Procurement: Israeli Bargains

Archives

April 20, 2018: Croatia has selected Israeli F-16Ds to replace its twelve elderly MiG-21s. Sweden offered newly built JAS 39 fighters and Greece offered less expensive used F-16s. Israel’s bid won because Israel offered recently (2014) refurbished and upgraded F-16s in a two-seat fighter-bomber version that Israel had demonstrated very effective in combat. The F-16Ds for Croatia have to be further modified to replace uniquely Israeli electronics and hardware with more standard versions. Thus the first Croatian F-16Dd won’t arrive until 2020. Croatia will pay $500 million for these dozen F-16Ds.

There are more such deals available from Israel which is retiring a lot of its older F-16s. Israel retired the last of its 125 F-16A fighters by the end of 2016. The first 70 were acquired in 1980 and 1981 and included 8 two-seater F-16B trainers. One of the F-16As achieved a record by being the single F-16 with the most air-to-air kills (6.5), all achieved in 1982 using three different pilots. Israel received 50 used F-16As in 1994 (including 14 two-seat B models) and used these mainly as trainers. Israel may still be able to sell some of these F-16As on the second-hand market like it did with its older Kfir fighters (retired in the 1990s). The F-16As were the first of the nearly 400 F-16s Israel obtained from the United States since 1980.

Israel received its 135 F-16Cs in the 1980s and about half were the two-seater F-16D. Israel wanted these not as trainers but for conversion to fighter-bombers like the F-15E. The F-16Ds were so successful that the last batch of 102 Israeli F-16s were all two-seater highly customized late-model aircraft called the F-16I.

Israeli F-16s have shot down 47 aircraft (out of 67 kills for all 4,588 F-16s built). Israeli F-16A flew 474,000 sorties and spent over 335,000 hours in the air over 35 years. Israel was the most energetic user of the F-16 and also took the lead in developing upgrades and accessories. This could help in selling the older F-16As, but that is a crowded market with more and more of these oldest F-16s being retired rather than upgraded. That is easier to do with the later F-16C models and that is what Israel did with all of its F-16Cs.

 

X

ad

Help Keep Us From Drying Up

We need your help! Our subscription base has slowly been dwindling.

Each month we count on your contribute. You can support us in the following ways:

  1. Make sure you spread the word about us. Two ways to do that are to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
  2. Subscribe to our daily newsletter. We’ll send the news to your email box, and you don’t have to come to the site unless you want to read columns or see photos.
  3. You can contribute to the health of StrategyPage.
Subscribe   contribute   Close