There are several reasons why a Rafale may be considered superior to another aircraft:
- It may be because of its qualities when it is in the air.
- It may be because it is in the air more often than other aircraft.
The discussion I had with
@randomradio is about the first quality, whereas the question you are asking now is about the second quality.
To answer the latter question, yes, a Rafale is worth 3 Mirage 2000s when asked to do a complex mission where it is heavily loaded and where it will use its omnirole qualities. This is mainly due to the fact that it does not need an escort in its air-to-ground role and yet it carries a heavier load than a Mirage, farther, which also reduces the use of tankers.
For the first question I describe how, in France, the qualities of the Rafale have allowed us to sell second-hand Rafales to Greece and Croatia without any disadvantage to our air force.
The information from our proposals to Finland shows us that in addition to this increase, the Rafale is capable of being used at a much higher rate than that which has been in force up to now: 350 hours over a month and 1000 hours over a year! It is therefore likely that the limit of 250 hours per year is only to spare the potential for a 30-year service life.
And this increase in duration explains why we are suddenly able to offer second-hand Rafales for export.
Under these conditions, 300 hours per year could have been used. But as we did not know, we consumed 250 hours per year!
We therefore have a "reserve" of hours that we have saved, which I will calculate approximately.
We produced operational aircraft for the air force from 2006 to 2016 (only 1 aircraft in 2017, I neglect), that is 10 years, and we had 106 aircraft for the air force (and space). During this time we have flown 10*106 * 250/2 = 132500 h to which we must add the last four years, i.e. 4*106*250 = 106000 h, i.e. 238500 h in total (at the end of 2020).
We have saved 1/5 of this amount, i.e. 47500 hours.
This reserve allows us to ensure the transition to export withdrawals.
This transition would take place over 10 years: 4 years to wait for the production of the new aircraft during which the remaining aircraft must consume more than their normal annual potential. 2 neutral years during which the new aircraft provide the additional hours to compensate for the levies and 4 years during which the new aircraft reimburse the hours that have been lost, thus allowing the old aircraft to consume less than their normal annual potential.
The air force will be left with 106 - 24 = 82 aircraft which will have to provide 106 *250 = 26500h or 323 h per aircraft. During the production of the 24 new aircraft the objective is to compensate the flight hours of the aircraft sold second hand with the new aircraft in production. As there will be an average of 12 new aircraft over this two-year period, they will have to be flown 500 hours per year. Then the 24 new planes will pay back the overconsumption of the 82 old planes by flying another 4 years at 500 hours per year. In the end, the old planes will have consumed the same number of hours as if there had been no second-hand sale, and the new planes will have consumed between 3000 and 2000 hours depending on their production rank, i.e. 2500 hours on average, whereas the planes sold would have consumed 1500 hours during the same period.
With the sale to Greece we will lose 7000*12 = 84000 h of potential and with the sale to Croatia we will lose 4500 *12 = 54000 h. We must therefore buy back 15 planes at 9000 h of potential, but I hope that we will buy back 24 if only to ensure the load at Dassault.
All this certainly means that we will be able to maintain the qualification of all our pilots despite the constraints imposed by OPEX.
