President Rodrigo Duterte is saying no thanks to the United States’ offer to sell F-16 Multirole Fighter jets to the Philippines. This speech happened in August 2018 during the 112th Anniversary Celebration of AFP.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has rejected an offer by the US defense chief and other top American officials to buy F-16 fighter jets, saying such an acquisition would be useless because his country needs lighter combat aircraft to fight insurgents.
the President said three U.S. Cabinet members wrote him a letter to make the offer.
“We hope to partner in other significant defense procurement of our mutual benefit including through the Lockheed Martin F-16 multi-role fighter platform and your attack helicopter platform among other U.S. systems,” as the letter offers.
But for the Defense Secretary, the offer needed to think carefully considering this is very expensive to buy and maintain.
The defense secretary also revealed, the US also raised its concerns over the country’s plan to procure military equipment from Russia.
“If you buy from them, it is the company of Russia that is sanctioned, not us. So the bank will not pay them,” the official pointed out, saying the US government will look into the matter carefully.
Again on September 2018 during the visit of our defense secretary, the US government once again offer the F-16 Fighter Jet but still, it is rejected.
Lorenzana was in the US with his counterpart, Secretary James Mattis and during a bilateral meeting, he reaffirmed that the Philippines-US alliance remains strong. Where at this time, Lorenzana said the Philippines is procuring 74,000 Glock pistols from their country, which is now being certified by the US Congress.
Meanwhile, Swedish defense group Saab is also advancing its engagement with the Philippine Air Force (PAF) as part of efforts to meet the service’s stated requirement to procure a multirole combat aircraft over the coming few years.
