Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) News and Discussions

[John Fedup]

Unlikely, if the RCAF is looking for a replacement fighter aircraft which can be made NORAD compatible quickly and easily. It might be able to work if the RCAF wanted to or was willing to run two separate pools of fighter aircraft, one to meet NORAD missions and another which might only need to meet NATO standards.

Two jets might be an option if the IOTUS continues his BS. The political pressure to limit US kit may become an insurmountable problem.

 

[seaspear]

My thoughts of such a purchase would be that Canada could have its own production of such an aircraft not subject to foreign interreference in upgrades or usage

 

[Todjaeger]

My thoughts of such a purchase would be that Canada could have its own production of such an aircraft not subject to foreign interreference in upgrades or usage

The practical problems with that is that any Canadian order would be rather small, so that the costs to setup the production facility would increase the costs per aircraft. Making this even worse is that the production run would also be fairly short meaning that after a few years the production line would stop and the facility would either close or need to be re-tooled to do something else, which in turn would mean that after a few years Canada would not be able to order more domestic production.

Also, trying to run a small fleet of well, anything really, and keep them upgraded can get quite expensive, especially if any/all upgrade programmes are only done domestically as opposed to part of a larger overall upgrade path or spiral development. If Canada were to start operating the Rafale for example, with perhaps 40-50 aircraft, and want to manage aircraft upgrades independently, that the costs and technical requirements to do so would be solely burden Canada. As expensive as some of the updates and upgrades to aircraft like the P-8 might be, the per aircraft cost for some of them is not really all that high, because at this point there is close to 200 aircraft in service worldwide.

 

[seaspear]

India of course has entered an agreement to manufacture the Rafale

Dassault Aviation partners with Tata Advanced Systems to manufacture Rafale fighter aircraft fuselage for India and other global markets - Press kits

Dassault Aviation and Tata Advanced Systems Limited have signed four Production Transfer Agreements to manufacture the Rafale fighter aircraft fuselage in India. © Dassault Aviation - S. Randé

www.dassault-aviation.com

.

Big defence boost! Rafale fighter aircraft fuselages to be made by Tata & Dassault in India; first time outside France - Times of India

India Business News: Tata Advanced Systems will manufacture Rafale fighter aircraft fuselages in India, marking the first production of these components outside France. Th

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

I understood three hundred of the Rafale to have been built so far with more on order for other countries

 

[Todjaeger]

I understood three hundred of the Rafale to have been built so far with more on order for other countries

Right now it looks like a total of about 300 have been built, with perhaps 200 more on order or in production. This total is of all types and versions.

This could permit some economies of scale in terms of future upgrades, but only if the upgrades a given country sought were also being sought and done in conjunction with upgrades by other users/the majority of users.

Therefore, if Canada wished to maintain independence in terms of Rafale upgrades in terms of foreign interference, this would mean that Canada would need to be the one doing the development and upgrades which can be quite risky and expensive. Given how small a Rafale fleet the RCAF might operate, there would not be many aircraft to spread any upgrade development costs over which means both that Canada would likely have a high per aircraft cost upgrade, but also that other smaller Rafale users would probably be more apt to go with upgrades France/Dassault develops for the Rafale, which could very well be less expensive due to greater scale of upgrades.