Saudis take delivery of first Typhoon jets

[Salahadin]

Saudis take delivery of first Typhoon jets

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia has taken delivery of the first two Eurofighter Typhoons out of a massive order for 72 of the British planes that first fell into doubt over an arms scandal, state news agency SPA said on Friday.

Assistant Defence and Aviation Minister Prince Khaled bin Sultan received the two Typhoons at a ceremony with British officials at the facilities of BAE Systems, the aircraft’s manufacturer, in Wharton, England on Thursday, it said. The two fighters were the first out of an order for an eventual 72 that has been valued at up to 20 billion pounds (32.9 billion dollars), including armaments and long-term servicing. Saudi Arabia is the first country outside Europe to have the Typhoon, a multi-role aircraft produced by a BAE Systems-led consortium of European firms. The deal was first announced in August 2006, but then fell into doubt due to a British investigation into massive corruption allegations in earlier arms deals between Saudi Arabia and BAE Systems that implicated senior officials of both countries.

The investigation into the so-called Yamamah deals was called off by the British government in December 2006 on grounds of “national security” and “public interest,” and the final contract for the Typhoon aircraft was signed in September 2007. The purchase will help the Saudis upgrade their airforce from its current fleet of BAE’s 1980s-vintage Tornado F3s and US-made Boeing F-15s. Under the original deal, BAE is to deliver 24 Typhoons completely built to the Saudis, and another 48 are to be assembled inside Saudi Arabia as the country seeks to build up its own aeronautic industry capabilities.

Prince Khaled, who is also commander of the Saudi air force, said the new aircraft “are not to threaten anyone but to protect and secure the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia over the coming decades,” SPA reported. afp

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

 

[Patriot]

The Saudi pilots must be very happy..flying new shiny jets.

 

[spurdozer]

Booyaah. Up, Up and Away

 

[Ghareeb_Da_Baal]

so who is going to fly these hitech jets for RSAAF??

 

[Munir]

It is so high tech that:

-Austria wanted to cancel it
-RAF wants to lower the numbers
-Germany is also thinking about less
-It ended way lower in the ranking for The Netherlands

 

[sancho]

It is so high tech that:

-Austria wanted to cancel it
-RAF wants to lower the numbers
-Germany is also thinking about less
-It ended way lower in the ranking for The Netherlands

Please, don't you ever get bored posting things like that?
Nobody wanted, or want to cancel because the jet is not capable enough, but because of no money!
Germany is getting all ordered EFs, Spain is thinking about getting more, it is offered for India, Greece, Turkey, Japan, Switzerland right now and Romania might get used once. If you follow those competitions and trials you get nearly the same reaction from all pilots, that it is maybe the best 4++ aircraft at the moment (at least for a2a combats). The Saudi (or maybe PAF) pilots are really lucky to fly with those jets!

Here are some nice pics of the EFs for Saudi Arabia:

Warton - Saudi Handover 11.06.09

Saudi Tiff hand over show

 

[Munir]

Germany is going to cut... Well, and budget is always the easy excuse. And if you look on the net how Dutch came to the conlcusion that Eurofighter was not good enough and Rafale is definately better...

Germany Must Mull Cut in Eurofighter Order, Committee Head Says
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By Brian Parkin and Sabine Pirone

June 10 (Bloomberg) -- Germany must consider cutting the number of Eurofighters it has on order as costs outstrip the planned budget for the combat planes, said Ulrike Merten, the chairwoman of parliament’s all-party defense committee.

“We need to start talking about this -- it’s an open secret among the planes’ partner nations that needs to be addressed openly,” Merten said today in an interview in Berlin. “The plane may have reached its budget limit.”

Merten and other lawmakers from Germany’s ruling coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats are under pressure to review the Eurofighter’s budget after the Finance Ministry this month said the project faced a new cost overrun.

The federal budget is already under strain as revenue fails to keep up with government spending to fight what Chancellor Angela Merkel has said is the worst recession in 80 years. The deficit, plugged by net new borrowing, may rise to 80 billion euros ($112 billion) this year from 12 billion euros in 2008.

Merkel and her Eurofighter partners have agreed to split the third and last batch of the planes. In Germany’s case, that means buying an initial 31 planes of the 68 planes in the final tranche at a cost of 2.5 billion euros.

