Jakarta. French President Emmanuel Macron is pleased with Jakarta’s Rafale fighter jet collection. Still, his recent talks with his Indonesian counterpart Prabowo Subianto did not explicitly mention any new request for more Rafale aircraft, as the French politician signaled hopes for another contract.

Prabowo is visiting Paris for the third time this year, not long after holding a traditional handover ceremony to equip the national air force with 6 of the French-made Rafale jets. Jakarta has so far ordered 42 Rafale units, and their maker Dassault Aviation is delivering the multirole planes in phases over multiple years. Every Macron-Prabowo interaction never fails to make the public guess whether Jakarta will further expand its Rafale fleet.

Speaking in front of reporters at the Élysée on Thursday afternoon local time, Macron said that an “exceptional [defense] partnership” had united both nations. This has allowed the two countries to “very concretely” strengthen their respective sovereignty while making major progress in defense technologies and industries.

“The delivery of Indonesia’s first Rafale fighter jets in recent months particularly illustrates this,” Macron told the press.

He went on to say that all domains of the game -- including military aircraft -- had given their existing defense ties “an unprecedented turn”.

“In a moment, we will discuss [this] again and build new perspectives,” Macron said.

During his turn, Prabowo only said that “defense ties [with France] have been going really well”, without explicitly mentioning the Rafale. 

A subsequent joint statement offered vague details on defense despite military purchases being an integral component of their ties. The document wrote that the leaders had encouraged their defense ministers to “further enhance cooperation in the field of armaments”. This includes joint development and defense industry cooperation.

This was not the first time Macron had spoken of his intentions to explore such "new perspectives" with Jakarta. Macron had previously courted Prabowo to buy more Rafale jets when he came to Jakarta last year. The government at the time had sealed a defense cooperation agreement that Macron believed would “open up a new perspective with new orders for Rafale”. In April, Defense Ministry spokesperson Rico Ricardo Sirait told the Jakarta Globe that the government was still “reviewing the idea” of acquiring more Rafales.

The 42-jet order at the time of the signing in 2022 was reportedly valued at $8.1 billion. Prabowo, who had spent years of his career in the army, has been frank about wanting to upgrade Indonesia’s ageing fleet and has defended such major purchases as necessary to safeguard sovereignty. Indonesia sealed the multi-billion-dollar Rafale deal when Prabowo was still the defense minister. 

But Indonesia -- France’s top arms client in ASEAN -- is now facing a dilemma to spend its falling rupiah on military upgrades, as economists urge Jakarta to save the money for energy subsidies instead. Rupiah had closed at Rp 17,845 per dollar on Thursday in the aftermath of the protracted US-Iran war.

In 2026 alone, Indonesia has allocated around Rp 337 trillion (almost $19 billion) for defense purposes. Some Rp 187 trillion (about $10.5 billion) specifically goes to the Defense Ministry, of which approximately Rp 83 trillion (close to $4.7 billion) is earmarked for military upgrades.  

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