Ah come on, stop with the Gulf Money baloney. Where's the 'dislike' button?
Just kidding.
That rumor is so old and I really think your anti-Egyptian sentiment clouds your sense of objectivity. The reason I say that is not to insult you, honestly, constructive criticism is always a good thing. The reason I said the part about the objectivity is that you're not looking deep enough (and you don't really need to spend a lot of time researching this stuff, even
@The SC mentioned and linked several sources that all the contracts were financed through banking within the nations these deals have been made. Especially France & Russia approved huge amounts of financing terms which are loans from the main banks.
A lot of people who not necessarily despise Egypt but see all this incredible and super fast modernization automatically assume that the Gulf nations are paying for all this. Let me tell you, the UAE and especially Saudi Arabia would NEVER allow any money they offer to go towards weaponry purchasing like this. This has been established way back in 2013 because their primary outlook at Egypt is the Islamic way. This might be tough for some to understand, but for Muslims this is a very well known effort to help another Muslim in need and those funds were to shore up partial foreign
reserves, to act as collateral for IMF loans and to also improve infrastructure. Those are the fields that any of the gulf money that was given is for, not purchasing weapons!
Waz, Egypt has not spent a penny on any true modernization for well over 35 years. We all know the common and weird hatred of Sisi, but he is a genius and he has modernized the entire armed forces from top and working his way to the bottom. What people are used to seeing is a "Mubarak" Egypt and so when they see this type of ultra modernization, it's automatic for them to think that they know better than these military men whom many of them actually have field experience and understand the things that ordinary people would never know anything about.
Sisi and Generals sat down in several meetings and planned out a major strategy for a "rapid" modernization. The plan was also to slowly move away from total US dependency and actually rebuild the entire military. Sisi is not some shmuck like many here label him. He was the former Director of Military Intelligence and former Minister of Defense and the General of the Egyptian armed forces.
There is so much background info that people need to understand about what is happening so it makes more sense. So when they spent quite some time planning this modernization and factoring all the counter-effects of each item, they had additional plans to cover. So plan A doesn't work, there is a plan B and I'm mentioning this to you because that factor has A LOT to do with this deal, here.
The French were eager to sell us the original 24 Rafales and also offered the option for 12 more. As you probably know, an option is pretty much a done deal. So if you sign and give me an option to purchase something within a certain times frame and I decide to buy it, you are officially obligated to sell it. So when the EAF bought the 24 Rafales instead of the maximum Dassault can offer in a single order which is 36, they did that because it's obviously a very advanced aircraft and they also bought 2 simulators and built a special base just for them where they have maintenance hanger and hardened shelters etc. It was amazing how quickly the EAF was able to absorb the Rafale and even use them for several bombing missions in Libya. Now they went back to exercise the option AND include and additional 24 on top and France along with Dassault have been very difficult to deal with and won't even show good faith on the 12 option. A large part of this carefully planned modernization plan was not to rely on one source and never be in the weaker position of negotiating. THAT is where this deal comes in. If the Typhoon does become part of this order, I can almost guarantee you that it will become the dominant Euro-canard aircraft in the inventory as the years go by and the Rafale will be brushed off. You see, people think this is window shopping without trying to learn basic details.
Now as far as the other items, have you seem the 2 Berghamini FREMMs that just arrived and the details of their capabilities such as having the ability to switch from AESA to PESA with the push of a button if needed? The SC and I actually counted at least 12 VLS for Aster 15 or 30 along with a forward compartment that is currently vacant becasue it's used for land attack missiles and that is against ITAR. But the French closed that off completely IIRC which sucks, honeslty. At least our Italian friends left it and said "hey, we have nothing to do with it, it's in your hands"! lol That is the type of friendship we need to make deals with not the French who complain and want top dollar and now want to sell Egypt 12 Scorpene DEEP SEA submarines. This is HUGE (but required in another thread altogether loool.) But the Berghamini to me is something that is better than the French ASW FREMM we purchased and the navy has been so happy with it since it tested it that making the decision to possibly order 6 more was easy.
So why all these frigates and OPVs which are actually just smaller corvettes. Because Egypt has not only a huge coastline to protect, but many vital sea assets they need to protect, mainly the richest gas fields in the Mediterranean. Nothing wrong and A LOT more right to purchase 20 of these vessels.
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Berghamini FREMM frigates which will dominate the Egyptian Navy for decades to come and frigates are not really useful in 2 or 3. If naval understanding is prevalent, one would realize that you need these in large numbers. Turkey has 12 Mekos IIRC I might be mistaken on that but why isn't any one biatching about them buying so many? lol. THAT, my friend, is the center of this anti Egyptian sentiment.
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The Typhoon we all know will not be an issue whatsoever and will actually compliment the Rafales and dominate them being the Tranch 4 model which is the latest with the CAPTOR-E radar and fully integrated for GBUs (which we have decades of supplies of those bombs) but especially the Italians will guarantee that this order is finalized only with the Meteor missile accompanying the big ticket items and any country that possesses the EFT & Rafale with the Meteor missile will be very difficult to beat.
Is the strategy showing a bit, bro? No window shopping silliness of course that's been thrown out the window.
And of course, we're not even talking about the 30 Su-35SE Egypt bought a year and a half ago or something like that. During the planning session and preparations between Sisi and all the top generals and commanders deciding on these purchases, the MiG-21MFs, F-7 AIRGUARDs and almost all Mirage V's were to be retired immediately to be replaced by these new figthers that will need new, advanced trainers also since all the cockpit fussion and layout and new IA features are not available in the old traners such as the L-59E and I hate to say this because this was a big was Pakistan and Egypt were connected and that is the K-8 trainers. Those will not work anymore for academy graduate pilots, hence the 24 M-346 trainer jets. Makes complete sense, doesn't it?
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Sorry for the long post and I really did try to keep it as short as possible but hopefully that helped clear up the unfortunate misunderstanding about the window shopping (not by you) and see it from the real point of view.
