Military Aviation News and Discussion

[Ananda]

Politics is always big factor if not main factor on any defense procurement. However F-16 is the main backbone of Egyptian AF. The article Eurasiantimes talk choices for J-10C not only replacing F-16 but also discarding choices for upgrade kit for V standard.

Now I know Eurasiantimes not what can be call dependable sources all the time, however sometimes it can bring out some info from reasonable accuracy. Thus for now I just put much grain of salt on this.

Because if they're doing this, I just can imagine how massive changes not only in supporting infrastructure but also in training regime will be. Not counting the Geopolitics means on this, just on the scope of logistics is very daunting.

Egypt already shown their displeasure with US always continued giving them second grade (relative) to Israel capabilities. French is one of the efforts to remedy that. However in my opinion those J-10C eventough being talk as F-16 replacement, I got suspicion that they are actually replacing older Soviet and Chinese made fighters. There's potential also they are even replacing Mig 29 considering the difficulty getting on time parts from Russia due to Russian own need in the war.

So let's see how's this develop, but the news means J-10C really got traction in Egypt. Whether they are really going to replacing US made Fighters or older Chinese and Soviet/Russian ones, remain to be seen.

 

[swerve]

Politics is a large factor for the decision to order the J-10C, but does it also means that Egypt regards the J-10C is better than the F-16? The amount of to be acquired J-10Cs is unknown, but probably the J-10C is intended to replace the first batch of 42 F-16A/B Block 15 delivered in the '80s during the Peace Vector I Program. So the J-10C seems to be good enough to replace the 40 years old F-16A/B Block 15.

I only wonder if Egypt considered to give the oldest F-16s an MLU.

AFAIK, the US restrictions on sales to Egypt include not selling AIM-120, & pressuring European countries not to sell Meteor. An MLU of the F-16A/B will still see them restricted to WVR missiles & AIM-7, & so will upgrading F-16s to F-16V, unless the USA relaxes its restrictions.

 

[koxinga]

Reputed China aviation watchers like Deino have called for caution at this Egyptian news as it is one sided.

Re why not MLU F16, I guess a question is what constraints will the US continue to apply to Egypt. EAF's fleet has always been constrained by the political agreement with Israel, such as access to BVRMs.

I don't think it means the end of the F16 in their service as they did build considerable infrastructure for it but they clearly see this as an issue.