Company Leaders Predict Good Years for Rafale, F-16
By PIERRE TRAN, PARIS
France’s Dassault Aviation foresees exporting about 300 of its Rafale jet fighters in the next seven or eight years, as air forces worldwide modernize their fleets, Executive Chairman Charles Edelstenne said.
Of the 20,000 fighter aircraft worldwide, between 8,000 and 10,000 would need to be taken out of service in that period, but the replacements probably would be on a basis of one new plane for every two old ones, Edelstenne told reporters here June 10, ahead of the Paris Air Show. Half of that market would be open to non-U.S. aircraft, typically buyers who do not buy American or want a second source of supply.
Thus, some 2,000 to 2,500 fighters likely would be needed in the next seven or eight years, and assuming Saint-Cloud-based Dassault maintains its 13 percent to 15 percent share of the world fighter market, that means potential sales of around 300 Rafale swing-role aircraft, he predicted.
“The Rafale program has reached a level of maturity which makes it competitive on export markets,†Edelstenne said.
Separately, Robert Stevens, president and chief executive of Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin, forecast potential exports of between 100 and 200 of the company’s F-16 fighter in the coming years. Potential buyers include Pakistan and India, he told reporters during a June 12 pre-air show dinner.
Lockheed expects to continue the F-16 production line after 2008, which would avoid a break in fighter output before full-scale manufacture of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, slated to begin in 2010, Stevens said. The F-16 has been in production for 30 years, and Lockheed Martin has an order book of almost 200 aircraft.
Meanwhile, Dassault Aviation has picked Thales to develop the datalink system for the European unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV), dubbed Neuron, being built as a technology demonstrator, Thales said in a June 14 statement.
Thales plans to use high-rate and low-rate datalinks to connect the UCAV to ground stations. The high-rate connection will be compliant with the NATO interoperable datalink standard STANAG 7085 and will permit secure transfer of video, images and radar, as well as command-and-control data for the aircraft.
The low-rate connection, on a different frequency band, offers a high level of data integrity.
Also at the air show, Raytheon displayed a new air defense missile system, the Surface Launched Medium Range Air to Air Missile, or SL-AMRAAM. The missile is a derivative of Raytheon’s AMRAAM weapon carried on fighter aircraft, and has an integrated fire control system and TPQ 36 radar, with a range of 75 kilometers.
By PIERRE TRAN, PARIS
France’s Dassault Aviation foresees exporting about 300 of its Rafale jet fighters in the next seven or eight years, as air forces worldwide modernize their fleets, Executive Chairman Charles Edelstenne said.
Of the 20,000 fighter aircraft worldwide, between 8,000 and 10,000 would need to be taken out of service in that period, but the replacements probably would be on a basis of one new plane for every two old ones, Edelstenne told reporters here June 10, ahead of the Paris Air Show. Half of that market would be open to non-U.S. aircraft, typically buyers who do not buy American or want a second source of supply.
Thus, some 2,000 to 2,500 fighters likely would be needed in the next seven or eight years, and assuming Saint-Cloud-based Dassault maintains its 13 percent to 15 percent share of the world fighter market, that means potential sales of around 300 Rafale swing-role aircraft, he predicted.
“The Rafale program has reached a level of maturity which makes it competitive on export markets,†Edelstenne said.
Separately, Robert Stevens, president and chief executive of Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin, forecast potential exports of between 100 and 200 of the company’s F-16 fighter in the coming years. Potential buyers include Pakistan and India, he told reporters during a June 12 pre-air show dinner.
Lockheed expects to continue the F-16 production line after 2008, which would avoid a break in fighter output before full-scale manufacture of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, slated to begin in 2010, Stevens said. The F-16 has been in production for 30 years, and Lockheed Martin has an order book of almost 200 aircraft.
Meanwhile, Dassault Aviation has picked Thales to develop the datalink system for the European unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV), dubbed Neuron, being built as a technology demonstrator, Thales said in a June 14 statement.
Thales plans to use high-rate and low-rate datalinks to connect the UCAV to ground stations. The high-rate connection will be compliant with the NATO interoperable datalink standard STANAG 7085 and will permit secure transfer of video, images and radar, as well as command-and-control data for the aircraft.
The low-rate connection, on a different frequency band, offers a high level of data integrity.
Also at the air show, Raytheon displayed a new air defense missile system, the Surface Launched Medium Range Air to Air Missile, or SL-AMRAAM. The missile is a derivative of Raytheon’s AMRAAM weapon carried on fighter aircraft, and has an integrated fire control system and TPQ 36 radar, with a range of 75 kilometers.