Pakistan F-16 Discussions 2

[Safriz]

what is that under the intake?
View attachment 632791

Hard point for pods I guess.

 

[airomerix]

what is that under the intake?
View attachment 632791

These pods were introduced by the U.S. Navy for their F-16Ns to increase their RCS during TOPGUN exercises. The F-16 has such a small RCS they needed a way to simulate a bigger enemy aircraft.

So during training sorties/peacetime, F-16s fly with these pods to increase the size of the blip on the radar scope of the ground controller. The pod is hollow, nothing electronic inside. They have no connector, and the hardpoint cover stays on underneath the pod. So, no jamming or any other capabilities here if anyone is thinking that.

threat warning antenna

View attachment 632792

"Those diagrams are for an F-16A/B model, and most of the antennae have been relocated on the F-16C/D/CJ/CG/E/F aircraft. Specifically, the lower UHF/IFF is now between the ventrals, the forward threat warning antennae are now the "beer cans" on the leading edge flaps, near the wintip missile rails, and the lower radar threat warning antennae are now the "shark's teeth" assembly, just aft of the radome."

http://www.f-16.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1591

 

[airomerix]

Some classy vipers.

 

[Dazzler]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1261286994979819520

 

[mshan44]

 

[Trailer23]

I know I should be posting this article in the Indian Defense Thread, but assumed someone else may have posted it there as a new topic. And for some reason - its more fun reading it here.

-------------------​

Say Goodbye To India’s Super F-16​

16 May, 2020
David Axe

Our chances of getting a new kind of F-16 just dramatically shrank. The Indian air force recently signaled it would cancel a tender for foreign-made warplanes.

It was that contest that motivated American plane-maker Lockheed Martin to develop a unique, highly-advanced F-16 variant the company called the “F-21.”

The Indian air force in 2019 announced it would spend up to $15 billion buying 114 fighters. The plan was for the new planes to replace old MiG-21s and fly alongside European-designed Jaguars, French Mirage 2000s and Rafales, Russian MiG-29s and Su-30s and India's own indigenous Tejas Light Combat Aircraft in what Lockheed described as "the world’s largest fighter aircraft ecosystem."

The F-21, Boeing's F/A-18E/F, the Rafale, the European Typhoon, the Swedish Gripen E and the Russian MiG-35 and Su-35 all were contenders. Indian companies would have assembled the new jets on license.

No longer. “The Indian Air Force is switching that to the LCA,” Chief of the Defense Staff Bipin Rawat said in an interview. The air force would order 83 additional Tejas on top of the 40 LCAs the service already has paid for.

Those 83 LCAs would cost $6 billion. That’s less than half what New Delhi planned to spend under the previous tender, implying that cost motivated the decision.

“The IAF is saying, I would rather take the indigenous fighter, it is good,” Rawat said.

The Indian air force in 2020 maintains just 28 fighter squadrons against a requirement for 42 squadrons. The service hopes to stand up three new units in 2020 as additional Rafales, Su-30s and LCAs arrive.

Hindustan Aeronautics’ Tejas, which first flew in 2001, is far less sophisticated than the F-21 would have been. The delta-wing, lightweight LCA can carry around 8,000 pounds of ordnance—half what an Indian Su-30MKI can haul. The Tejas also is slower and less maneuverable than India’s other foreign-made fighters are.

The F-21, by contrast, would have included technology from the company’s F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters. "The F-21 has common components and learning from Lockheed Martin’s fifth-generation F-22 and F-35 and will share a common supply chain on a variety of components," Lockheed stated on its website on the morning of Feb. 20, 2019.

A few hours later, that claim disappeared from the site. In any event, the F-21 would have been the most advanced version yet of the single-engine F-16, which flew for the first time in 1974.

The F-21 design boasted new cockpit displays, conformal fuel tanks, a large airframe spine that could accommodate communication systems or radar-jammers, fittings for towed radar decoys, a new infrared sensor and a refueling probe for use with India's Russian-made aerial tankers.

Production of the F-21 would have extended one of the world’s most successful fighter programs.

Around 2,300 of F-16s fly for more than 30 air arms, accounting for no less than four percent of all the world’s military aircraft. But even without an Indian order, Lockheed anticipates it could continue building new F-16s through 2030.

Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2020/05/16/say-goodbye-to-indias-super-f-16/#1339b2e83ca6

 

[nomi007]

Hope now USA will allow PAF to buy Bk-72

 

[Ali_Baba]

Given how much sensitive information Lockheed Martin has transferred to India as part of this tender process, there is really no future for the F16 Block 70/72 or the F21 in PAF.

India has successfully gathered the technical capabilities of every 4.5+ gen platform out there, and in reality this can form the basis of a set of requirements for both the Tejas and stealth programmes going forward.

India has also managed to successfuly block of 10years of weapons sales to Pakistan using this tender process and thereby degrade Pakistans military capability by more than the procured jets themselves may have had as an effect. Thankfully China grew in that time period and stopped that from happening.

There are a lot of western plane manufacturers feeling very stupid right now. The French especially since they have destroyed their military relationship with Pakistan for just 36 Rafales and a few submarines which they had built up for over 40 odd years...

 

[Raider 21]

Given how much sensitive information Lockheed Martin has transferred to India as part of this tender process, there is really no future for the F16 Block 70/72 or the F21 in PAF.

India has successfully gathered the technical capabilities of every 4.5+ gen platform out there, and in reality this can form the basis of a set of requirements for both the Tejas and stealth programmes going forward.

India has also managed to successfuly block of 10years of weapons sales to Pakistan using this tender process and thereby degrade Pakistans military capability by more than the procured jets themselves may have had as an effect. Thankfully China grew in that time period and stopped that from happening.

There are a lot of western plane manufacturers feeling very stupid right now. The French especially since they have destroyed their military relationship with Pakistan for just 36 Rafales and a few submarines which they had built up for over 40 odd years...

On a sidenote, India has seen the F-16 as early as the 90s. Heck even their test pilots did their masters thesis at USAFTPS on the F-16.

 

[Blacklight]

On a sidenote, India has seen the F-16 as early as the 90s. Heck even their text pilots did their masters thesis at USAFTPS on the F-16.

And Singapore's F16's are parked their? If not, regular exercises do take place.

 

[Raider 21]

And Singapore's F16's are parked their? If not, regular exercises do take place.

Include Israelis, Omanis, Emiratis, Thai as well as Americans. Tactical exercises are different from actually diving into systems and performance handling qualities of the aircraft.

 

[Blacklight]

Given how much sensitive information Lockheed Martin has transferred to India as part of this tender process, there is really no future for the F16 Block 70/72 or the F21 in PAF.

India has successfully gathered the technical capabilities of every 4.5+ gen platform out there, and in reality this can form the basis of a set of requirements for both the Tejas and stealth programmes going forward.

India has also managed to successfuly block of 10years of weapons sales to Pakistan using this tender process and thereby degrade Pakistans military capability by more than the procured jets themselves may have had as an effect. Thankfully China grew in that time period and stopped that from happening.

There are a lot of western plane manufacturers feeling very stupid right now. The French especially since they have destroyed their military relationship with Pakistan for just 36 Rafales and a few submarines which they had built up for over 40 odd years...

Brother, you paint a very pessimistic picture. Things are not so bleak!

Doesn't matter what they know. How that intel is used is of ultimate consequence, and we all know that

Please see this article from an Indian outlet:

F-16 never stood a chance to be in IAF fleet. Lockheed Martin messed it up so much
In many ways, F-16 is a microcosm of India-US ties. Imran Khan’s meeting with Donald Trump had little role in US resuming military sales to Pakistan.
Abhijit Iyer-Mitra 30 July, 2019

If US President Donald Trump offering to mediate on the Kashmir issue wasn’t enough, he went ahead and exonerated ‘selected’ Prime Minister Imran Khan – implying that under Khan, Pakistani perfidy has stopped. To cap it all, the State Department announced a resumption of military supplies – specifically F-16 spares – to Pakistan. In many ways, the F-16 is a microcosm of India-US ties: oversell, unable to understand the other, stringing your lover along in spite of not understanding what he/she is saying, and a final rejection leading to bitterness.

Let us be clear, however, that the F-16 never stood a chance. Lockheed Martin (LM) screwed up on several issues: its primary weapon the AMRAAM; its sales pitch peddling a point the Indian Air Force (IAF) did not understand; a sales campaign that bordered on outright lies; and finally, Balakot, which proved to be the last nail in the coffin.

