Eurofighter pitches Typhoon to UAE as Rafale deal in final stages

[Galaxy]

Eurofighter pitches Typhoon to UAE as Rafale deal in final stages

Sun Nov 13, 2011 6:37am EST

Nov 13 (Reuters) - The European arms consortium Eurofighter has been invited to brief officials from the United Arab Emirates on the Typhoon combat jet, manufacturers said, in a surprise overture likely to disappoint France as it tries to finalise a sale of the Rafale.

A spokesman for the consortium from Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain confirmed a report on the recent briefing in industry publication Flightglobal.com, but declined further comment.

The publication said the briefing by UK officials took place in October in response to a request from the UAE, which has held long-running talks with France over a purchase of up to 60 Dassault-built Rafale fighters.

The move was disclosed hours before the Dubai Air Show, where both jets faced off on Sunday in acrobatic flying displays.

A fighter deal is not expected at the show.

But the progress of talks on the Rafale and potential U.S. arms purchases by the UAE loom large, where marketers are expected to seize the chance to extol the performance of their respective weapons in Libya.

Dassault and UAE officials were not immediately available for comment.

France said in October it was in the late stages of talks to sell Rafale fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates.

Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said the two sides were in "final discussions" and a deal was "extremely probable."

"It seems like a way of galvanising the process," Longuet said in said in response to the Eurofighter report. "Everyone is doing is as one would expect. We are in a final stage of negotiations and the barest flicker of an eyelid can make a difference of about 100 million euros."

The UAE has been in talks with France since 2008 over the purchase of 60 Rafale jets, at a price estimated at $10 billion, to replace a fleet of Mirage 2000s it bought in 1983.

The French company has still not found a foreign buyer for the multi-role Rafale, billed as one of the most effective but also one of the most expensive fighter jets in the world.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has handed the task of sealing a deal with the UAE to his foreign minister, Alain Juppe, in the hope of concluding something by year-end.

The Eurofighter is built by Britain's BAE Systems, Finmeccanica of Italy and European aerospace group EADS on behalf of Germany and Spain.

Competition to sell fighters is intensifying amid rising security tensions in the Gulf and pressure on domestic Western defence budgets, which has prompted U.S. and European manufacturers to step up efforts to find exports.

French arms sales fell 37 percent to 5.12 billion euros in 2010, according to figures released earlier this month.

Pakistan offers cut-price fighter jet | Reuters

 

[Galaxy]

UAE Weighs Typhoon for Combat Jet Order in Blow to Dassault

By Andrea Rothman - Nov 13, 2011 4:48 PM GMT+0530

The United Arab Emirates has asked Britain for information on its Typhoon combat jet, setting up a possible competition with Dassault Aviation SA (AM) on an order that the French manufacturer had been confident to win.

British government officials met with officials from Abu Dhabi in mid-October to provide details about the plane's performance, as the United Arab Emirates seeks to replace its Mirage fighter planes with more modern aircraft, a senior official at Eurofighter GmbH said today at the Dubai Air show.

The Typhoon, marketed as Eurofighter within Europe, has won orders from U.K, Germany, Italy and Spain, which represent the four countries that participate in the project. The jet has also been sold to Saudi Arabia and Austria, while Dassault's Rafale has failed so far to win a single export order.

French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet said Oct. 17 that he saw a "very strong" probability that the United Arab Emirates would place an order for Rafale planes.

Dassault is now building only one Rafale a month on its production line, to supply the French military. Winning an order from the UAE, which is expected to buy 60 planes, or from elsewhere would help cut the costs of maintaining a production line. Officials from the UAE couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Dassault and Eurofighter are also facing off in India, where the government is seeking to place an order valued at an estimated $11 billion. India has said it may select the winner from the two contenders this year.

Eurofighter is an alliance of European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co., the U.K.'s BAE Systems Plc and Italy's Finmeccanica SpA. (FNC)

UAE Weighs Typhoon for Combat Jet Order in Blow to Dassault - Bloomberg

 

[Galaxy]

Big Bad Blow To Rafale, UAE Punches Out

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2011

Calling this bad news for Dassault is like saying Luca Brasi is a rough man. The unexpected words of Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed on Wednesday -- released through a series of innocent looking tweets, no less -- will have created an exit wound the size of a grapefruit in the psyche of the supremely jinxed French fighter programme. A splendid fighter plane that nobody wants to buy. With this latest, decidedly rough ejection by the UAE, there's no telling where things stand for Dassault.

If you haven't been keeping up, France said it was poised to win a $10-billion deal from the UAE for 60 Rafales, a deal it has negotiating for years. On Nov 12, a day ahead of the Dubai Air Show, it became known that the "near-final" deal wasn't actually a deal at all -- and that arch-rivals Eurofighter had been invited to submit details about the Typhoon (for which they'll be in a mad scramble right now, I imagine). And today, boom. A handful of tweets by the Crown Prince brought it down with all the gentleness of a guillotine. Sample this:

"Thanks to President Sarkozy, France could not have done more diplomatically or politically to secure the Rafale deal. Regrettably Dassault seem unaware that all the diplomatic and political will in the world cannot overcome uncompetitive and unworkable commercial terms." (Somehow, "ouch" doesn't quite say it.)

Reuters says its sources pointed to Dassault's "arrogance" as the reason behind frustration both in the French government and in the UAE. Dassault is presumably in too much shock to comment officially just yet, or may be, at the very least making an effort to confirm that this is indeed curtains in the Emirates. Either way, as FlightGlobal's Steve Trimble wrote a few days ago, "uch a loss would surely be long remembered in the industry as yet another can't-miss deal that only the French could mess up."

Yeah, we're all thinking the same thing: Where does this leave things on the MMRCA?

Livefist: Big Bad Blow To Rafale, UAE Punches Out

 

[sukhish]

couple of days ago, there was an article that french was set to secure this deal. at that time everybody was congratulating Armand. I said at that point that the deal is no deal until it is signed. lookd the UEA is not going to but french after all, unless they give full TOT and bring down there prices.