by Chris Pocock
Having secured three customers, Lockheed Martin (LM) is discussing the F-16V with five more countries, and sees potential for up to 1,000 such upgrades to the evergreen Fighting Falcon. In a briefing here at the show yesterday, the company’s F-16 business development manager Randy Howard declined to identify Taiwan, Korea and Singapore as the three committed countries.
Northrop Grumman’s APG-83 Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR) is the centerpiece of the upgrade, which also includes a new mission computer with 10 times the memory and twice the power of its predecessor, a high-speed 1Gb databus, and a 6- by 8-inch center pedestal display.
The test flight program for the upgrade is due to end early next year after some 80 sorties. Taiwan is the lead customer, with some 150 aircraft to convert. AIN understands that LM has agreed to a plan for Taiwan’s AIDC to do the upgrade work on all except the first two aircraft at its Taichung facility.
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