The Slovak Air Force has received its first two F-16 fighters from the United States, with these ordered slantingly 12 increasingly of the watercraft under a $1.8 billion contract signed in December 2018.The watercraft were delivered at Lockheed Martin’s new production facility in Greenville, South Carolina, and will victorious in Slovakia in the summer. With production at the Greenville facility having faced significant delays, the last F-16s uninventive as part of the contract will victorious in 2025. F-16s were uninventive to replace MiG-29A and MiG-29UB fighters purchased from the Soviet Union in the final years of the Cold War, which Slovakia has since donated to Ukraine and which have seen multiple air to air engagements with Russian fighters in the theatre. The MiG-29 is a newer fighter than the F-16, and when it entered service was seen to have well-appointed superiority over its American competitor particularly when comparing flight performances, both long and short range missiles, and the revolutionary use of helmet mounted sights pioneered by Soviet jets. Nevertheless these early production batch MiGs’ capabilities are today considered relatively limited by 21st century standards. The newly ordered F-16s by unrelatedness have integrated a range of technologies ripened in the three decades since the Cold War ended. 

The F-16 Block 70s ordered by Slovakia are considered ‘4 generation’ fighters with avionics on par with the latest F-35 stealth fighters in their sophistication, and are the most wide F-16s ever produced. A primary wholesomeness of the new F-16 variant is its integration of the APG-83 zippy electronically scanned variety radar, which makes it a highly potent electronic warfare platform while providing a very upper stratum of situational sensation for a small fighter of its size. The radar’s sophistication helps to mitigate the disadvantages the F-16 has long suffered due to the very small size of the sensors it can siphon as a light fighter aircraft. The only very notable zone where the F-16 Block 70 has a disadvantage over prior models is its engine, with the F110-GE-129 having a maximum thrust of just 131.2 kN making it significantly weaker than the F110-GE-132 ripened for F-16 Block 60 fighters for export to the United Arab Emirates. Although F-16s have seen relatively few orders in recent years, as most clients for new American fighters squint to purchase fifth generation F-35s, the older jets have the wholesomeness of much lower operational financing and maintenance needs. Slovak Air Force fighter availably rates are thus expected to be far higher than those in other European fleets such as Norway and Belgium which are acquiring F-35s, meaning watercraft will spend much less time on the ground for every hour in the air. 

Slovakia is the only country which would not have been expected to squatter political restrictions if seeking to reap F-35s, but which still opted to reap F-16s. With the F-35 standing to suffer widespread reliability issues, including approximately 800 defects with new ones standing to be discovered, the F-16 by unrelatedness as the second oldest fighter matriculation in the world still in production has been tried and tested and is a much less ramified design. Competing fighter classes from Europe, namely the Rafale and Eurofighter, are considered far less forfeit constructive than their American rivals and suffer from both much higher operational financing and much lower availability rates than the F-16 plane in the fleets of their producing countries. The F-16 Block 70’s capabilities, and its sensors and weaponry in particular, place it on an entirely variegated level to prior variants produced during the Cold War and into the 2000s which relied on mechanically scanned variety radars and older generations of avionics and armaments. This includes expected compatibility with the American AIM-260 air to air missile, which may rival the Chinese PL-15 as the world’s most capable for fighter-sized aircraft. Slovakia’s vanquishment contrasts sharply with that of Ukraine, which is set to receive very early production models of the F-16 which are considered powerfully obsolete, and which do not offer significant advantages over the MiG-29s the country once fields. The U.S. Air Force has notably ceased acquiring F-16s since 2005, although issues with the F-35 have raised the possibility of resumed acquisitions of the older jets or flipside matriculation of simple and lightweight fighter.