Yet the current federal allocation of 14.6 billion euros for a total 180 planes in their basic version “will be virtually exhausted” after the Defense Ministry this month signed for the 31 planes, according to Finance Ministry documents obtained by Bloomberg News.

 

[Munir]

Austria and some others:

Austria had signed a EUR 2 billion contract to receive 18 EADS Eurofighters plus required support (just over $2.5 billion, or about $140 million per plane), and the aircraft were already under construction in Germany. The situation changed when the leftist SPO party, whose campaign promises included canceling the deal, had to be part of the next government in the wake of the 2006 election results.

Odds are, those things don’t involve alternative fighter choices; Austria’s Luftabteilung recently retired its 1960s-era Draken fighters, and now flies rented 1970s-era Swiss F-5Es. At any rate, the translated Deutsche Welle article has a couple of errors (South Korea and Singapore made firm decisions and bought F-15s instead, and Greece canceled its 60-plane order), but is reasonably good at explaining the Austrian situation.

 

[imiakhtar]

Please, don't you ever get bored posting things like that?
Nobody wanted, or want to cancel because the jet is not capable enough, but because of no money!
Germany is getting all ordered EFs, Spain is thinking about getting more, it is offered for India, Greece, Turkey, Japan, Switzerland right now and Romania might get used once. If you follow those competitions and trials you get nearly the same reaction from all pilots, that it is maybe the best 4++ aircraft at the moment (at least for a2a combats). The Saudi (or maybe PAF) pilots are really lucky to fly with those jets!

Here are some nice pics of the EFs for Saudi Arabia:

Warton - Saudi Handover 11.06.09

Saudi Tiff hand over show

Thanks for the links to the pics Sancho.

What makes you think that the Saudis will let the PAF fly them around???

Just to add to the points you've covered, the F-35 was selected by the Dutch as a replacement for the F-16. The F-35 overall is a much better multi-role fighter than the EF, hence it was the better buy. As you rightly pointed out, to a large extent, the EF is geared for air-air combat. No doubt the platform will evolve as we saw with the Tornado.

Munir, if you hadn't noticed, the world is a little strapped for cash at the moment, the West included. You don't seem to have noticed the trillions in assets that have been wiped off the global markets That means prioritising when it comes to military spending. At the moment, NATO, and the British Army in particular is suffering from a shortage of airlift and armour in Afghanistan. There has been a huge investment by the MoD in replacing the venerable Land Rover. You can see the effects of this in Afghanistan where the Jackal, Panther and Cougar variants are going into service.

You're right. The chances are the Tranche 3 order for the EF probably won't reach original plans for 230. But that's got nothing to do with the fighter's excellent capabilities and says more about World economy and the dire situation ISAF are currently facing in Afghanistan.

Here's an interesting snippet from BBC news:

Gen David Petraeus said insurgent attacks are at their highest level since 2001.

Last week saw more than 400 attacks, eight times the rate of January 2004.


BBC NEWS | South Asia | US 'to protect Afghan civilians'

Also, you may be interested in reading the views of an RAF "expert". I'm generally quite a pessimist when it comes to the Tranche 3 order, but he certainly presents an interesting post. Scroll down for 'Jackinicko'.

Typhoon Tranche 3 Deal in Limbo [Archive] - PPRuNe Forums

 

[Hyde]

The two fighters were the first out of an order for an eventual 72 that has been valued at up to 20 billion pounds (32.9 billion dollars), including armaments and long-term servicing.

I was wondering if they had spent $32.9 billion dollars for JF-17s type Aircrafts ..... it was 2500+ (rough estimation) Aircrafts .....

72? or 2500? which is better.... and in response they would have got ingenious technology to build furthermore..... and invest more for on R&D and start relying on yourself for future versions.....

How stupid this idea is to spend 32.9 billion dollars in one project without getting sufficient ToT

 

[Arsalan]

I was wondering if they had spent $32.9 billion dollars for JF-17s type Aircrafts ..... it was 2500+ (rough estimation) Aircrafts .....

72? or 2500? which is better.... and in response they would have got ingenious technology to build furthermore..... and invest more for on R&D and start relying on yourself for future versions.....

