In less than a week, France lost two major defence contracts to the US, causing tens of billions of dollars in damage.
In the past week, the noisiest incident was that France accused the US of “stabbing in the back” when it made them lose a contract to build submarines for Australia, but this is not the last “gift” Washington gave Paris.
Specifically, after Australia refused to cooperate with France and this country decided to switch to buying US-made nuclear submarines, Switzerland also planned a similar action.
Instead of France’s 4.5 generation Rafale fighters, Switzerland chose to sign an agreement to buy the US F-35 Lightning II fifth-generation stealth fighter. In both cases, Paris’ arms exports were blocked by Washington. It is known that the deal to buy multi-role fighter aircraft is worth about 7 billion USD.
Frances President Macron had previously refused to conduct a business trip to the US to celebrate the 240th anniversary of the Battle of the Chesapeake because Washington had “stolen” from Paris a lucrative contract to supply submarines to the Australian side.
Going back to the weapons contracts that France has just lost, it is impossible to deny the fact that the defence products offered by the US have much higher technical and tactical features.
Placing diesel-electric attack submarines next to nuclear submarines, the defeat of France is too obvious, the same situation is easy to see when the Rafale fighter has to confront the F-35 Lightning II.
Even though the Rafale is considered the most advanced 4.5-generation multirole fighter today, it even defeated the Russian-made Su-35 fighter in the situation of manoeuvres conducted by the Egyptian Air Force. , it still has a certain distance to the F-35.
The big disadvantage of the Rafale is that it does not apply stealth technology, which is a paramount requirement in modern air battles because the fifth-generation fighter will always be the “foresee, shoot first” side.
Switzerland is a rich country and has a relatively impressive defence budget, so they can afford to order the best products unless the US refuses to sell, otherwise, there is no reason for Bern to refuse to buy the F-35.
Besides, it must also be mentioned the fact that France is subject to many scandals in its arms sales policy, for example, defense products are always overpriced and often come with many restrictive terms.