After a four-year hiatus, deliveries of the Rafale combat aircraft to the French armies are resuming.
Dassault Aviation* specifies that it delivered a first aircraft, the Rafale B359 (F3R standard), to the General Directorate of Armaments on December 29, which brings to 153 the number of Rafales delivered to the French forces.
The B359, intended for the Air Force and Space Force, “
is part of the so-called “tranche 4” order, notified in 2009, which covers 60 aircraft”
, specifies Dassault Aviation.
But “
in accordance with the various military programming laws, deliveries to France have been interrupted for budgetary reasons
”.
To discover
Pension reform: the answers to all your questions
During this period of frozen deliveries to the French armies, the final assembly line in Mérignac, near Bordeaux, was fueled by the successes achieved internationally by the French combat aircraft.
Since 2015 and the first contract signed with Egypt, 285 Rafales have been sold for export.
This has made it possible to increase production rates to three aircraft per month and to support the activity of Thales and Safran, Dassault Aviation's major partners on the Rafale program, as well as the ecosystem of 400 French SMEs involved.
There are now 27 Rafales to be delivered under tranche 4, to which are added 12 others ordered in 2021 by France to compensate for the twelve aircraft taken from the French fleet and resold to Greece.
The notification of a tranche 5, relating to 42 additional Rafale, including 12 to compensate for the same volume resold to Croatia, must be signed this year.
*
The Dassault group owns the “Figaro”.