Draken Purchase Dutch F-16s For Red Air
 

A very interesting development on the Red Air scene:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/theav...6s-draken/amp/

Buying 12 F-16s.

Game changer with the M6.5 software tape giving an adversary equivalent to the USAF Block 50/52 with an established pathway to APG-83 installation. Some of the embedded software programmes are quite useful too for emulating other weapon system fly outs.

Indeed, DD. The F16s are MLU aircraft which are nice jets and as I understand it are significantly better than Top Aces F16s. Follow on purchase of up to 28 I believe is also offered.

I guess it depends if you believe (Top Aces's) marketing or not? Either way, I suppose it gives ACC something to carefully consider before rushing to any decisions..........

From my experience interfacing with the Cloggy F-16s in the 90's, I am surprised that they have any fatigue life left on them!

Is that better before or after the Top Aces aircraft were fitted with an AESA and IRST?

If they get those mods then yes, the Top Aces’ F16s will be a formidable platform. The if is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Also, they’ve got to be contracted for those mods to be of any use. Equally, the baseline Draken F16s are better and will be able to accept the same mods.

one thing is for sure, it’s going to be an interesting next few months to see where this all goes.

I should think the F16s are a shrewd purchase and have come at the right time perhaps given what happened to one of their F1s at Nellis. Equally, it sets Draken up for the future with an F16 MLU jet and if they purchase the majority of those jets offered other companies won’t have them.

USA Air just bought 40-odd Aussie F-18s for a similar market of increasing size

Its all gone very quiet on that front and I don’t think Air USA have been awarded a contract to operate them yet? My understanding is those Hornets are absolutely shagged out as well so their fatigue life will be an issue.

Yep I have been told the deal is dead, they won no contacts so they have no use for them.

Agreed, I’d heard that he never completed the purchase of the Hornets as he couldn’t generate a contract to operate them.

I think we need to be clear with our terminology. Air USA, just like Top Aces, did indeed win a contract and were given $3MM on award back in October 2019. What NEITHER of them have is a Task Order for an Operating Location. The key difference is that Don Kirlin has not been able to raise the capital to a) actually acquire the jets (hence why he's trying to sell Hawk mk67s for ludicrous money), and b) (finally) realised that he'd also need to include costs for a CBR on them. Top Aces have drawdown on the $100MM in raised capital from Clairvest CEP IV, CDPQ, and other investors which has funded the Netz acquisition and so far an AAMS and AESA upgrade to a single A-4N, the radar for which is believed to be the EL/M-2052 with a tiny 300 TRM antenna.

Its interesting isn't it, DD, that there's much hype around the A-4N being fitted with the AESA, yet its a very limited press release and there's no meat on the bones of how many they're going to equip and what the expansion plan is. Similarly, Top Aces have gone quiet on what their expansion and operating plan is with the Netz. Kirlin, talked a good game, but I don't think it was ever going to work for him.

Have they? They only announced the certification in May - how much news are you expecting?

The certification and 3 flights with nothing since. Now the important question and observation is this, did that flight include all the modifications and upgrades, I suspect not as there are many pointers to this in all the marketing material pushed thus far. As such it gained its AW certification against the baseline configuration it was received in from Golden Number Solutions (GNS) in Israel. So assume the modifications and upgrades are done as per their marketing (new radome (likely from GD) for AESA (likely from Elta) will be the most obvious) then the aircraft will have to be re-certified. Same if they have undertaken and achieved USAF TAA Military Flight Release. At this time, they have no task orders from the government to generate revenue with these aircraft. I suspect they will be eager to bid on the upcoming F-35C Chase Contract and look to partner with another provider to compete for Nellis as 4 becoming 12 aircraft don't cut it.

Exactly this, DD. As I said it’s all been very quiet since they arrived in country with not much in the way of fanfare. I rather suspect that Draken Int’l’s purchase of 12 F16 MLU aircraft has put a rather large dampner on Top Aces’ F16 party. Particularly when Draken already have a foothold at Nellis.

The Draken purchase of 12 F-16 MLU standard jets kind of blows this Top Aces’ news out the water. Particularly when they have the option to purchase a follow on order of a further 28.

Top Aces, as I understand, are yet to have any contract confirmed to operate these aircraft under. Draken however may have stolen a march on others as they could likely swap out some of their aircraft such as the L-159/A-4 and replace those lines with F-16.