Pakistani defense minister has said that PAF is interested in purchasing the F-16 fighter jets from the Royal Norwegian Air Force which is looking to replace them with the low observable stealthy F-35 fighter jets.
Royal Norwegian Air Force had purchased a total of 74 F-16A/B combat aircraft and 56 of them has gone through extensive upgrade called Mid Life Update. This upgrade is was on the same lines as it now planned for the Pakistani F-16 A/Bs.
This upgrade allows the arcaft to use AIM-120 AMRAAM beyond-visual-range missile. Upgraded aircrafts can use all the weapons associated with the new F-16 C/D block 52+ aircrafts.
Any word on where they got their upgrades done from? Pakistan was planning on getting the USAF to do the upgrades but then recently seems to have finalized that deal with the TAI(Turkish Aeronautic Industries)
ReplyDeleteFour European nations Norway, Belgium, Netherlands and Denmark created joint European group which manufactured F-16 under license for these nations.
ReplyDelete5 Lead aircraft one each from four EU nations and one from USAF was sent to the USA for MLU upgrade.
US was requested for 301 MLU kits for European air forces but later on Belgium increased its requirement from 48 to 90 in 1998.
MLU Kits were deliveried by the USA and Work was carried out on-site by participating countries. Flight testing of the Belgian, Netherlands and Norwegian F-16AM/BM started in 1996 at Leeuwarden, Netherlands.
The modification kits were retrofitted into the F-16A/B to convert them into the F-16AM/BM at SABCA's Gosselies facility in Belgium, Ålborg in Denmark, Woensdrecht in the Netherlands and Kjeller in Norway.
It is the best option to get these 56-74 f-16 Aircraft it is a treasure for Pakistan.USA is in no mood to provide even the 14 F-16 which were to be given to Pakistan out of a trench of 28 given as trophy on war on terror to Perez Musharraf later on As we bought 18 f-16-52 but 1 is still undelivered for v sqdrn.There is a roomer that Pakistan cannot cross into India with F-16,s armed with AIML 120 Amramm This is given in writing by Pakistan as per Pakistani Press This also covers the f-16-am/bm being upgraded in Turkey .Better option is to buy 2nd hand Mig -29 & SU-27 which we can mantain as the engines used in these aircraft are same like mig-29 Rd-33 Jf-17 Rd-93 same engine Like su27/j-11b alf31 .other aspect is that we can get rebuild technology from China Su-27/J-11B mig-29-35 from ukrane Russia .This_will not have any strings attached
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