SHAH ALAM: C Etai La Rafale, It was the Rafale. Back on April Fools Day 2017 I wrote a post – in French no less – that the government had signed a contract for the Dassault Rafales. We did not of course, though we came close in just a few days earlier to sign the contract. Even the French president then came to town in a last ditch effort to get the then administration to sign the deal, no matter how many, eight or 18 aircraft.
It was not to be of course. Although it was the the Rafale that had been chosen for the MRCA programme beating out the Eurofighter Typhoon. Indeed if we had signed the contract back in 2017, it is likely that RMAF will be taking delivery of the first aircraft late this year.
The first of six Rafales, ordered by India in September, 2016 is expected to be flown home this month. The delivery would have come sooner but like most other things, it was affected by the Covid 19 pandemic. Qatar which ordered 36 Rafales in 2015, received its first Rafales in June, last year.
Why I am writing about this then? I was talking with my usual industry sources last week and when the MRCA programme was mentioned, they agreed that the Rafale had been chosen ahead of the Typhoon back then. The only consolation for them is that the government did not go ahead with the Rafale contract.
A small consolation perhaps as the new RMAF MRCA will probably be decided in the next decade or so. A lifetime away, really.
— Malaysian Defence
View Comments (221)
on the hindsight, we are really2 lucky not to have signed for the rafales then.
if we did, right now we would be in a deeper pile of xxxxx than we are in currently.
It will destroy our airforce overall capability, with no money for MPA, MALE UAV, air defence radars and LCA LIFT probably till 2030.
With the rafale our airforce fighter fleet in 2030 will look like this
8 Rafale 10 yrs old
18 Su-30mkm 20 yrs old
8 F/A-18 Hornet 33 yrs old
13 Hawk 208 38 yrs old
5 Hawk 108 38 yrs old
Without the rafales we can get our LCA/LIFT instead, and reduce the fighter types to just 3.
Then the issue of being stuck with a fighter that is low in quantity, high operating costs, and not much difference in capability to our current MKMs for the next 40 years or so. By 2030 we will regress to probably the weakest air force in south east asia, with no mpa or awacs as a large portion of our aircraft is in need to be urgently replaced, while other air forces can focus to buy 5th gen MRCA at that time. There is no way if we buy the rafales, we can have enough money to buy LCA/LIFT, new 5th gen MRCA, MPAs and AWACS at the same time post 2030.
@...
More than just the monetary burden is the capability gap. If we had bought Rafales, no hope for us to get 5th gen stealth planes in at least another 15-25 years. By then we would be flying 4.5gen planes in an airspace filled with hostile 5th gen planes. Fortunately the previous previous Government had more sense and sensibility to pull out before too late.
@ joe
" Fortunately the previous previous Government had more sense and sensibility to pull out before too late "
That was mostly out of luck rather than a conscious decision taking our future capability into account.
Probably those decision makers lament the cancellation for the missed millions they could have made rather than happy to ensure we get 5th gen stealth fighters when the time comes.
We were also lucky that plans to acquire Tornado IDRs and later F-20s were shelved.
Knowing our penchant for TOTs/offsets Dassault offered us the possibility of local assembly. A disaster in the making given the lack of scale and the fact that the taxpayer would have had to pay for the assembly set up; with little or no chance of us recouping the costs.
That only true if we indeed get 5th gen by 2035 the latest..but i highly doubt it..so lets buy lcas first with additional hornets and mkms and uav/ucav too..
@ firdaus
At least we will have the option then in 2035. With Rafales, we will not have the means to get those. Not when we also need to replace the hawks and other stuff that we deferred
@...
Sometimes, a battle outcome depended on luck. I will take this last minute pullback as a win no matter what the cause of it. Post COVID, we would certainly faced difficulties paying for them.
@Firdaus
I wholeheartedly concur with your plan but it still doesn't justify getting Rafales especially when we already have MKMs with better capabilities. IMHO realistically we will likely start to get MRCA (hopefully 5th gen) in 2040 or thereabouts, provided our economy holds steady post COVID.
"doesn’t justify getting Rafales especially when we already have MKMs with better capabilities"
Yes and no. The MKM has greater range and payload, the Rafale has the advantage of a smaller RCS and can supercruise. The Rafale also has more advanced avionics and pilot interface. For that matter, there is a mistaken belief that the MKM has Rafale avionics or can deploy French weapons. Being a Western aircraft, the Rafale is easier to integrate into a networked force comprising Western components, which ultimately is more important than the platform's performance itself.
"I will take this last minute pullback as a win no matter what the cause of it."
Decisions on what to buy and how much to spend are made with budgetary assumptions in mind.The fact that budgetary circumstances changed later may make it fortunate that we didn't buy an MRCA, but it does not change the fact that we've left a pressing requirement unfilled all these years.
I don't believe the Rafale is the right aircraft for us- it is simply too expensive. I would prefer a cheaper platform that leaves us able to afford an AEW. We were offered Gripen, but even that would be considered too expensive for us today.
@ joe
on covid-19
So far malaysia has not needed to take emergency loans to counter the spread of covid-19, unlike the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia.
We are in a precarious situation in our nationhood history. Yes we are facing a pandemic, but we are also facing a threat of colonization of our seas, which has no precedence in human history. We cannot afford to reduce our defence budget allocation, and seeing all the signs IMO we can afford to ride out the economic recession caused by this pandemic without much trouble.
@ AM
" For that matter, there is a mistaken belief that the MKM has Rafale avionics or can deploy French weapons "
Our MKM does have the same HUD, MFD, IFF, helmet, targeting pods as the Rafale. France actually offered the Mica missile for MKM but we did not take the offer because of cost. Su-30MKI/MKM is the first russian aircraft designed from the start to use NATO standard MIL-STD-1553 databus, which makes integrating any western avionics and weapons straightforward.
The Rohde & Schwarz software defined radio in the MKM (which we have them from new, and indian air force learning the hard way the importance of SDR when their MKI faced with jamming from pakistan) can even be used as a datalink, maybe not a link 16 standard datalink, but a datalink nonetheless.