sancho
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@ sancho - everybody is talking about price of eft, but going by rafale's uae deal the price the french are asking is 200+ mill per plane (9 billion euros for 62 planes)...... Is there a reason behind this highly inflated price or since this is the first time rafale is being exported so this is the first reliable source for price and earlier sources were wrong?
Hi, wanted to reply to you before on that, but was pretty busy this week and didn't found the thread anymore. If you want to compare costs of each fighter, you have to take the flyaway cost, because that includes only the cost for the base fighter, engines, radar and avionics, which should be mainly the same be it for the F3+ that France ordered, or the F3+ that is on offer in India, Brazil, or Swiss.
The cost you are refering to, are the system costs for the UAE version, which includes training, spares... for a specific lifecycle and any customer calculates that differently. Also we know that the UAE wants several changes on their version, which makes the fighter more costly as well, but the most important point is, you calculated the unit cost for Rafale from the total cost of their procurement (60 fighters, the Mirage are 62), which is not correct, because the total cost is always dependent on the number of fighters a country procures!
For example the Australian air force procured 24 x Super Hornets for a total cost of $6 billion australian dollars, by that time around $4.6 million US dollars. That means that each fighter costs around $191 US dollars totally, but the flyway price of the base F18SH is only between $55 and 70 million each.
Similarly, 85 Gripen NG was offered to the Netherlands for a total cost of around $7.6 billions in 2008, which makes around $89 millions per unit, but the flyaway cost is between $45 and 50 millions only.
For India with an order of at least 126 fighters, the flyway costs will be mainly the same, but the system cost will be decided by the number we order and the additional costs we add for training, spares...and of course the licence production that will make it more costly as well. The fact that we shortlisted the 2 most expensive fighters, but also those that offers the most ToT and industrial benefits, tells us that we are fine with paying more per unit, if we get much benefits for our industry in return as well. But the cost, ToT and offset negotiations won't be that easy!
When you compare just the reported flyaway costs, it should be like this:
Gripen NG (E/F) - $45 to 50 millions
F18SH for USN - $55 to 70 millions
Rafale for French forces - $90 millions for the air force version
EF T3A for EF partners - $118 millions
The costs for Rafale and EF includes European taxes that should not be added at our costs and are calculated at todays exchange rates, but the EF on offer for us is the T3B, which should be even costlier.