Rafale is another story. The home market is small, and getting smaller. Just 180 have been ordered by France over the past 20 years, and production is running at 11 per year, a rate threatened by budget cuts (see my August 2010 letter). The export situation has been a slow-motion train wreck. France tried everything with Rafale. After well over two decades of trying, they’ve got exactly nothing. There were plenty of near-misses: UAE, Morocco, South Korea, Singapore, Brazil, etc., and some of these are still active campaigns. The low point: the Libya sales campaign. It’s very unusual for a target market to become a target for the product in question, especially in just a few short months. At least the Qaddafi regime is getting the best product demonstration imaginable. (Somewhere, there’s a desktop promotional Rafale model with Libyan Air Force markings. I want that model.)
