Belgian F-16's

I have 2 questions: I know Belgium uses both F-16 A and B, but are these Lockheed Martins or General Dynamics? And are they still using block 15 jets, or are they all updated to MLU?

They aren't Lockheed Martin nore General Dynamics. They're SABCA. The Belgian F-16 were licence build by SABCA at their Gosselies construction plant near the city of Charleroi. The Belgian air component is still using block 15 jets, although numbers are falling rapidly. The latest count of MLU stands at 67, but this is definitely not correct. The project is due to end at the ending of 2003, so numbers of updated aircraft should be in the late 70's early 80's of a total of 90 converted aircraft.

And do you know whitch Belgian Squadrons have what Tailnumbers?

I already found these:
33
62
71
82
94
116
122
124

Ellebaut,

I don't really understand your question, but I suppose that you mean if anyone can tell you which aircraft is flying with which unit.

This is quite difficult since Belgian F-16's don't cary any unit marking for a few years now. Even if you succeed in obtaining a list of which aircraft served with a particular squadron, this is a very rapidly changing list. Even with the F-16 serving in a multi-role (every sq. can perform all tasks) concept within the Belgian air component, every squadron still has it's own specialities. For example, 349 sq still is a dedicated air defence sq., while 31 sq is a dedicated air-to-ground sq. This means that the different aircraft are used in a very different way. For the structure of the aircraft this means that the planes flying air-to-ground operations are much more stressed than the ones flying air defence missions.

This means that if the Belgian air component wants their aircraft to have an overall similar stress factor, they have to switch the aircraft between the different squadrons performing different task very frequently. This happens all the time.

In this context it's very difficult to point out which aircraft 'belongs' to a certain squadron. They are switched constantly as I stated before.

Greets,

s_ellebaut,

Regarding your first question, it's actually irrelevant whether the Belgian F-16s are from GD or LMTAS - lockheed bought GD, so all US F-16s have been built in the same facility.

As Bjorn already mentioned, foreign F-16s (or parts of) are sometimes produced by local industry under a licensing deal, for example SABCA in Belgium, Fokker in the Netherlands, Samsung in Korea, etc.

stef

We had two BAF F-16s come into Ramstein yesterday. One had an engine problem, so they both landed. They were from Florennes. One had the FS tail code, while the other did not. The FS jet, departed later that afternoon, while the other is still here. They both appeared to be non MLU jets, as I did not see the enhanced IFF "bird slicers".

Storm