Given that these aircraft are about 2/3rd down their service life, upgrades will be minimal and confined to essentials. Perhaps PAF will assign them to training of pilots, COIN and Air Defense duties with an aim to relieve pressure and conserve remaining fleet. AIM-120, Sniper XR and DB-110 compatibility would suffice, I think.
These aircraft are Air Defence Fighters specialized for air supremacy. The upgrades would be similar to what the other PAF aircraft have gone through.
The service life distribution for the global F-16 fleet shows the service life ranging from 1 to 30 years. Surprisingly enough 5 active airframes have a service life of 30 years, making them the oldest F-16s still in service. The average service life of the active F-16 fleet is 17.2 years.
For the active fleet, three major groups can be distinguished. The majority of the airframes have a service life of between 10 and 25 years. These obviously include the F-16A/B aircraft delivered to the USAF and the European Participating Air Forces (EPAF) nations -
Belgium, the
Netherlands,
Norway and
Denmark. It als includes the first Foreign Military Sales programs for
Israel,
Egypt and
Turkey. These aircraft were block 1/5/10/15 aircraft and many of these aircraft underwent service life extension or were upgraded. Service Life Extension programs included Falcon Up, Falcon Star and some others. Upgrade programs included the F-16
ADF (Air Defense Fighter) and F-16 OCU (Operational Capabilities Upgrade) for the USAF, and
F-16 MLU (Mid-Life Update) for the European aircraft.
The reason why we don't see the attrition rate increasing for older aircraft is that F-16 aircraft are thoroughly monitored and air forces will retire F-16 airframes before they reach their end-of-service-life. Also, many of the older airframes have been through at least one upgrade program or Service Life Extension Program (SLEP), such as the Midl-Life Update (
MLU), Operation Capabilities Upgrade (OCU) or Falcon-Up. These programs bring the airframes back to "as new" condition, further explaining the lack of "upward slope" in the bathtub curve.
Two operational F-16 models were actially converted from older airframes. The first is the F-16
block 15 ADF (Air Defense Fighter), a variant specifically designed for the USAF to take over the interception role from the ageing F-106 and F-102 aircraft, traditionally assigned to the Fighter Intercept Squadrons of the Air National Guard. The F-16
ADFwas capable of firing the AIM-7 Sparrow and was the first F-16 to be equiped with an advanced IFF system. All ADF airframes were converted from existing block 15 aircraft.
The second operational converted model is the F-16
block 20 MLU. This Mid-Life Upgrade was designed to significantly increase the operational capabilities of the older block 1-5-10-15 aircraft still in service with the four original European customers (
Belgium,
Denmark, The Netherland and
Norway). It introduced many C/D capabilities into the A/B models, including a new Modular Mission Computer, upgraded radar, advanced stores management, etc. Most MLU aircraft are by definition upgrades of existing A/B aircraft. The majority of MLUs were upgraded from
block 15 and
block 15OCUairframes, with a small portion upgraded from
block 1, 5 and 10.
