My understanding was that if you're not contributing to the net, the kit doesn't need to transmit because it doesn't need to register itself to establish a transmission slot. It just listens to everyone else's messages?
I think it works a bit like this, every unit estimates its own TQ (Time quality), based on the clock drift, past accuracy of determining NTR (Network Time Reference) which it can do during the time-refinement time in every time slot ,and finally how long ago it did an RTT-exchange.
If any of these three parameters increases the TQ goes down, below a certain TQ threshold or after a certain pre-set amount of timeslots has passed,every unit needs to an RTT exchange which means 2 way communication by definition, so all in all there will inevitably be 2 way (sending/receiving) moments for everyone that uses Link-16.
Could be wrong though, but that's basically how I remember it.