Libya : from Mirage to Rafale?
By Mustafa El Ghazi
in Tripoli, Libya
It
is certainly not a secret that Dassault-Aviation or the French
government want to share with others. But as there has been too much
noodling around in the French daily press lately, a likely sale of a
batch of Rafales to Colonel Khadafi’s air force could be brewing. Especially
since France’s government has recently authorized resuming exportation
of modern weapons to Libya.
In December 2006, during the Lavex
2006 exhibition in Tripoli (December 4th-6th), the Libyan government
announced it had just concluded a contract with France (worth €100
millions), for the refurbishing of twelve Mirage F1 fighters (out of an
inventory of some 40 aircraft delivered back in the mid and late
seventies, and nowadays all grounded despite having all very low houred
airframes). Prime contractor for this deal will be Sofema, France’s
military service and hardware export agency, but the companies directly
involved in the partnership will be Dassault Aviation (airframe),
Snecma (engines) and Thales (avionics).
As only a fraction of
the old Mirage F1s is to be retrofitted, some experts think in Paris
that this could open the way to a likely separate Rafale contract, a
move which would mark the very first export sales for the expensive and
hard to sell Dassault stallion. But this option is definitely not
confirmed by Dassault. Only clear move so far : a group of Libyan
pilots and their associated ground crews is today receiving a complete flight refresher and
support training instruction at Mont-de-Marsan AB in France. Flight
training consists in several sorties on Alpha Jet dual trainers
followed by requalifying flights on Mirage F1s.
A large Mirage 5 and a
Mirage F1 old customer and operator, Libya has done very little with
the Al-Quwwat al-Jawwiya al-Jamahiriya al-Arabia al-Libyya’s almost
100-strong Mirage fleet during the past decades. A banned state for
many years, Libya is now just renewing normal relationship with the
West. Ordered in 1974, the 38 Mirage F1s of the Libyan Air Force are
split between 16 Mirage F1AD attack-fighters, 16 Mirage F1ED
interceptors and six Mirage F1BD dual-seat trainers. A reported sale of
some twenty more Mirage F1s in the early eighties is not confirmed by
Dassault. All these French-built aircraft used to be operated from the
former US Wheelus air base near Tripoli, now renamed Okba Bin Nafi.
This was before all flying was stopped in the late eighties, mainly due
to a lack of spare parts and maintenance agreement. And moreover when the French instructor pilots cadre left Libya on account of Tripoli's involvement in the destabilisation of nearby Chad.
The
uncontested star of the December last Lavex 2006 aero salon held at the
former Wheelus AFB in Libya, the Rafale was a high keyed item during
the show and one which attracted many visitors including Mr Shukri
Ghanem, the Libyan Prime Minister who spent some time seated in the
French high-tech fighter plane talking with technicians from
Dassault-Aviation.
A very official visit by Libyan president
Muhammar Khadafi to the newly elected French president Nicolas Sarkozy
being in the funnel for this coming Autumn, it cannot be excluded at
all that the Libyan ‘Rais’ could formalize a further and pompous deal
for modern military hardware with France as there is a strong demand
for Western high-level technology originating today from Tripoli.
However, being a totally undermanned and very large air arm relying
mostly on foreign contracted technicians, the present Libyan Air Force
has a very limited capacity to accept fourth or fifth generation
fighters without providing its personnel with the adequate high profile
training abroad or without hiring more expats. Therefore such a sale of Rafales is mostly unlikely. Moreover, the case of
the convicted Bulgarian nurses still confined in Libya on alleged
charges of Libyan children blood poisoning was addressed by Nicolas Sarkozy during the
presidential campaign as something that should be dealt with first
before resuming normal relations with Colonel Khadafi's country.
The
only aircraft fighters currently flying today in Libyan Air Force
service are the ex-Soviet types like the MiG-21, MiG-23 or Su-22 which
also were on exibit during Lavex 2006. Purchased in very high numbers
in the seventies and eighties, these aircraft are regularly maintained
by Russian contractors. [Tripoli - 03-13-2007]
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| Pictured during Lavex 2006 in Tripoli, one of many Libyan Air Force Sukhoi Su-22M3 fighter-bombers maintained in good operational service by the Russian defence industry © M. El Ghazi |
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