Avoiding F-16 in a dogfight
The moment India is offered the same equipment as Pakistan, you pretty much know it’s going to be rejected. Although, India had no hesitation buying the same manufacturer’s C-130 transport aircraft, which Pakistan also operates. However, the IAF, instead of looking at how its aircraft perform in combat situations, seems to be obsessed about fitting them with one particular missile: the European Meteor. The Meteor missile’s long range outclasses the F-16’s primary long-range air-to air weapon, the AMRAAM.

It is in fact a tribute to the F-16’s potency that the IAF wants to avoid engaging it in a dogfight and would prefer to take it out at longer ranges. In effect, it wasn’t the F-16 that irritated the IAF so much as it was the AMRAAM – after all, no matter how advanced an F-16 India was being offered, if the missiles were going to be the same as Pakistan’s (AMRAAM), the electronics differential of the launch platform wasn’t going to be much use to India.

F-16, upgraded to F-21
To counter this perception, LM had a clear case that the F-16 being sold to India (the Block 70 variant, since renamed F-21) was a whole different beast from the Block 50 that Pakistan has. Beyond the superficial exterior resemblance, there’s about 40 per cent difference in terms of equipment; and the electronics derive much from the F-35’s heavily network centric architecture. As such, the F-21s are a generation ahead from anything on Pakistan’s F-16 that could be better in terms of being able to see further, ‘talk to’ other networked assets, and jam enemy frequencies better. So, even if the F-21 and F-16 use the same missile, the F-21 can detect its enemy faster and shoot first and more accurately.

Sadly, given the hodgepodge of equipment the IAF operates, almost none of which talk to each other, the IAF simply doesn’t understand networked warfare, nor does it care. Stuck in the 1980s’ mindset, the IAF still believes in kinetics while the rest of the world has moved towards electronics. The simplest explanation for this is the scene from Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark, where an Arab swordsman comes around flaunting his sword skills and Indy simply shoots him with a revolver. Here, the IAF is the Arab swordsman, who thinks a better sword could have won him the battle, instead of transitioning to a revolver; Lockheed Martin is the revolver salesman, who futilely tries arguing with the swordsman to give up his sword for the revolver.

US firm’s disinformation campaign
If LM’s sales pitch left the IAF confused, then LM’s disinformation left the IAF entirely not-amused. This disinformation campaign started off with the promise of F-16 production being shifted to India. This developed into a set of transparent lies that F-16 production would involve deep technology transfer and make India independent. Obviously, it didn’t take long for the lies to get called out, which was followed by a public retraction from Lockheed. The amount of damage this did to LM’s campaign is almost incalculable.

But Balakot was the last straw. The IAF is convinced that it shot down an F-16 using an obsolete MiG-21. The severe factual inaccuracies of the “IAF didn’t shoot an F-16” lobby, combined with an embarrassing set of tweets by the Pakistani DG-ISPR unable to explain two missing pilots, means the IAF is now convinced that its reliance on dogfights is valid (that is, the Arab swordsman can still win against Indian Jones’ revolver) and that the F-16 is a flawed product.

In the end, the overall problems of the India-US relationship explained earlier are distilled into India’s F-16 saga: India’s understanding of war and technology being different to the US, both talking a different language; disinformation from the US’ side; India giving false hope where there was none to begin with. In such circumstances, the resumption of military sales to Pakistan was a foregone conclusion, and would have happened regardless of whether there was a Donald Trump involved without anyone getting surprised.

The author is a senior fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies. He tweets @iyervval. Views are personal.

https://theprint.in/opinion/f-16-ne...-lockheed-martin-messed-it-up-so-much/269699/

 

[airomerix]

Agressor Viper and CCS Thunder.

 

[Rafael]

The only thing stopping J10-CE's arrival with long-sticks are a few pending business-centric decisions that will govern the life cycle of this weapon system in PAF. As far as I see it, it's a done deal.

The only thing stopping J10-CE's arrival with long-sticks are a few pending business-centric decisions that will govern the life cycle of this weapon system in PAF. As far as I see it, it's a done deal.

How many units approx.?

 

[truthseeker2010]

How many units approx.?

Two Squadrons!

Hope now USA will allow PAF to buy Bk-72

That would be strategic blunder on part of PAF if they go for more F-16s.