Hugo selling Iran F-16s? It's no threat.

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This is the exact model of F-16 I flew back in 1984.

Back then it was awesome (state of the art). Now, it's a piece of shit.

It doesn't have the avionics to carry a radar missile (these F-16s will be dead before they get within 10 miles of one of today's F-16s).

It has no laser bombing capability. Unless someone sold Iran JDAMs they have to not only overfly the target to kill it, they have to be able to see the target which means fly-by-day only.

It has very little night time combat capability of any kind.

It has no data link ability with other radars (like AWACs and other F-16s).

By today's standards, it's a piece of shit.



CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela's military is considering selling its fleet of U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets to another country, possibly Iran, in response to a U.S. ban on arms sales to President Hugo Chavez's government, a Venezuelan military official said Tuesday.

www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,195672,00.html

[MrDoublel]

Which means they would all deteriorate into hanger queens since the spare parts would be hard to come by.

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sfcdoublel said:

Which means they would all deteriorate into hanger queens since the spare parts would be hard to come by.

Exactly! I'd guess they're ALREADY hangar queens. This is NOT a military move. It's a political one.

This is a demonstration of why we don't generally sell top of the line (state of the art) stuff to foreigners.

Which, I might add, begs the question of why we're even talking about selling the F-22 overseas (to Japan as I recall).

One of those, alone and all by itself, can destroy a fleet of F-15 Eagles and it's like shooting fish in a barrel from what I understand.

Congress passed a law back in circa 2000 barring such sales. You know how politics goes though... They may want to sell it just to keep the production lines going. Who knows?

Those things cost well in excess of $100,000,000 (one hundred million).

We could charge a Billion dollars each and it wouldn't be worth it. Congress would have that money spent before the next coffee break.

[MrDoublel]

I don't worry about Japan then selling them to someone else. Also selling them to trusted nations reduces the cost per plane and Japan has a reputation of buying the best for her forces.

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sfcdoublel said:

I don't worry about Japan then selling them to someone else. Also selling them to trusted nations reduces the cost per plane and Japan has a reputation of buying the best for her forces.

Well that may be, but I can STILL remember when Toshiba sold our nuclear submarine "quiet propeller" secrets to the ruskies.

I have never bought one of their products as a result of that.