Saudi Arabia is reportedly exploring a purchase of 54 multirole Dassault Rafale fighter jets from France, which could mark the first purchase by Riyadh of a French-made combat aircraft, despite decades of Paris attempting to win a deal with the kingdom.
Riyadh has officially requested a detailed quote from Dassault Aviation for a potential acquisition of 54 Rafales, the French weekly La Tribune financial newspaper reported Sunday. It has given the aerospace giant until Nov. 10 to respond.
Of course, this does not mean that a deal is imminent. The Saudis could merely be exploring their options. Nevertheless, the timing is somewhat significant.
Saudi Arabia apparently even contemplated buying as many as 100-200 Rafales, according to a previous La Tribune report from last December, which cited unnamed sources.
The premier fighters in the Royal Saudi Air Force, RSAF, are advanced American F-15SA (Saudi Advanced) and Eurofighter Typhoons from the United Kingdom, along with a fleet of aging British Panavia Tornados.
While buying another fighter type from a third country may seem excessive, Riyadh may have political reasons for doing so.
One-third of the components that make up the Eurofighter are German. Consequently, Berlin has a veto on any export of that multinational European jet and has decided to exercise it.
“There will be no decision on the delivery of Eurofighter jets to Saudi Arabia any time soon,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared in July.
Saudi Arabia signed a memorandum of intent with the United Kingdom in 2018 for the supply of 48 Typhoons in addition to the 72 it acquired under a deal signed back in 2007.
Berlin had frozen arms sales to Riyadh following the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, taking a harder line than other European countries and the United States. As Scholz’s July comments indicate, it has no intention of changing its stance and green lighting this potential sale.
Riyadh’s request for a quote for 54 jets suggests it is reaching out to France for the Rafale as an alternative to these extra Eurofighters. The request could also be Riyadh attempting to exercise leverage, pressuring the U.K. to convince Germany to reverse its stance or risk losing out on a lucrative sale to a competitor.
Such a move would certainly not be unprecedented. When Israel objected and lobbied against the United States selling Saudi Arabia 60 F-15s in the late 1970s, until then the biggest American arms sale to the Arab country, the Saudis prepared negotiations with France for the Dassault Mirage F1, the premier French fighter at the time.
As reportage from 1978 made clear, if the F-15 deal had been successfully vetoed, Riyadh would still have had an “ensured supply” of “at least an equivalent number of modern aircraft” from France. Paris could have also seized the ripe opportunity to displace — or even replace — the United States as Saudi Arabia’s leading military supplier.
And while that obviously did not happen, the negotiating strategy from that time could prove informative today.
While Germany’s blocking of the Eurofighter sale likely prompted this latest outreach to Dassault, its previously reported consideration for 100-200 French jets could have been motivated by a then-recent dispute with the United States.
After Riyadh agreed with Opec+ to cut oil production last October, angry U.S. lawmakers proposed legislation advocating freezing all American arms sales to the kingdom. If passed, such legislation could have affected the operational readiness of the RSAF’s mainstay American F-15 fighter fleet.
Consequently, it would make sense from Riyadh’s point of view to further diversify its fighter fleet so it’s not wholly reliant on any one source.
Neighboring Qatar has ordered over 100 4.5-generation fighter jets from three different Western countries in the last few years alone.
The United Arab Emirates relies on France and the U.S. for its advanced fighters and has shown a tendency to play them off each other to get what it wants.
In the late 1990s, Abu Dhabi bought 30 Mirage 2000s from France as it was negotiating a sale of the most advanced variant of the F-16 in the world at that time to show Washington it had alternatives.
More recently, to demonstrate its frustration with U.S. preconditions, it suspended a landmark deal for fifth-generation F-35 Lightning II stealth jets and immediately turned to France instead for 80 Dassault Rafales in another record-breaking deal.
Riyadh is likely using a similar playbook today. Its latest outreach to Dassault could secure an acquisition of those 48 Eurofighters or an unprecedented deal that will ultimately result in the RSAF fielding French fighters for the first time in its history.
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