The UAE has made no secret of the fact that it requires an aircraft significantly more advanced than the current Rafale versions in service with the Armée de l’Air.
It specifies a longer-range active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar with ground moving target detection and tracking (GMTI/GMTT), ‘interlaced’ air-to-air and air-to-ground modes, a more capable version of the Spectra electronic warfare suite, integration with MBDA’s Meteor long-range missile and, crucially, with more powerful versions of the Snecma M88 engines, producing more than nine tonnes of thrust (about 1.5 tonnes more than the current engine).
Over time, Meteor integration and some AESA and Spectra improvements have become a funded part of the core Rafale programme, but the Armée de l’Air has no stated or funded requirement for a more powerful engine, which the UAE reportedly still wants and which many analysts believe would be essential for long range air-to-ground operations with heavy weapons in the region (and certainly to allow carriage of a three-missile heavy strike loadout using the Black Shaheen). Nor are planned French radar and Spectra improvements believed to be sufficient to meet UAE requirements.
There may also have been a stumbling block in that the UAE is understood to have demanded that the existing Mirage 2000-9s must be ‘bought back’ by the French either for resale or for use by the French forces at an estimated unit price of €20 million – equivalent to about €1.2 billion for the whole fleet.
Historically, Dassault has tended not to use its own resources to fund military aircraft development, preferring its government clients to do so. In this case, the cost of developing the upgrades required by the UAE has been estimated at 4-5 billion euros – or more modestly at €2 billion ($2.9 billion), a sum which the UAE has reportedly expected the French side to pay.
Though the UAE has previously invested in the development of more advanced versions of fighters that it has bought (funding the development of both the Mirage 2000-9 and of the Block 60 F-16E/F in return for a share of profits from any export of aircraft with the features it had paid to develop), it seems not to have the appetite to do so for a modernised and advanced version of the Rafale, or it may be disinclined to be the launch customer and ‘guinea pig’ for such a variant.
