The F-16V is a giant step in direction of preserving the U.S. fleet of warplanes related and capable of maintain their very own, however will India lastly buy its personal F-21 variant?
Lockheed and the Air Drive have armed the F-16 jet fighter with a brand new suite of weapons, computing, sensors, cockpit shows and focusing on applied sciences as a part of a continued general of the Nineteen Eighties-era plane now being ready to fly for at the least a number of extra many years into the long run. As a part of an effort to accommodate the service’s want for the plane, Lockheed has engineered a brand new F-16 “V” variant which additionally incorporates a brand new knowledge bus, digital warfare suite, missile warning sensors and helmet mounted cueing expertise.
Whereas aligning with an Air Drive F-16 fleet-wide Service Life Extension Platform to increase the operational performance of the plane into the long run, the brand new variant represents a selected effort to tailor a particular model jet for U.S. allies in want of massively upgraded fourth-generation warplane. Many are of the view that new sensors, weapons and electronics, if even built-in into an older airframe, may end result within the equal of just about solely new aircraft. The idea is to carry the decades-old, combat-tested plane into a contemporary menace enviornment by a sequence of technical variations, a lot of which may be made potential by new software program applications and purposes.
The F-16 “V” mannequin, in growth for a number of years now, has tremendously knowledgeable the rising Indian F-16 jet fighter variant referred to as the F-21. Based mostly upon a sequence of Lockheed improvements, the F-21 incorporates just a few applied sciences distinctive to India, corresponding to Digital Warfare weapons and one thing referred to as Triple Missiles Launcher Adapters which arm the plane with 40-percent extra air-to-air weapons compared with normal or earlier F-16s.
“The F-21 can be the one fighter on the earth able to each probe/drogue and growth aerial refuelling, and it has the longest service lifetime of any competitor—12,000 flight hours,” Lockheed spokesman John Losinger instructed The Nationwide Curiosity.
The F-21s new AESA radar, Losinger defined, not solely principally doubles the radar vary but additionally attracts upon current improvements such because the Navy’s Infrared Search and Observe (IRST) focusing on expertise. Engineered first on a Navy F/A-18, IRST is a passive, long-range sensor that may observe a number of targets concurrently in a “jamming” or digital warfare menace atmosphere and help exact air-to-air focusing on.
A massively enhanced, upgraded and up gunned F-16 variant such because the F-21 may introduce a way more beneficial strategic circumstance for India because it seeks to discourage and comprise China, significantly alongside its border space. China has for fairly a while taken particular measures to additional militarize its Western plateau areas alongside its border with India, a sort of pressure posturing and strategic manoeuvre which might be held in danger by a fleet of F-21s.