Pakistan Defence

prasun blog had that discussion.. seems one guy posted information there... seems a good bet he is correct.. They will be out of commission.. but knowing our sub continent mindset, they will use it for 5-6 more years surely..

The first 40 F16A/B received under Peace Gate 1/2 program are as of today upto 33 years old. 31 Of the first 40 survive today. Another 14 of the embargoed were received later.
These 31+14=45 had undergone the MLU which also includes an Structual Upgrade Kits, adding atleast 2000 flight hours more to the jets.

And 2000 flight hours is a lot. They are not going anywhere any soon.

The thing is US fighters now seems to follow this pattern whats known as life extension with first original life at 600 hrs then to 700 hrs then to 9000hrs and finally to either 11000-12000 hours..
But in essence, they can make this fleet work for 10 years with 2000 hours added life and flying less than 200 hours per year..

but fatigue part on airframe will show tell tale signs over time and maintenance cost would increase a lot.. unless certain parts are localised and swapped .. but thats a bit difficult as its dependent on US.. so beyond a point it has to be discarded or sign fresh maintenance deals which will be costlier..

Ankit Kumar the with the MLU kits what Pakistan recieved, and the SLEP upgrade, you can upgrade the avionics, and the stuctural strengthening of the airframe increasing its life, but not the engine. The MLU kit only includes the Overhaul of the enginne, not the upgradation or replacement of the engine.

In comparison, our Mirrage got the replacement of the engine with uprated spec. thats why the cost of the upgrade was so high.

psk blog line
The IAF's upgraded Mirage 2000s have new-build SNECMA M53-P3 turbofans & all older M53-P2 turbofans are being replaced by the -P3. That's why the per-unit cost of upgrading each Mirage 2000 is so high.

See I am sure about it , but what I have read is that the upgrade did include Falcon Star Structural Service Life Enhancement kits by Turkish Aerospace Industries which enhanced the structural lives of the airframe to upto 2000 hours.

Yes Parik, being >33 years old, they will surely get more costly to operate. But only a part,Means only 31+14 ADF versions from Jordan will be likely to be replaced first. Rest Blk 52 & the embargoed ones are relatively new.

Coming back to the structural part, Parikrama try to get the list of what the aircrafts received during their MLU, maybe take help of some Pakistani members, may be Mastan Khan may help, I have only seen that person except WAZ and Oscar to keep cool while discussing all these...

Problem is who will ask this from the pakistani members. They will directly ban us if we said that in the forum.

Ah , well so the thread by Manticore does says no improvements to engine.

Any idea about the price of a new F16 engine ?

Nope but which engine. I don't really know whether the older airframe could get the latest engine variant or not.

This thread does give good insights in its first post. https://defence.pk/threads/paf-f-16-mlu-specifications-and-36-blk-52-prospects.60896/

The price of the F-16 block 52 for Pakistan was 63.33 Million, because all the weapons, spare engines, and MLU kit in a package had some cost

Pakistan spent some 500 million dollars(Rest near 500was given by USA) to upgrade their most loved birds, so the moment re equipping the aircrafts with new power plant crosses the 500 million mark in cumulative, I don't think they will opt for the upgrade.