Eurofighter, Saudi Arabia to buy

The BBC are tonight (2 hours ago) reporting that the Saudi Arabian government has agreed with the UK government the sale of Eurofighter there.


news.bbc.co.uk...

How quickly these things can move on and change, eh?
I certainly didn't expect Eurofighter to appear anywhere outside of Europe.

I wonder if these are to be 'full flavour' Typhoons or a slightly lower spec 'export variant'?

I'm sure there are more than a few potential competitors gnashing their teeth over this one.

It'll be interesting to see what the financing deal will be; another oil/cash hybrid like the Al Yamamah contract (incidentally of exactly 20years ago this year) or a straight cash deal?


[edit on 21-12-2005 by sminkeypinkey]

SMUGNESS TIME!

Me, in September, when reports of the Rafales selection by Saudi Arabia was broken on this message board



Its about time it had more than the Austria sale to show though I must say

What If?

This is pure hypthetical theory but a thought has occurred to me regarding this announcement.

The timing of it seems quite a coincidence coming so soon after the revelation of the Corax Raven, this makes me wonder if perhaps the UCAV announcement wasn't deliberately timed to precede this announcement?

My thoughts are that maybe the Saudi's have been intensively briefed on the UCAV project many months previously, possibly to the point where they have been offered production UCAV's to go with their Typhoons on favourable terms to serve in the A2G role, maybe even with some Saudi money helping to fund the full scale development of an operational UCAV?

Of course this is hypothetical, but if Saudi involvement in a BAE UCAV is part of the terms then maybe BAE thought it better show some UCAV work publicly as a precursor?

[edit on 21-12-2005 by waynos]

I feel a bit sorry for France. The Rafale is an excellent platform and deserves to do well for export –the Eurofighter program was stacked against France’s needs so they were right to go split and go for the Rafale.

But good news for UK and BAE Systems.

I don't, and I don't think they would feel sorry for us, and why should they? There's nothing to be sorry about.

To say the Eurofighter was 'stacked against Frances needs' is a rather loaded statement, you could say that Frances demands were stacked against the needs of the other partner nations, but it is unnecessary, at the final reckoning the French could have been partners in Typhoon if they hadn't insisted that the other partners hand over design leadership, final assembly and all flight testing and control of export efforts to France. Such demands were obviously going to be unnacceptable and you have to wonder if France wasn't being mischievous when it did this in order to ensure the collapse of the programme and allow a free run for its own design?

In any case, the Saudi order might not be the only one secured in the near future as while searching the web I saw this piece reporting on Turkeys wish to buy 100 Typhoon's.

Turkey wants 100 Typhoons

I like the Rafale, Especially in the Matt Black on the other thread, I thought the Eurofighter was only for European marketing? now Saudi Arabia wants them!

Ok if they want it but i think they already have a good choice of fighters Panavia Tornado's, F-15's n stuff like that.

There is a US/German fighter project similar to the Typhoon, It is called the X-31. I believe Rockwell International are part of it.

Why would anything be for European marketing only?
The X-31 is not a fighter, the German element of the programme was related directly to research for the Eurofighter programme.

Saudi Arabias aircraft are getting old, however 'cool' they might be, hence they want new ones.

- No, maybe the old project name is confusing you Browno?

Eurofighter/Typhoon was always intended for export if possible, my own doubts about it ever leaving Europe were based on it being so high tech.

Kind of like the USA exporting full spec F22's to anyone outside of it's '1st world' allies (and even the '1st world allies' bit seems unlikely in the extreme to happen).



- Like I said the vast Al Yamamah deal that brought Tornado to Saudi Arabia is 20yrs old in 2005, so taking into account delivery times etc etc I expect their aircraft to be around 20yrs old by the time they get these new ones, that's coming up for replacement whatever way you look at it.

(Having said that I'd love to know how many hours the Saudi Tornados have logged; my bet is that they have a lot of life left in the airframes and engines compared to the European counterparts......but then again knowing how stingy the western airforces can be these days maybe not.

.....and I can't help wondering if they maybe will get their aircraft off the 'lines' soon leaving the Europeans to get the newer later higher spec versions?)



- The X-31 is ancient; interesting I grant you, but, ancient nevertheless.
First flight 1990, program closed 1995.

That's 10yrs worth of getting old and being stopped.
In any case it was a pure flight test experiment, not an actual operational front-line in-service fighter there, that's a huge difference.



[edit on 21-12-2005 by sminkeypinkey]

NoNoNo..........
The news didn't say that contract has been signed, which means the stuation still will be changed! I bet that Saudi Arabia will order Strike Eagle, not Eurofighter. You guys should remember several months ago they wants Rafael but no resault happened as Waynos said that only lie on politics force.

i can`t see them ordering more strike eagles - they F-15E is getting very long in the tooth now , and as good as it is , the tornado is a better `bombs in the mud` aircraft , and the F3 tornado is perfect for the long cap times they wanted.

[edit on 22-12-2005 by Harlequin]

Several Newslinks now say so.




