Recently, the Philippines, instigated by the United States, has been stirring up trouble in the South China Sea. However, the "Nikkei Asia" website disclosed on the 27th that the United States seems to be the "thick thigh" behind the Philippines, but in fact, for various reasons, it has seriously affected the Philippines' acquisition of key weapons to "deal with the Chinese threat".
According to the report, the Philippines previously declared that in order to "monitor China's naval and air operations in the South China Sea", the country's air force, which is outdated, urgently needs to be updated. To this end, the Philippines first introduced a small number of FA-50 light attack aircraft developed by South Korea and converted from trainer planes, and then asked the United States for the purchase of new F-16 fighters. In June 2021, the United States officially approved the supply of 12 of the latest F-16V fighter jets to the Philippines. In terms of performance, these latest batches of American F-16V fighters are equipped with advanced AN/APG-83 active phased array radars, and have the ability to launch AIM-120 series medium-range air-to-air missiles, and their general performance is comparable to the PLA's J-10C fighter jets - of course, in the case of detachment from the support system, the Philippine F-16V fighter alone can actually not play much role.
However, the entire procurement project will cost about 2.43 billion US dollars, which is not only as high as 200 million US dollars per unit, which is even more expensive than the F-35 stealth fighter, but also the overall budget is more than half of the Philippine annual defense budget, which is simply unaffordable for the cash-strapped Philippines.
In order to solve the problem of money, the Philippines once pinned its hopes on free military aid from the United States. Philippine Ambassador to the United States Romoudes said, "We hope that the United States will provide some kind of assistance so that we can modernize our armed forces as soon as possible." However, considering that the Pentagon has sold the F-16V for a sky-high price, the Philippines hopes that the United States will suddenly switch to providing it for free, which is tantamount to expecting pie in the sky......
On the other hand, the ambiguity of the United States on the issue of providing F-16V to the Philippines is also due to "lack of heart". Earlier, Taiwan admitted that despite repeated urging by US lawmakers, due to supply chain problems and lagging progress in technological development, the Pentagon's priority project to provide 66 new F-16V fighter jets to Taiwan was forced to be postponed, let alone meet the needs of the Philippines on time.
In desperation, the Philippines pinned its hopes on second-hand F-16 fighter jets.
Romoudes revealed that the Philippines may cancel the agreement to purchase new F-16V fighters from the United States, and instead buy second-hand fighters from third countries such as Denmark. "I think Denmark has a dozen or more hardly used F-16 fighters that should be available for purchase. ”
(Danish F-16 fighters have already been booked for Ukraine)
At present, Denmark, Norway and other countries in Northern Europe still have dozens of newly retired F-16A/B fighters that can be provided to the outside world. Compared with the retired F-16 fighters of the US military since the Cold War, which have been frequently consumed in various tasks and basically lost their reuse value, the F-16A/B fighters in the Nordic countries have less daily consumption and the fuselage life is still usable, and they have undergone medium-term transformation, and their overall capabilities are close to the level of F-16C/D, and they also have the ability to launch AIM-120 series medium-range air-to-air missiles. Although it is not as good as the new F-16V, for the Philippine Air Force, at least it has finally regained access to a professional fighter, and it can be regarded as a solution to the problem of whether there is one.
However, the Philippine plan was once again cut off halfway by the United States. According to the relevant laws, countries equipped with F-16s that want to transfer this American-developed fighter to a third party must first need permission from the United States. The problem is that "in order to offset China's growing influence on the South American region," the US State Department in October approved the resale of Danish second-hand F-16 fighters to Argentina in order to prevent China from providing Argentina with the "Thunder" fighter jets jointly developed by China and Brazil.
On the other hand, the United States also approved the Nordic countries to provide these second-hand F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine to meet the urgent needs of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Now that the F-16s for aid to Ukraine have begun the delivery process, "these needs will basically deplete the existing F-16 fighter stocks in the Nordic countries." It can be seen from this that both Argentina and Ukraine have a much higher status in the hearts of the United States than the Philippines, so although the Philippines was instigated by the United States to be on the front line of provoking China, the United States is very stingy in terms of actual support for the Philippines -- in the so-called "Chinese coast guard ship attacking Philippine ship with water cannon" incident not long ago, the US military ships nearby just watched from the sidelines, which is very revealing.
The Philippines, which is being used as a gun by the United States, is so pathetic.