Ukraine’s Rafale F4 Quest: France’s Backlog Hits 233 Jets

KEY POINTS

•Ukraine announced acquiring up to 100 French Rafale F4 jets by 2035, marking them as a key air force upgrade.
•The deal includes advanced French radars and eight French-Italian Surface-to-Air Missile Platforms equipped with launchers.
•This agreement complements previously planned purchases of US-made F-16s and Sweden's JAS 39 Gripen E fighters.
•Dassault produces fewer than four Rafales monthly, currently with a backlog of 233 aircraft pending delivery.

On November 2024's fateful Monday, Ukraine ambitiously inked a letter of intent to buy up to 100 sleek Rafale F4 jets by 2035, declaring France as its avionics Tinder match alongside Sweden’s 150 Gripen E’s and America’s donated F-16s already airborne. President Zelenskyy celebrated this historic ‘step toward guaranteed security in Europe,’ as if Europe were a teenager finally allowed to throw a backyard party with NATO-approved supervision. Dassault, France’s proud Rafale maker, charmingly confessed in October it churns fewer than four jets a month, with a whopping 233 backorders queued, so Kyiv’s new air force may ride into battle fashionably late but fabulously Westernized.