Éric Trappier, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of
Dassault Aviation presented the “2022 first half-year results” during a press
conference.
Highlights
and excerpts of the first half‐year
results
“The Rafale chosen by the United Arab Emirates to
equip their air forces in December, Dassault CEO, Éric Trappier, signed a
contract in Dubai for the supply of 80 Rafale aircraft to the UAE Air Force.
The signing took place in presence of the President of the Republic, Emmanuel
Macron, and Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, then Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi
and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE armed forces. It is the largest
contract in Dassault Aviation’s history. Its effective date was announced on 19
April 2022. It is the result of more than 45 years of trust between the UAE and
our company through The Mirage family, and in particular The Mirage 2009”.
“It is yet another demonstration of the excellence of the Rafale and the French
aviation industry. The Rafale demonstrates its versatility, efficiency and
reliability daily in many theatres of operation. It continuously integrates
feedback from the armed forces and the latest innovations to stay at the cutting
edge of technology”.
“The French Ministry of the Armed Forces, Directorate
of Aeronautical Maintenance, has awarded the Dassault Aviation a new generation
contract, Balzac, to support the French Air and Space Forces’ Mirage fleet.
This follows from the Ravel contract which guarantees excellent Rafale availability
for the armed forces. Covering a period of 14 years, this verticalised contract
includes all through life maintenance activities for the French Mirage 2000,
excluding the engine and the ejection seat”.
“On 19 January, six Rafales flown by the Greek Air
Force’s crews, took off from an east side to the Tanagra Air Base. Our CEO was
a guest at the ceremony, presided over by the Greek Prime Minister. The entry
into operational service for these first six Rafales in the Hellenic Air Force
332 Squadron clearly demonstrate the strong partnership between France and
Greece, just one year after the signature of the contract for 18 aircraft”.
“On 24 March, the CEO and the Greek Defence minister signed
a new contract for six additional Rafales in Athens in the presence of the French Minister of the Armed Forces.
This will bring the number of Rafales operated by the Hellenic Air Force to 24. This year, two
Greek Rafales also took part in the traditional 14th of July parade”.
“In late January, Dassault Aviation attended the second edition of La Fabrique
Défense trade show in Paris alongside GIFAS and the French aerospace industry.
For three days, defence and industry professionals gave a large number of young
people the chance to discover the challenges of defence and to find vocations,
training opportunities, and professions for their future”.
“On 10 February, Éric Trappier and Air Vice Marshal
Yusuf Jauhari, Head of Defence Facilities Agency for the Indonesian Defence Ministry, signed a contract in Jakarta for
the purchase of 42 latest generation Rafale aircraft in the presence of French
Defence Minister, Florence Parly. Once the contract comes into effect,
Indonesia will become the eighth country to purchase a Rafale and the seventh
international customer and the first country having never had a Dassault
aircraft to acquire new Rafales”.
“Now we're going to continue the development of work
in France on our F4 standard, which is the armed forces standard for the UAE
and for France, the launch of the productivity works to allow Batch 5 contracts
for 2023; around 42 aircraft”.
As for military support, we are delivering the
retrofits of Mirage 2000D. The Mirage 2000D will keep flying together with the
Rafale aircraft air/air and air/ground improvements. Ravel for Rafale, or ATL 2
for Ocean, and Balzac contract for the Mirage 2000D but also for the other
Mirage 2000 that will still be flying in the coming years”.
“Future Combat Air System launched in February 2020.
Phase 1 work was completed at the beginning of the year. We are waiting for the
contractualisation of the Phase 1B after Phase 1A. This contract should have
been signed at the end of last year or before the end of 2021, and we
encountered a few interpretation difficulties of what ‘prime contractor’ means
between Dassault and Airbus, and we are still at that point right now”.
“For the export support for our fleets and all the
service platforms that we're setting up to improve the support and be as close
as possible to our clients for all the Rafales that were delivered to four countries
‐ Egypt, Qatar, India and
Greece. Our training centre in Mérignac is still running, especially now, to
train pilots and Greek mechanics who have bought the Rafale”.
“The contract for the supply of 20 MALE Eurodrone systems, i.e. 60 aircraft and
their support for five years, was signed at the end of February by OCCAR and
Airbus Defence and Space, which is the prime contractor for the programme.
Dassault Aviation is one of the first three main subcontractors. It is specifically
responsible for flight controls and mission communications”.
“The Falcon 6X first production has completed a world
tour with its team of onboard engineers and technicians. This summer the 6X
will be facing the hot Middle East weather. Then it will fly low altitude routes
over the desert to test the peak efficiency of the environmental control
system. This follows on from the extreme cold tests which were carried out last
year in Iqaluit in Canada where the aircraft was tested at minus 37 degrees
Celsius. The first customer aircraft are currently being finalised at our Little
Rock facility in Arkansas”.
“Falcon 10X, we are still developing it. So, this is
an ultra‐long range aircraft. We
are developing a new cockpit. We have a technology and innovations centre. All
this was presented. The cabin; we are really insisting on that in terms of
comfort because these are long flights, because it's an ultra‐long range aircraft, and
the design has already received a certain number of awards thanks to the mock‐ups of size one that we have
manufactured and that we're taking around the world so that our future clients
might realise how pleasant it is and how efficient this cabin is once this
aircraft will be flying. The state of the programme ‐ we finished the wind
tunnel test. We have produced the first parts of the Falcon 10X. The
development of the Pearl10X engine is taking place well with 1,000 test hours.
So therefore we are quite satisfied with this development. But of course, it's
a very ambitious plan and the COVID issues have stopped us from working as we
usually do, with an integrated platform in Saint Cloud before each one goes
back to his company to carry out the ad hoc developments. So all the difficulties
in 2020/2021 can be felt on our programme. But we're still ambitious and we are
sticking to this schedule for late 2025”.
(All
photos: Dassault Aviation)
Rafale
Falcon 6X
A fully loaded Rafale off on a mission