Libya looks into French weapons

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TRIPOLI, Libya As the race for lucrative business deals in this recently rehabilitated pariah state has intensified, so has French diplomacy.

Just over two months after President Jacques Chirac made a symbolic first official trip to Libya, the French defense minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, went to Tripoli to sign a letter of intent on military cooperation and procurement late Saturday. Already booked for early April is Trade Minister François Loos, who plans to attend Tripoli's international trade fair. Industry Minister Patrick Devedjian is also contemplating a trip.

Libya, long ostracized for bankrolling terrorists and seeking nuclear weapons, has become a popular destination for Western officials in search of new markets ever since the European Union and the United States lifted economic sanctions last year.

Opportunities in this oil-producing country are vast, thanks to a combination of sizable need and just-as-sizable buying power: Almost two decades of economic sanctions have left Libya's civilian and military infrastructure in tatters, while soaring oil prices have filled the country's coffers with billions of dollars of ready cash in recent years. Libya has Africa's largest proven oil reserves and about $20 billion in foreign exchange reserves.

"There is a lot of competition for the Libyan market," said Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "People throughout the world see this as a remarkable opportunity."

A host of French companies are already working in Libya, and many more are scrambling to win contracts in a string of ongoing tender offers.

The construction giant Vinci has been helping build Muammar el-Qaddafi's Great Man-Made River project that aims to bring groundwater from the Sahara to the coastal regions. Alcatel, a maker of telecommunications equipment, has worked to upgrade Libya's fixed and mobile telephone infrastructure and is currently bidding for another contract. The engineering group Alstom operates electricity installations, and the oil company Total has been in Libya for years, producing about 60,000 barrels per day from its oil fields there.

But so far, France's share of the Libyan market remains modest. With just over 6 percent of the country's imports, France trails Italy, Libya's former colonizer, at 21 percent and Germany at 11 percent. Indeed, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany all beat Chirac to Qaddafi's Bedouin tent in 2004, raising concerns among French executives that they had arrived too late.

And competition comes not only from fellow Europeans: U.S. companies, which dominated Libya's oil industry before sanctions were imposed in 1986, reaped 11 of the 15 oil exploration licenses tendered a week ago, leaving European oil companies, including Total, out in the cold.

But while French government officials called the oil auction a "big disappointment," an area in which they see a decent chance in winning market share is defense. One reason for such optimism is that the United States, which includes Libya on its list of states sponsoring terrorism, still has an arms embargo in place. Another is that France supplied a significant portion of the Libyan Air Force in the 1970s, meaning that many older pilots were trained in French and on French equipment. It also means that those planes that are still operating require French parts, and repair work alone could bring French companies several hundreds of millions of euros, one general in Tripoli said.

When Alliot-Marie met with Qaddafi in his private library inside the Bab-Aziz palace Saturday, Qaddafi expressed interest in the Rafale fighter jets made by Dassault and the Tigre combat helicopters made by Eurocopter, a French-German venture, a source close to the talks said, without providing specifics.

If the minister made clear that she would leave the haggling over contracts to defense companies like Dassault and Thales, departing from Tripoli without having discussed any concrete business deals herself, her visit nevertheless put the spotlight on an industry in which France remains among the top three exporters in the world.

"The strong point of France is that we have the strategy, the research and the products in the area where they have needs," Alliot-Marie said on the plane back to Paris late Saturday.

But for all the positive signs, officials stress that doing business in Libya remains unpredictable. The two countries faced off in Chad in the early 1980s when Libya invaded its neighbor over a border dispute and France honored a defense accord with its former colony. In 1989, Libyan terrorists blew up a French flight over Niger, killing 170 people, including 54 French nationals, and preventing diplomatic relations until Qaddafi agreed last year to pay indemnities to the victims' families.

At the same time, France has remained popular in Libya as a symbol of revolution often used as an analogy to the country's own "guided revolution." Alliot-Marie's delegation was welcomed in Tripoli by large posters hanging from the wall of the ancient Medina showing the French and Libyan flags side by side under the slogan: "The meeting of the pioneers."

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Rafale, and like the Typhoon are nice planes, but come on Libya can get better. I'd rather get the Su-35/Su-30MKI which is just as capable but at half the cost. Same with Tiger, the Ka-52 and Mi-28N are much cheaper yet just as capable.

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19 years 9 months

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Isn’t it more likely that Libya will start with restocking spares and perhaps upgrade/overhaul some of the current aircraft already in the inventory?

But I guess both Russia and France might have a chance for future sales though.
Regards

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24 years 2 months

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Ok so the sanctions are lifted.
But do we seriously need to sell arms to Libya?

regards,
Castor

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Ok so the sanctions are lifted.
But do we seriously need to sell arms to Libya?

regards,
Castor

Money is the magic word!

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20 years 4 months

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The French need some export succes of the Rafale. I'm pretty shure they would sell them.

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19 years 11 months

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I don´t think Qaddafi will just forget the War in Chad and buy french weapons so soon. Perhaps the lybians will looking for spare parts for its fleet of SA 321 Super Frelon but major weapons form France, no way.

