Macron offers Petro the Rafale fighter for the Colombian Air Force

The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, has offered his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, the Dassault Aviation Rafale C/F3 multirole fighter to become the new fighter jet of the Colombian Air Force.

The renewal of this offer, presented to Colombia for the first time in October 2019, took place within the framework of the meetings that both leaders held this November and in which they discussed this issue extensively: first in Egypt, during the celebration of the UN Conference on Climate Change, and later at the OECD meeting in Paris.

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In the French capital, Macron recalled his country’s interest in participating in the renewal processes of Siden (Comprehensive National Defense System) not only in naval issues (PES) and anti-aircraft defense but also, and in particular, in the project to replace the combat vectors of the South American country.

Also present at the meeting were the French Ministers of Economy, Finance and Commerce, as well as the presidents of the Dassault and Thales companies, accompanied by the Colombian Foreign Minister, senior officials and at least one senior officer of the Colombian Air Force.

The talks between the two governments will have a third meeting, which will take place in Colombia in the development of an upcoming visit by a French delegation. Petro wants a very precise agreement regarding the final sale prices, the financing offered by the European country and the budgetary capacities of the Latin American country.

PROPOSAL DETAILS

The gala offer -for a number of units not yet agreed- would include a 20-year financing package, with very comfortable sale prices, directing offset resources to modernize the airport infrastructure in the south-east of the country, the operations of the national airline Satena and potentiate aerospace and satellite issues for which the collaboration of Thales would be essential.

Petro also reportedly requested that his country’s aeronautical industry -CIAC, Codaltec and private sector companies- be able to actively participate in aircraft maintenance processes, as well as in the manufacture and supply of certain spare parts, in order to guarantee the logistics support of the fleet.

In this same sense, France would have guaranteed full autonomy in the operation of the planes and relatively short delivery times.

CONTROVERSY OVER THE “END USE” OF THE F-16

The interest of the new Colombian government in this model would be based on the conditions that the United States would impose for the operation of the Lockheed Martin F-16 Block-70 (end use), which would have motivated Petro to flatly reject undertaking any negotiations regarding this aircraft, leaving aside for the moment also the other models that make up the shortlist: the Eurofigther Typhoon and the SaabGripen NG.

During the command of General Ramsés Rueda, the purchase process -not the model selection, which had been the F-16- could not come to a successful conclusion, despite strong pressure from the previous government to sign agreements of intent to purchase before the end of his term, which would have motivated the subsequent resignation of Rueda.

With information from Infodefensa