Podcast: Inside Three Major Fighter Decisions

Aviation Week editors provide context and insights into Finland’s decision to buy the F-35, the UAE’s deal for 80 Rafales and Canada’s looming fighter decision and look ahead at what’s next for the market.

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Rush transcript:

Jen DiMascio:

Hi and welcome to the Check 6 podcast. I'm Jen DiMascio, the executive editor for defense and space, and I'm here with Defense Editor, Steve Trimble and London Bureau Chief, Tony Osborne. It's been a remarkable couple of weeks, starting with a big announcement out of the UAE that it would purchase 80 Rafale fighters, along with the news out of Canada that Boeing's FA18 would be ousted from competing for its fighter replacement program. And then the widely anticipated news from Finland that it would purchase 64 F35s over the next 20 years. Steve, can you put this moment into a bit of context for us?

Steve Trimble:

Yeah, sure. So I mean there's been an extraordinary few weeks. Two of the big long-awaited contract selections have been made and a third has gotten whittled down to the last two competitors. So a year ago, what we were talking about was the surprising move in the United States to kind of take a second look at the fourth generation fighters. You know, obviously by that point had already been purchased. The air force was talking about this new block 4.5, not block, but a 4.5 generation fighter clean sheet design that might replace the F16s rather than the original plan, which was to replace all those with F-35As. And the Navy obviously was still moving forward with Super Hornet Block IIIs. And we were talking about how this sort of moment for the re appreciation of fourth generation aircraft in the US might play into some of these international competitive evaluations.

Steve Trimble:

If the US wasn't even sure about how many F-35s it needs just at a moment where Switzerland and Finland and Canada and India were all looking at... Well India, not looking at fifth generation, but those other three, how would that affect or influence their decisions. And obviously we see so far it hasn't diminished their enthusiasm for fifth generation fighters at all in Europe, especially when you think about Switzerland back in June, selecting the F-35 over fourth generation alternatives was even probably a bigger shock than what we saw in Finland doing the same thing, raking the F-35 ahead, in terms of both evaluation and cost over even the Gripen paired with globalized Super Hornets package with Growlers, obviously the Typhoon, and Rafale.

Steve Trimble:

So now there's sort of a swing-back, the pendulum has sort of swung back now to sort of the fifth generation side, and so what we're going to see is for the fourth generation fighter programs the time is kind of running out on some of these programs. Rafale is pretty safe, given all the programs it's won over the past year, especially, but Canada... Gripen's still involved and the next big competition coming down the line is India. And for a few of these companies and fighter production lines, that is, I'm not sure if it's make or break, but it's become very important to win that deal.

Jen DiMascio:

Well, Tony, I wanted to talk to you a bit about the Finland competition. You were fairly certain that the F-35 was going to win, but what was most interesting to you about how that deal came together?

Tony Osborne:

Well, yes, greetings from my dentist in Ankara [Turkey], bit of an odd place to be. Speaking about fourth and fifth generation fighters from... I have to say, actually, Jen, I can't say I was going to of predict F-35 as the winner for Finland. I think a lot of that changed post Switzerland in July when the F-35 won there, which was real surprising cause I would've had my money on the Rafale. I think what's interesting in this case, the F-35 has been selected essentially in every European fighter program, apart from Germany over the last five years. We've obviously seen Belgium, Italy and Switzerland, more recently Denmark and the Netherlands, they've all gone down the F-35 group. I think what's won it to what swung it for...I mean, obviously there was a lot of potential opportunities for Finland in terms of going towards Gripen.

Tony Osborne:

There were a lot of options for Finnish industry provided by the numerous countries. I think what's won it is obviously like that fifth generation capability that obviously we hear a lot about the fact that they had a full complement of 64 aircraft being offered. Not everyone, not all the nations, not all the tenders offered that, but also sort of security supply system, which was a really interesting offer. So Finnish industry has been offered the ability to produce front forward fuselages for the aircraft. It's also going to remain part of that global supply chain. And then when Finland's borders close in the event of conflict, when it can't be aligned with any other nation, it will have the ability to...it will have a source stockpile of spare parts, but it'll also be able to undertake repairs of more than a hundred components of the aircraft, and it will support the global fleet as well. So it's actually getting a really very independent fleet compared to perhaps what some of the other nations have got.