To countries like Lybia, Russia is a much more reliabe source of military hardware. The lybians can get more and better equipment from Russia than France. The MiG-29 is more affordable than Rafales or even M2000, especially if they intend to replace older jet fighter like Fishbeds, Floggers, Foxbats, Fitters and the Mirages. Some Su-30 could be bought to boost the fighter force, more than MiG-29 SMTs.

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20 years 6 months

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I hope you dear ladies realize that before you go off spouting your favorite aircraft to them, Libya is infamous for not fully paying off their aircraft :dev2:

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and not only that, Libya is famous for not having enough pilots to fly all their Migs. Back during the Cold War, Qaddafi bought more Migs than he could fly, therefore he had spare aircraft instead of pilots. How often does that happen.

And yes the Russians are much more reliable in this case. Libya has the money, they could invest in future in PAK-FAs to replace eveyrthing from all of their Migs in invetory to mirages. A sufficient number could be like less than 40 for Libya.

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and not only that, Libya is famous for not having enough pilots to fly all their Migs. Back during the Cold War, Qaddafi bought more Migs than he could fly, therefore he had spare aircraft instead of pilots. How often does that happen.

And yes the Russians are much more reliable in this case. Libya has the money, they could invest in future in PAK-FAs to replace eveyrthing from all of their Migs in invetory to mirages. A sufficient number could be like less than 40 for Libya.

My friend, we seem to be in agreement these days. Although I don't know about the PAK-FA, a bit too much.. they're not exactly facing Uncle Sam anymore ;) .. or are they? Me thinks if the Russkis can trust them enough (if I were Antonov or Dassault I'd demand my money) MiG-29s would be a good bet, dare I suggest that they should consider Chinese options too!

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Mig-29 is getting older. I'd rather invest in a squadron of PAK-FAs 10 yrs from now on than get 50 Mig-29SMTs now.

I really think Libya should invest in SAms, a few S400s along the coast can give Libya some really good Air Defense, and a squadron of PAK-FAs for interception, Anti-Shipping and w/e

Depends. If they are genuinely trying to suck up to the west they might buy European weapons with an eye to improving relations perhaps to the point where they could get some old F-16s. They have to get some benefit from US companies owning their oil.

Personally I'd just upgrade existing aircraft and get them operational and spend more on training and some modern weapons.

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20 years 5 months

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Weren't there speculations about selling Rafale and Tiger AHs to Algeria two or three years ago?
That runs as security and confidence building measures. And, you can control a potential enemy by selling him the weapons he might - in a quite unlikely case - use against you. And you coud get the Russians out. And keep the Americans out. And of course you can make a little extra dough in the process.

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Well, the most progressive aircraft in Libyan inventory up-to-date are Mirages F1 and Su-24M. I guess the folks have MUCH to catch up :) A nice piece of dollar cake I do see. :) Voila...

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and they laid down their Mirage-III fleet by selling a big stock of engines and spares to pakistan.

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19 years 9 months

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To be honest, is there really a need for Libya to invest in Su-30/35 or Eurofighters/Rafael? What is the big threat to them, given that they are not branded as “bad guys” anymore?
Regards

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20 years 7 months

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To be honest, is there really a need for Libya to invest in Su-30/35 or Eurofighters/Rafael? What is the big threat to them, given that they are not branded as “bad guys” anymore?
Regards

Errrh, I wonder why Netherlands needs to invest into JSF, then.. I mean, who wants to attack Netherlands? And who would be even able, if they are deep in the EU?

Weapons are not meant for fighting, they are meant to power projection.

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Libya doesn't need SAMs or Rafales. Libya needs, upgraded Helicopters, Su-25s, long range bombers and Transports to support Gaddafi's favourite dictators in Africa.

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Why do they need anything? They have plenty of zero-houred MiG-23's still in crates.

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and they laid down their Mirage-III fleet by selling a big stock of engines and spares to pakistan.

Not III, but 5.

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Originally posted by Srbin
and not only that, Libya is famous for not having enough pilots to fly all their Migs. Back during the Cold War, Qaddafi bought more Migs than he could fly, therefore he had spare aircraft instead of pilots. How often does that happen.

Yes...and I think its pretty stupid to buy so many aircraft if your air force don't have enough piots to fly them, if Libya wants to modernise its fighter force then maybe they should thinking of replacing rather then adding.

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Those large numbers of MiG-23s were at some time to be used as a sort of Southern Front by WarPac airforces against NATO's southern flank in case of WW3. It nicely circumvented the need for the Black Sea Fleet to actually break through the Dardanelles.

And those MiG-23s might have made few hours, they most certainly weren't crated. There is a nice picture showing a Lybian airbase with some 60 Floggers on the flightline, for example. Pretty neat. And considering that about 10 Lybian MiG-23s were seen to be impounded at two maintenance centers in the Ukraine through the 1990s (now thát was exciting, spotting those green flags or balls on those tails/fuselages!), that "still in their crates"-myth seems more like denial to me. Or just blindly swallowing unbases yet official nonsense.