Did President Rodrigo R. Duterte procrastinate in
giving the go signal in the procurement of the most lethal technological
advanced combat jets’ U.S made F-16 Viper because the Chinese asked him not to
buy them?
In case the Philippines purchase the latest version
of the fourth generation F-16V Block 70’s opus of Maryland based Lockheed
Martin, the Philippines Air Force will be possessing, according to Wikipidea,
the most modern aircraft in terms of avionics, radar, electronic warfare
equipment, automated round collision avoidance system (AGCAS), cockpit and
weapon systems.
Before we go to the boring details of the
“Messenger of Death from the Sky”, here are the readers’ friendly features of
the plane and the “politics” that surround it.
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| The F-16V (Viper) is the latest evolution of the F-16 |
The F-16V is equipped with an upgraded programmable
displays generator, a Link-16 theatre data link where for example it can
connect with the enemies’ location thrown to her by either of the two South
Korean made frigates we bought and shoots SIMULTANEOUSLY through its advanced
Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar with its AGM
119 those absconding Chinese warships in the Scarborough and those enemies at
the artificial islets, their submarines, and their cruising missiles with
other missiles it carries for those specification.
The plane’s carry the AGM-119/AGM-84/AGM-65G
anti-ship missiles.
An example of AGM-119 is the Penguin anti-ship
missile designated by the U.S. military. It is a Norwegian passive IR seeker
-based short-to-medium range anti-ship guided missile.
The Penguin, according to Wikipidea, can be fired
singly or in coordinated-arrival salvoes. Once launched the F-16 Viper is free
to turn-away as the missile is inertially guided until the autonomous terminal
homing phase.
The bad ass Viper is effing deadly thanks to the
modern technological marvel.
The AESA radar aboard the aircraft enables
all-weather targeting, and offers high-resolution detection and imaging of
land-based targets. The phased array radar allows the simultaneous application
of air-to-air and air-to-surface modes.
The Northrop Grumman’s APG-83 Scalable Agile Beam
Radar (SABR) AESA potency to the unsophisticated means spikes the Viper’s
capabilities versus increasingly sophisticated threats that include new enemy
cruise missiles as well as evermore-capable adversary fighters such as the
Chinese's Sukhoi Su-35S Flanker E.
Compared to the F-16’s existing APG-68 mechanically
scanned radar, the APG-83—which leverages technology from the fifth generation
stealth jet’s F-35 ’s APG-81—can detect, track and identify greater
numbers of targets much faster and at much longer ranges.
