Romania to Buy 40-year-old F16s from Norway

Who says Romania doesn’t have a generous budget for public spending? Romania is to buy 32 F16s from Norway. So far, so good, but there are two major concerns here.

The first problem is that this governmental shopping spree costs the Romanian state EUR 454 million. From this sum, EUR 354 million will get to the Norwegian state and EUR 100 million to the United States for maintenance and training fees. When doing the math, each fighter jet costs around 11 million Euros.

The second problem is that the jets have been servicing the Norwegian army for 40 years. Norway is currently under transition from F16 to F35. This is why they are getting rid of all their old jets. Romania seems to be the proper country to take this sort of army toy from the West.

The transaction is to be approved by the Romanian Parliament. Still, there won’t be any problems, as the governing coalition has the majority. If the contract is ratified, Romania will have a fleet of 49 modern second-hand F16 fighter jets, as the country already purchased 17 second-hand fighters from Portugal.