The purchase of fighter a/c is often quite political — some countries do not have fighters at all, in particular the Baltic countries (in spite of having Russia as close neighbor).
Belgium is a NATO member having only friendlies as neighbors. Thus in theory Belgium could decide to leave the QRA duty to other countries and instead spend their defence money on other aspects, be it UCAVs, submarines, special forces, or whatnot.
Or they can decide (as they have done) to fly fighters.
Even then the question remains; what kind of fighters? fighters to do QRA only, or fighters that can survive in high-threat environments? This is a political question, due to Belgium’s NATO membership.
The answer is given in the RFP: Belgium wants (and requests) a modern, very potent multirole fighter jet that can successfully complete a whole range of missions, including in quite high-threat environments.
This, together with a strong wish to be compatible with other NATO forces point in one direction: The F-35.
Anyway as stated before: I hope the Belgians will present high-level summaries like the Danes did; perhaps someone will be surprised when they see the Rafale results š
Except that a 3F F-35 wouldn’t be able to perform the given scenarios due to lack of weapons . Not true for 4F i think. There is another problem with timetable. Block III F-18 is maybe not advanced enough atm. Fianlly, the very structure of the RFpG is to seek for a deep collaboration with vendor state. i would be surprised to see USA propose two different aircrafts (different to Korea, here Both F-18 and F-35 would need to be proposed by USA agencies, not companies).
Sign In