Source

[edit on 22/12/2005 by Lonestar24]

Another case of politics, lobbying prevailing over the better Rafale.
Clearly the Rafale was the better option .... but alas, the Saudis did a 'Singapore' and handed the victory to the white elephant.

How is the Rafale the better option? It's only advantage over the Typhoon is cost. Saudi Arabia has a history of buying the best (I guess they can afford it) so why would they go for a Rafale?

Maybe the French priced it too heavily, the Swedes were so sure they would get the Austrian deal that their price was only 5% off that which the Eurofighter consortium was offering, hence Austria took the Typhoon, they'd have been crazy not to. Saab later offered a lower price but the Austrians were still so peeved off about them trying to shaft them that they told them to bugger off.

I'm fairly sure the reason the F-15's wins in Singapore and Korea were due to a very good price on those F-15s, similar to a car manufacturers 'run out' sale on a soon to be superceded model. With the dealer throwing in a few free 'extra's' to sweeten the deal.

There's a lot more to these deals than simply saying well I like this plane, how much does it cost, right I'll have 50. There are all sorts of backroom shenanigans going on. I suspect the Brits have a few sneaky deals going on with Saudi Arabia that helped them grease this through. The details probably wont surface for a while though, as is usually the case in this sort of thing.

"Clearly...better option," StealthSpy?

Opinions are cool and a right, but speculation really needs to be left to speculative subjects. You have made an unfounded assertion and one that will no doubt be vigoriously contested.

But hey, if the Rafale is "clearly" the better aircraft option, then perhaps you can convince Indian government to buy some, being that the Rafale will "clearly" be a better aircraft than those Su-30MKIs? Speculation begets speculative rebuttals.







seekerof

[edit on 22-12-2005 by Seekerof]

So, you reveal your true colours stealth spy, as I suspected with your repeated hatchet jobs of the Typhoon.

I would venture that it is actually a case of UK lobbying winning out over French lobbying.

I cannot understand why you doggedly cling to the belief that the Rafale is a better fighter than the Typhoon when the French themselves deliberately chose to make the Rafale smaller and less capable than the Typhoon in order for it to be cheaper? They don't have a problem with this (and it is prettier, I'll give them that) so why do you?

The Typhoon is universally rated as the No2 fighter behind the Raptor (accepting F-35 MIGHT change that when it appears) but you continually seem to try to post stuff that says different, even if it is only your interpretation

i`ll do stealth spy`s job for him (for the 35th time of posting):


The RBE2 radar had been in development since 1989. It was decided that the radar would receive a new phased-array antenna with full electronic scan, instead of the electro-mechanical scan employed by the Eurofighter Typhoon's Captor radar. Initially, the radar received a passive phased-array antenna, but ultimately an active electronically scanned array (AESA) will be fitted. According to French Ministry of Defense (MoD) sources, the RBE2 radar has a modest range about 100 km against fighter aircraft, but it operates in a low-probability-of-intercept (LPI) mode and is resistant to deception jamming. The Typhoon's Captor has a range of 160 km against fighters but is considered more prone to jamming and can track fewer targets. The French Air Force accepted the penalty in range reduction for the benefits of LPI and other characteristics. Moreover, in network-centric operations, a common air picture will be transmitted via the Multifunctional Information Distribution System (MIDS) to the Rafale, enabling the aircraft to make use of off-board sensors.


[edit on 22-12-2005 by Harlequin]

- Er, well excuse me if I add a little 'well they would say that, wouldn't they'
to that as a proviso.

I'll take the market's verdict long before I pay too much attention to the French sales team, oh.....um.....er, I mean 'Ministry of Defence'.



- You're surely not going to suggest or imply that this kind of real-time data linkage is something either new or unique to the French Rafale are you?

hey im just copy/pasting what Stealth Spy has said in 79 other threads.... not my opinion .


And a data link is allready in use in many airforces - heck IIRC they retrofitted it to the RAF Tornado F3`s.

- Whoops!
Slight wrong end of the stick there Harlequin, sorry about that.



- Well exactly, why on earth would anyone consider that a brand new unique selling point?
Surely it is a minimum fit requirement?

Actually I am not surprised that Saudi Arabia would purchase EF. They have enough money so the difference in price between Raf and Typhoon is not so serious for them. And what else should they buy? There is only one better plane than EF - F-22. And I think it's sure US will never sell F-22 to Saudies after all that problems with terorism. They don't want to repeat history - when they sold F-14 with Phoenixes to Iran. So what else should SA buy?
Rafale is considered slightly worse than Typhoon. For example it cannot supercruise. It may be not be much worse, but I supose Saudies want the best thing available. JSF is not there, it's not suposed to be air superiority fighter and there is the same problem as with F-22. Let's face it F-15 is half generation behind Eurofighter. I would not buy them for new aircrafdt fleet.
Then there is F-18 E/F which is hmmm nothing special. It may be comparable to EF and Rafale when equipped with better radar , but it has not the "next gen charisma".

[edit on 22-12-2005 by longbow]