LAHORE: Pakistan is one of the world’s 26 countries, which together possess over 4,400 F-16 fighter planes, best known for their advanced aerodynamics and avionics. India, meanwhile, may get F-16 ‘Super Vipers’ from American aerospace giant Lockheed Martin.

According to Lockheed Martin’s Vice President-Business Development (India), Orville Prins, the programme to deliver 18 F-16s to Pakistan, named as ‘Peace Drive I’, will raise the total number of F-16s ordered by Pakistan to 54. Orville Prins’ statement was reported by Press Trust of India on March 29, 2010 with a Dallas dateline. He had also stated that Pakistan’s ‘Peace Drive I’ order was for 12 F-16 Cs and six F-16 Ds.

Lockheed Martin’s Vice President-Business Development had assured the Indian media in the US that the F-16s being offered to India would be “much more advanced” than the fighters being provided to Pakistan.

Lockheed Martin is one of the six contenders in the Medium Multi-role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) along with US Boeing, French D’Assault, Swedish Gripen, European Consortium EADS and Russian MiG.

The other nations using these cost-effective combat “workhorses” to perform various kinds of missions and maintain around-the-clock readiness, include the US, Bahrain, Italy, Belgium, Chile, Denmark, Jordan, Netherlands, Israel, Indonesia, Morocco, Norway, Greece, Egypt, Oman, Poland, Venezuela, United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Thailand, Singapore, Portugal, China and South Korea. Various versions of the F-16 fighter planes have been used in numerous combat operations t date by the US, Pakistan, Israel, NATO foroces, Holland, Turkey and Venezuela.

The Pakistan Air Force F-16s shot down at least 10 intruders from Afghanistan between May 1986 and January 1989 during the Soviet-Afghan war. Afghanistan also claimed to have shot down one Pakistani F-16 during an encounter on April 29, 1987, though the pilot had ejected safely and landed in Pakistani territory. Subsequently, Pakistani officials confirmed that the loss was an F-16, but asserted it was accidentally shot down in a friendly fire incident during a dogfight with an enemy aircraft violating the Pakistani territory. According to the PAF then, Flight Lieutenant Shahid Sikandar Khan’s F-16 was hit by a missile fired by another F-16 piloted by Squadron Leader Amjad Javed.

Although, F-16s of the Pakistan Air Force did not see a combat in the 1999 Kargil War, they were initially deployed in patrolling the border to ensure that Indian Air Force fighters did not cross the Line of Control.

Later in the war, lack of spare parts due to sanctions imposed on Pakistan, forced the PAF to withdraw its F-16 fleet from regular patrol duties. The PAF’s main opposition was the MiG-29, used by the Indians to provide fighter escort for Mirage 2000.

Though both Pakistani F-16s and Indian Mirage 2000 planes were reported tracking each other with their radars, no actual combat had taken place during the Kargil war.

The Pakistan Air Force has also been using its F-16 fleet to attack militant positions and support the Pakistan Army’s operations in North-West Pakistan against the Taliban insurgency. Prior to the operations in the Swat Valley, approximately 10 of the PAF’s F-16s were fitted with high-resolution infrared sensors for reconnaissance purposes, supplied by the United States, to provide the Pakistani military with detailed imagery of the area.

In “Operation Desert Storm” of 1991, the US had used 249 F-16s that flew 13,340 sorties in strikes against Iraq, the most of any Coalition aircraft. However, seven of these aircraft were lost in the process in just 42 days between January 16 and February 28, 1991 due to confirmed Iraqi ground fire, radar-guided surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles. This mission also marked the largest single operational F-16 strike package flown to date. From the end of “Operation Desert Storm,” until the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the American F-16s patrolled the US/UK imposed no-fly zones in Iraq and two air-to-air victories were scored by these F-16s in “Operation Southern Watch.” On 27 December 1992, a US F-16 shot down an Iraqi MiG-25 in the airspace over Iraq.

The F-16s were also employed by NATO during the Bosnian peacekeeping operations in 1994-95 in ground-attack missions and enforcing the no fly zone over Bosnia.

These F-16s have also been used by the United States in Afghanistan since 2001. In 2002, a tri-national detachment known as the European Participating Air Forces (Danish, Dutch and Norwegian) had deployed 18 F-16s at Kyrgyzstan to support “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan. The US F-16s participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the only loss suffered during this combat was witnessed on June 12, 2003, when a fighter jet crashed near Baghdad due to fuel shortage. Meanwhile, a US Army fire-controlled Patriot Radar was damaged on March 25, 2003, following an erroneous hit by an anti-radiation missile fired from another US F-16 on a patrolling mission over Iraq.

On June 7, 2006, two US F-16s dropped two 500 lb (230 kg) guided smart bombs at an Al-Qaeda safe house, killing Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. On 25 February 25, 2009, a US F-16 shot down an Iranian jet, after it had entered into the Iraqi airspace. The F-16’s first air-to-air combat success was also achieved by the Since April 2005, eight Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16s, joined by four Royal Norwegian Air Force F-16s in February 2006, have been supporting International Security Assistance Force ground troops in Afghanistan. On August 31, 2006, a Dutch F-16 crashed in Ghazni province.