Jen DiMascio:

Why do you think Finland was able to secure such a deal?

Tony Osborne:

I think it's very strict rules that Finland put in place in order to skew this. I think the US obviously was very keen to get Finland on board to get yet another F-35 fleet into the region. Obviously Norway and Denmark have already selected it. And I think as some of the other sort of competitors have said, it's very difficult to compete with F-35, but it's even more difficult to compete with the US Air Force and what they can offer as a through partnership and all that sort of thing.

Jen DiMascio:

Wanted to swing over to the long running saga in Canada and, Steve, ask you a little bit about that. Canada's obviously an original F-35 partner, but the Trudeau government said when it was elected that it was not going to buy them. And now we see Boeing on the sidelines, so what's going on there?

Steve Trimble:

I was just writing about this a week or two ago, but I mean, it's just amazing how these things can shift over time, not least in the UAE where as Tony I'm sure remembers at the 2011 Dubai air show, that's when we thought we were going to see the Rafale deal was in 2011. And it had been building up for a few years that they were going to buy the rafales and it was a 60 aircraft order. And we all went to the 2011 Dubai air show expecting to see that deal signed. And at the end of it, we didn't get a deal. And in fact, we got the Sheik Zaid, deputy supreme commander of the armed forces, calling out Dassault for their unworkable bid pricing proposal. Of course, I mean, it took 10 years to sort out, but they finally did.

Steve Trimble:

In the case of Canada. I mean, another sort of kind of weird sort of turn of events where the F-35 had been selected by the Harper government. That selection was criticized significantly by Justin Trudeau, the prime minister. At the time, he wasn't the prime minister, but he became the prime minister in 2015. During his election campaign in 2015, it was one of his campaign platforms that he would not accept F-35 selection that wasn't done after a competitive Tinder process. You know, once he got elected in 2015, he scrapped the deal that the Harper government had made to buy F-35s and sort of reopened things to competition. But in the process, he actually selected the super hornet for an interim buy of 18 aircraft in 2016. And so the plan was to start replacing the CF-18 fleet, the Hornet fleet that they have today with an interim group of 18 aircraft, and then have a competition for the rest of it. Of course, that would give Boeing this sort of a huge foot in the door to winning the whole thing.

Steve Trimble:

So that 18 aircraft interim buy was huge for the Super Hornet in Canada, and it seemed like it was going to almost make this a done deal, especially given the Trudeau government's sort of opposition to the F-35 in the first place. Of course, some things happened, Boeing decided to sort of prioritize the interests of its commercial business and filed an anti-dumping claim against Bombardier for a deal over 75 CSeries aircraft at Delta Airlines in the US. Bizarrely, Boeing lost the anti-dumping complaint, the International Trade Commission threw it out. But before that happened, Bombardier was forced to sell the CSeries program to Airbus, and Trudeau, in kind of a fit of pique over Boeing's sort of cheek in having just being given a huge fighter contract by his administration and to basically launch this trade assault on Canada's largest commercial aircraft company, ripped up the interim buy for 18 aircraft and sort of restarted the whole process, which now Boeing has been disqualified from competing in the final phase for.

Steve Trimble:

So, I mean, Boeing had this contract in its hands it seemed, and now they have no chance of winning, and the F-35 and Gripen are the only two contenders. Interestingly, Rafale dropped out in 2018, Dassault dropped out, withdrew Rafale, and Eurofighter also withdrew the Typhoon. I mean, we heard at the time there were hints the reason why they did that was because they thought this thing was sort of rigged for the F-35 to win ultimately. So they decided it wasn't worth participating. So we'll see how that evolves with the Gripen still in the competition, but that should be decided next year.

Jen DiMascio:

And then the other big deal was the Rafale capping a string of big orders for Dassault. I'm wondering if you can give a snapshot of what's happening there, what that means for the company?

Tony Osborne:

I think the key thing with the UAE Rafale deal is that this is no way linked to F35. And so Rafale is a completely separate deal. There should be...and we've seen it a lot actually on Twitter and the media that Rafale has beaten out the F-35, and it clearly hasn't. UAE will always demand two or maybe even three type fighter fleet. Part of that is because the Rafale gives the UAE access to long range standoff weaponry, such as the Scalp missile, and these are weapons that the Americans won't necessarily supply to the Middle East. I think the longest range weapon the US has said it would supply is like SLAM-ER, which is...I think it's a sort of a sub 200 kilometer range weapon, whereas Scalp potentially... Officially it's around 300 kilometers within terms of NTCR, but it's probably longer range.

