the current issue, a reader sent a noteworthy feed back.

One point may be worth mentioning is that the EF2000 bid may be at somewhat of a disadvantage given that Saudi Arabia (a key ally of Pakistan and very active with the PAF) has already bought the Typhoon. It may worry the IAF brass if many details of their new aeroplane are available to PAF planners.

 

[Paan Singh]

In last months AFM magazine, there was an interesting comparative article under the headiung, "Typhoon vs Rafale which will win in India", however in the current issue, a reader sent a noteworthy feed back.

uae too purchasing rafales

 

[ramu]

In last months AFM magazine, there was an interesting comparative article under the headiung, "Typhoon vs Rafale which will win in India", however in the current issue, a reader sent a noteworthy feed back.

That is not a problem to India. India has every detail about F16s and it is one thing to know the aircraft and totally another to know the strategies used by leveraging the platform.

Second, we know how close a partner Saudi Arabia is to Pakistan.

 

[SpArK]

That is not a problem to India. India has every detail about F16s and it is one thing to know the aircraft and totally another to know the strategies used by leveraging the platform.

Second, we know how close a partner Saudi Arabia is to Pakistan.

Just a look and a back seat ride makes all immortal..

 

[rockstarIN]

On the contrary I have heard that EF is cheaper on a per unit basis as compared to Rafale. So EF is now clearly leading the competition. Price, yes but it wont just be a lower cost that will work for MoD. Unless Rafale comes up with a discout of 15+% added with sweeteners for Mirage and missiles, the deal is headed EF's way.

You can't change the quotes now... MoD will select the lowest bidder then the negotiations will happen.

---------- Post added at 02:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:11 PM ----------

Considering the reported snub by Sarkozy to MMS at the recent hello hi..
I think the Rafale may lose it again.
Moreover, the EF's distributed manufacturer base.. and the fact that it even involves the US to a large degree may give it the upper hand.
Unless the Rafale gives a much lower price, the EF may take this as well.

In fact US originated weapon systems will give EF a disadvantage. Lots of US items in EF...

 

[SQ8]

Just a look and a back seat ride makes all immortal..

Just a statement based on thin air doesn't bring back the mortality.

 

[SpArK]

Just a statement based on thin air doesn't bring back the mortality.

But its usually the thick air that's coming causing mortality here.

 

[Windjammer]

That is not a problem to India. India has every detail about F16s and it is one thing to know the aircraft and totally another to know the strategies used by leveraging the platform.

Second, we know how close a partner Saudi Arabia is to Pakistan.

I find the former editor of AFM much more credible in this regard..... specially on the cooperation between the two air arms. Enough said.

 

[Windjammer]

Just a statement based on thin air doesn't bring back the mortality.

My dear, poor innovations can not be nurtured.

 

[ptltejas]

Fighter bid like no other
- European rivals sit at long table as offers are read out

New Delhi, Nov. 12: The only military wing headquartered outside South Block in the capital’s Raisina Hill is the Indian Air Force. A squat multi-storeyed block, the Vayu Sena Bhavan is marked out by a scrapped fighter aircraft mounted on a pillar, its nose skywards as if it were soaring.

Visitors are allowed in only on invitation and after they are frisked, the irises of their eyes checked biometrically to confirm their identities.

Foreigners are rarely allowed into the building and even civilians must have their backgrounds investigated for permission to enter.

Last week, half-a-dozen Europeans were let into the building after going through security and escorted to the fifth floor where they were sat down at the end of a long table in a conference room adjacent to Air Chief Marshal N.A.K. Browne’s office.

The Europeans were from two firms, EADS Cassidian and France’s Dassault Aviation. In one of the world’s largest defence contracts that is hotly contested, Cassidian’s Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault’s Rafale fighter jets have been shortlisted.

When their executives were invited last week, it was for the opening of the financial bids. The meeting was convened by joint secretary (air) R.K. Ghosh, the “acquisitions manager” for the IAF’s medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) programme, the exercise to procure 126 fighter jets, an order that may be expanded to 200.

For both EADS and Dassault — as it would be for any other firm — European giants struggling to keep their assembly lines (and thousands of jobs) intact — the IAF order will mean a guarantee for years.

For India and its air force, the MMRCA is the single largest defence contract it would sign. When the Request for Proposals (RFP) was sent out in 2007, the value of the contract was estimated to be Rs 42,000 crore or $10 billion.


The order could now well go up to $20 billion, or double the estimate, accounting for cost and forex fluctuations. The spotlight on A.K. Antony’s defence establishment in going through with the acquisition, therefore, is so much sharper.

Not only have Indian defence acquisitions been plagued by allegations of bribery and unaccounted commissions (or kickbacks), the last time a Congress government signed a comparable deal (for 410 Bofors howitzers in 1987), it cost Rajiv Gandhi his prime ministership.

