After the Royal Thai Air Force introduced last week that they’re aiming to purchase 8 fighter jets, yesterday the Cabinet accredited the plan to fund the acquisition of 4 planes. They estimated a budget of about 13.eight billion baht which will be unfold throughout the following four fiscal years.
Stunning says the purchase is necessary to replace the F-16 Falcon jets which have been in operation for practically 40 years and continued use runs the risk of accidents in addition to continued high maintenance costs. The determination has not yet been made on precisely what kind of jets to buy, however it will be determined by a procurement committee later, based on the RTAF spokesperson.
The procurement committee is one of 2 panels which were established regarding the purchase of new jets for the Air Force. The first will concentrate on researching the type of plane to be bought and will be chaired by the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the RTAF. The procurement committee, headed by the RTAF Aide-de-camp, will take their recommendations and make the ultimate choice and contract to actually buy the jets, after getting the ultimate approval from the Cabinet.
The Air Force has been leaning in path of Lockheed Martin, the US firm that produces the F-35 stealth fighter and its variants, the F-35A, B, and C that have completely different takeoff and touchdown characteristics. And they argue that nows the time to purchase, as costs have dropped since the F-35 first came out and planes could be picked up for about US $82 million (2.seventy three billion baht), a discount of 42% of their original record worth of US $142 million (4.73 billion baht)..