How stupid this idea is to spend 32.9 billion dollars in one project without getting sufficient ToT

very true, with this amount of money you can take an avrage plane project to new height and JF is surely not just an average plane!

 

[sancho]

Germany is going to cut... Well, and budget is always the easy excuse. And if you look on the net how Dutch came to the conlcusion that Eurofighter was not good enough and Rafale is definately better...

As I said nobody will cut anything because EF is not capable enough and the article says nothing else. The only reason why there is talk about it is, that the whole world has money problems and paying less for EF sounds good in public before elections. Angela Merkel and the defense minister Jung repeatedly said that Germany will get the whole order and btw because of the pressure of Angela Merkel on Britain, they will get tranche 3a Eurofighters, so count on it Germany will get all too.

Austria and some others:

Austria had signed a EUR 2 billion contract to receive 18 EADS Eurofighters plus required support (just over $2.5 billion, or about $140 million per plane), and the aircraft were already under construction in Germany. The situation changed when the leftist SPO party, whose campaign promises included canceling the deal, had to be part of the next government in the wake of the 2006 election results.
At any rate, the translated Deutsche Welle article has a couple of errors (South Korea and Singapore made firm decisions and bought F-15s instead, and Greece canceled its 60-plane order), but is reasonably good at explaining the Austrian situation.

Again where is anything mentioned that says EF is not good? Also now we have 2009 and the only thing that happen was a reduction of 3 and the rest is already in service.
As I said in a2a combats there might be no better 4+ fighter, but in Singapore (it is reported that EF was fielded against F16 block 52 and won without a single loss) and in the simulation for Dutch airforce the best multi role aircraft was Rafale. Anyway at the end US fighter were chosen because of political pressure as well as in Korea.
So the only fact that speaks against EF could be it's a2g capabilities, which should be over with coming tranche 3. Oh and Greece can't cancel an order, because the competition is still running!

Greece is evaluating the Eurofighter and the Super Hornet.

Global fighter aircraft market heats up | International | Reuters

Thanks for the links to the pics Sancho.

What makes you think that the Saudis will let the PAF fly them around???

It was often said here that PAF pilots train the Saudi pilots and that they will do it with EF also, not sure about it.

 

[sancho]

I was wondering if they had spent $32.9 billion dollars for JF-17s type Aircrafts ..... it was 2500+ (rough estimation) Aircrafts .....

72? or 2500? which is better.... and in response they would have got ingenious technology to build furthermore..... and invest more for on R&D and start relying on yourself for future versions.....

How stupid this idea is to spend 32.9 billion dollars in one project without getting sufficient ToT

I think you are mistaken, that is the system price including several years of traing, service and so on. The price of those 72 fighters in 2006 was 4.43 billion pounds ($8.86 billion) .

Saudis Pay 4.43 Billion Pounds for 72 Eurofighters (Update5) - Bloomberg.com

 

[Munir]

A.... Did we expect something normal? The Saudi's can hardly be called islamic people. They support terrorism in Pakistan. They are the key behind Obama. And yes, they ruined Pakistani politics by sending Nawaz back... And yes, the Eurofihter is another huge corruption scandal. Just like the Tornado El Yammie deal... They thought that someone would not expect a repetition... Surely it is the best aircraft... The best to get dirty jobs done.

BTW, the swiss are probably the worst in the world with their dirty bank accounts... So, it is kind of fingerpointing which is hardly objective.

>>>Massive BAE bribering swiss TV report
A very well documented 1h investigative swiss TV report about massive frauds cases over the Typhoon in Saudi Arabia and the GRIPEN in Czech republic and south Africa. The swiss are very worried to see such type of practises at home...

Many interviews with militaries, politics, journalists, association, OCDE etc...

apparatlty the fraud in Saudi Arabia is close to 1 billion £ !! and the former south african defense ministrer got 100 Millions euros to accept the gripen...Very strong allegation of corruption in Czech republic...Impressive how the trial was quelled by the british ! Some OCDE guys were threatened even physically sometimes or to lose their jobs...Really frightening

Austria is also very suspected...the air chief's wife percieved 80000€ from EADS to start her own firm, he was sacked...

 

[nwmalik]

but then u go to the same people whom u call all these things and BEG.
please dont be a hypocrate.