Minutes after the Europeans were sat down at the end of the conference table, the acquisitions manager asked for a metal box containing the financial bids to be brought in. They were asked to confirm that the box was locked. They did. The box was then opened. It contained bundles of papers that the competitors had submitted, each trying to outdo the other to emerge as L1 – the lowest bidder.

The seals on the envelopes were broken after they confirmed that their bids were genuine.

“It was like nothing I had seen in India before,” one of the men present in the room told The Telegraph. He had attended bid-openings before.

“They were always like casual and regulation stuff. But here there were people seated around the long table, each was asked to identify himself, and there were placards with our names on the table and we had designated seats and everything was on the record,” he recalled.

The Typhoon and the Rafale, both twin-engine fighter jets – seen in action over Libya most recently -- that claim to be in the four-plus generation of aircraft, were shortlisted after 643-point technical and flight evaluation tests by the IAF through 2009 and 2010.

The aircraft were tested over the desert in Rajasthan, at Hindustan Aeronautics’ Bangalore establishment and at the high-altitude airfield in Leh, Ladakh. Then IAF test pilots flew the aircraft in their countries of origin to test their weapons’ capabilities in air-to-air and air-to-ground combat.

The tests eliminated the F-16 Super Viper IN and the F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet, made by US firms Lockheed Martin and Boeing; the Gripen NG made by Swedish firm Saab and the Russian MiG-35.

In so doing, India was risking a growing defence relationship with the US. After months during which US envoys to India said there was “an expectation” of the contract being awarded to US firms as a thanksgiving for the civilian-nuclear deal, the Pentagon and the US government were bitterly disappointed.

A day before the bids were opened in that fifth-floor conference room in New Delhi, the Pentagon presented a report to the US Congress, expressing its regret over losing the deal yet again and also offering to “share information” with India on its F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter programme, an aircraft that is a generation ahead of the competitors for the MMRCA programme.

For the IAF, not only was that proposal “too late”, it was also seen as an effort to queer the pitch when it was two-thirds of the way through the acquisition process.

“It was the Pentagon talking to the US Congress. It wasn’t Vayu Sena Bhavan talking to South Block,” said one officer, underlining that the Pentagon’s offer had little relevance to the MMRCA programme at this stage.

The F-35 certainly did not figure around that long table where 13 officials from the defence ministry, the IAF, Hindustan Aeronautics and the Defence Research and Development Organisation who make up the contract negotiation committee for the MMRCA programme briefed the Europeans on the process to be followed.

The acquisitions manager read out in broad terms the financial terms offered by the two sides. As the executives took notes furiously, it dawned that the formulae for pricing the aircraft presented by each was so complicated that it would take weeks to determine the values.

“There is no such thing as a sticker price,” said one officer. “You don’t buy aircraft like oranges, by the kilo.”


He explained why it could take up to six weeks – may be till the end of December -- to determine the lowest bidder. “It’s a price for the whole package,” he said.

For the first 10 to 12 days, Air Headquarters expects there will be much back-and-forth between the IAF and the companies as clarifications are sought. The meeting determined that the financial bids would be tied to the price of the dollar quoted by State Bank of India’s Parliament Street branch on November 4.

The IAF has sought financial quotes in eight categories, called M1 to M8. M1 is the “unit flyaway cost”, the price of each of the first 18 aircraft to be purchased “off the shelf”.

M2 asks for the lifecycle costs – the price of running the equipment over their lifespan of 6,000 hours – of the different components that make up the aircraft (engines, airframe, weapons pods).


M3 is “operational cost”. M4 asks for the lifecycle costs of spares, fuel usage, a “mean time between failures” (MTBF), and lubricants.

M5 and M6 are the estimated costs of overhaul and mid-life upgrade. M7 is the cost of the technology that the maker will transfer to Hindustan Aeronautics that will set up the assembly line were the Typhoon or the Rafale would be made under licence. M8 is the computation of total costs.

The formula for computing the costs has an escalation cost, net present value and discounted cash flow built into it, a financial expert said.

Air force officers, however, worry that formulae have a way of getting disrupted in the acquisition process because they get complicated by the pressures of diplomacy and/or under-the-table processes. On the other hand, they also say that if India were to award such a huge deal to a country or a collection of countries, it would be foolish to not extract diplomatic and political mileage out of the deal. Compounding all of this is the IAF’s dire necessity for the aircraft as it stretches its assets – such as the outdated MiG 21 that make up a bulk of its inventory -- well beyond their prescribed lifespan.

Eurofighter’s chief executive officer Bernhardt Gerwert is on record as having said that the four countries that make up the EADS consortium – Germany, the UK, Spain and Italy – had “offered to make India a partner country” with an assurance of steady equation with the four top west European countries.

