Of course they had knowledge, even in procurement department engineers work and they have in-depth knowledge of the products they are supposed to acquire. Even pilots have knowledge of flight mechanics. I didn't say UAE people are dumb, there a lot of very smart people among them and of course their airforce has some of their best people so they know things. But what I said is that the R&D was done by LM as per OP and I standby that.
What I think UAE AF decided that they wanted to see those upgrades in F-16, they made a team, they laid out specs and some preliminary details, contacted LM and asked if they can do those modifications to F-16. LM's team thought about it, came with a proposal, discussed the details and there should have been changes and discussions and then it got finalised, UAE paid them, got the rights to this particular configuration. LM agreed and made the block-60. However since it was LM's who did that so even if UAE has copyrights, LM engineers further modified and made APG-83 with slight improvements over APG-80 and sold them as part of F16V without paying any royalty to UAE.. and an OEM can always do that.