Should this materialize , Baghdad will join Greece, Indonesia, Croatia and the Emirates, which in less than a year have also acquired the model.
A new customer appears on the horizon for the successful Rafale fighter jet, from the French company Dassault Aviation. Iraq has revealed its plans for the acquisition of at least 14 aircraft of this model in a transaction that contemplates the payment of 240 million dollars in oil.
At the moment it is not yet known whether Baghdad’s intentions are to buy newly manufactured aircraft, or second-hand, or perhaps using both formulas, as Greece has done. It is told by the American financial media Forbes in a piece in which it recalls that the country currently has a fleet of 34 F-16C/D Block 52 fighters.
The source wonders about the need to acquire 4.5 generation fighter jets, expensive, sophisticated and high performance, for a country whose main need in this area is for turboprop aircraft with ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) capabilities and low-cost drones, with which to fight the remnants of the Islamic State (ISIS) that continue to act in the area.