Tony Osborne:

So, it's a critical aircraft to be able to carry that weapon along with numerous other weapons. It gives it sort of security of supply, security of operation. If you look back at recent years, the UAE's Mirage 2000 fleet has sort of been deployed all over the place, and to some very nefarious places that the F16s have not gone to. So look at Egypt, look at its support to Yemen, sort of other deployments around the world where the F16 is simply not allowed to go, or perhaps the US puts in place some limitations on its use. So, I mean, that's an incredibly important decision that has no influence on F35. I think F35 will still be a done deal regardless. And depending on what's coming up in the US Senate.

Tony Osborne:

And of course it's massively important to the Rafale. I mean, as Steve alluded to, this has been on the go for many, many years, 2011, obviously not quite a done deal back then, but for Dubai air shows ever since it was always a - will it be a Rafale or will it be Eurofighter? Obviously we now have that decision. It's a really big win for France post AUKUS and we know that there are other potential opportunities for the Rafale in the running, so it's really significant. We've got you potentially Indonesia in the running and maybe some follow up orders from India and so on. So no, it's absolutely massive and it will be really interesting now. Yeah. Seeing how the development of Rafale is influenced by this. Yeah. There's still opportunities out there, for example, for the Euro fighter, but I think Rafale is now actually taking the lead in terms of those export numbers. I think it's now sort of 240 Rafale to 180 Eurofighters. So that's really becoming quite an interesting competition between them now.

Steve Trimble:

And if I can chime in there, I mean what the UAE deal does for Rafale is give them a solid backup with Indonesia, possibly coming along in the near future with another order. So if India doesn't go with Rafale there, this gives them still quite a bit of runway before they have to get their next deal. But like I said, I mean, time is kind of running out on some of these fourth-generation fighters, the KF21 Boramae is supposed to roll out and have its first flight next week, or sorry, next year, not next week, which is... I mean that's the sort of Vanguard of this new generation of 4.5 generation aircraft you got TF-X, you got the Sukhoi Checkmate, perhaps, maybe or maybe not, and then of course the six generation designs in Japan and Europe, there's a couple of them in Europe.

Steve Trimble:

And of course the United States between Next Generation Air Dominance with the Air Force and Navy. So like I said, clock is kind of ticking on some of these programs. Of course, there will always be sort of a market or demand for something below those kinds of requirements. You know, we see Philippines is about to make decisions, perhaps in the next year or so, between Gripen CDs, and F16s. Colombia's looking at new fighters, Peru is looking at new fighters. Again, those are sort of used F16s or Brazilian made Gripen or used Rafales. Those are all those sort of markets for those kinds of aircraft. So yeah, there is some opportunity left for those programs, but somebody needs to...a couple of these programs, perhaps Gripen, perhaps Super Hornet, Typhoon, they need deals pretty soon in order to keep those lines going beyond say 2025, 2026.

Tony Osborne:

And just to add actually briefly, I think also it sort of really secures the future of Rafale. I mean, the current French roadmap, so when the UAE gets its aircraft, they will be F4 standard capable of firing the new MICA NG. They'll have new communications capabilities that will sort of allow them to become part of this future combat cloud that Europe is planning with its future combat air system, and potentially allow it to communicate with sort of these remote carriers, sort of unmanned air systems, loyal wing man as we might call them. And then of course that would roadmap extends into F5, F6, maybe F7 and out into the 2060s. And so countries see a future with Rafale because the Rafale is going to be the aircraft that flies with France alongside the [Future Air Combat System]. So nations see a future with Rafale, and that's why I think Rafale is still selling. I'm wondering whether the same count, perhaps some of the other fighters, perhaps like Gripen or the Eurofighter.

Jen DiMascio:

Well, that's a really interesting take into the future. Unfortunately, we're going to have to end it here. Thanks for listening to another edition of check six, which is available for download on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play. Join us again for the next edition of check six and happy holidays.