France’s President, Nicolas Sarkozy, pushing Dassault’s bid with the Rafale, has extended repeated invitations to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh – who was in Paris for the G20 last week -- and had hosted India as the chief guest at the Bastille Day celebrations, a signal moment for the Indian armed forces when they marched down the Champs-Elysees at the head of the parade.

France is also banking on traditional relations – it supplied the frontline Mirage 2000 aircraft – with the IAF.

In Vayu Sena Bhavan where the airforce wants to insulate itself from the politics of handing out an estimated $20 billion, the search for that precise formula is still on.


Fighter bid like no other

This Man believe he is a SACHIN TENDULKAR. boundary pe baundary.

 

[sancho]

RFI news from Raytheon and this news suggest EFT may have got the upper hand.

Not really mate, chhindits summed up the news in the wrong way, check this:

Raytheon says keen to sell HEAT missile to IAF

...The Indian Air Force is evaluating the options for its MMRCA (Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft) programme. Raytheon feels that its missiles such as JSOW (Joint Standoff Weapon), Maverick, AMRAAM (Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile) and AIM-9X are capable of being integrated with any type of aircraft that the IAF may select for the programme. The Eurofighter and Rafale are the two in the race for the $10 billion MMRCA to supply about 125 aircraft...

Business Line : Companies News : Raytheon says keen to sell HEAT missile to IAF


So it's just an offer of Raytheon, which is not even approved by the US government and they offer it for both fighters! They simply wants to have a piece of the cake that's all, but neither the French, nor the EF officials are interested in it, since they want to sell their European weapons.
Especially the EF partners wants India not only to select the EF, but also to upgrade it and pay for the integration of weapons they will use as well, because that's how they can save more money. So it is in their interest if India pays for the integration of Storm Shadow, rather than JSOW, for Brimstone, rather than Maverick, RBS 15 rather than HARPOON..., so don't take that news too serious.

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Flickriver: Most interesting photos from Sukhoi Su-30 pool

Great link, thanks for sharing!

DUBAI: UAE issues shock Eurofighter Typhoon request

Personally I would say the UAE should take the EF and invest in it, to make it fitting to their requirements, it would be a win win situation for them and the EF consortium/partners, but we heared the same about additional F16 B60 orders instead of Rafale, about F18 Silent Hornets instead of Rafale and now about EF instead of Rafale. It's simply too obvious that the UAE wants to build up pressure on the French to lower the costs, because after all, they are highly interested in the Rafale and since that deal is mainly political only (strong relations to France, no need for UAE to buy new fighters, mainly to get side advantages, not new fighters), the deal will got to Rafale for sure, but they will try any trick to get as much out of the French as possible.

 

[sancho]

Considering the reported snub by Sarkozy to MMS at the recent hello hi..
I think the Rafale may lose it again.
Moreover, the EF's distributed manufacturer base.. and the fact that it even involves the US to a large degree may give it the upper hand.
Unless the Rafale gives a much lower price, the EF may take this as well.

Media hype, nothing else! If you are following the current situation in Europe and especially in Greece, Italy and Spain, it should be obvious that there were more important things to discuss at that sumit that Rafale or MMRCA. Even MMS should have had a higher interrest on how the financial problems in Europe will be dealt, than in negotiation about fighters, because Europe is important for the Indian economy as well.
Besides, the EF project doesn't involve the US, all they have is some influence on partner countries, especially UK and ITA, but there was a high focus on beeing independent from the US as much as possible, because the countries learned from the past as well. That's why they developed the techs maily in Europe and why they replace most US weapons with European counterparts. If the US would have been involved in the EF, the partners couldn't provide that much ToT, just like Sweden/Saab or Israel couldn't, but that's not the case.

On the contrary I have heard that EF is cheaper on a per unit basis as compared to Rafale.

Not really, most reliable reports said that it was closer to Rafales price than expected, but that Rafale is still cheaper!

It's like this, the EF partners don't have the money to either fund most of the T3B upgrades, nor to buy the T3B fighters they originally wanted. So they have 2 options now:

1) cancel the orders, which means they have to pay a high penality to the consortium companies to compensate their loss

2) find another customer, that would take over these orders and in this case the partners decides the price! For example, if they initially had to pay $125 millions each fighter, they can cut the price to $100 (to make it more comparable to the Rafale price), which means a loss of $25 millions for them / fighter, but is still worth it, because they don't have to pay the penalities, can divert fundings of upgrade and save a lot of money that would have been paid for the operational costs of the fighters.


All 4 partner countries combined initially wanted another 124 x EF T3B, which Italy already announced (not don yet) in favour for F35s, UK didn't even wanted the T3A order and even Germany has now announced that they cut the last order. That's why it shouldn't be surprising that such desperate countries are offering their orders for low cost to India/Japan, while a country like Swiss, with a small order has to pay the full price directly from the consortium and why the EF was rated in their evaluation as more expensive than the Rafale (just like in all competitions before).