The Argentine Minister of Defense, Jorge Taiana, during the inauguration of a new air surveillance radar station, spoke about the future incorporation of new supersonic fighters for the Argentine Air Force.
As is well known, Argentine President Alberto Fernandez recently gave an interview organized by the Financial Times, during which he commented that «Argentina has to allocate its resources to more important things than the purchase of military aircraft».
????"Argentina tiene que destinar sus recursos a cosas más importantes que a la compra de aviones militares. Estamos en un continente muy desigual, pero no hay problemas de guerra y se busca la unidad entre los países". El presidente @alferdez en The Global Boardroom de @FT. pic.twitter.com/IexXG8ryi6
— Alberto Fernández Prensa (@alferdezprensa) December 7, 2022
For years, the Argentine Air Force (FAA) has been carrying out a series of evaluations and negotiations with the aim of equipping itself with modern supersonic multirole fighters, which recently resulted in the pre-selection of three candidates for their eventual purchase. The offers under consideration are those of China, with its JF-17 Block III (or FC-1 Xiaolong); India with the HAL Tejas and the US with the F-16MLU, which will soon be decommissioned by the Royal Danish Air Force. However, President Fernandez’s words seem to bury the long-delayed illusions of re-equipping the FAA.
When consulted by the media, Minister Taiana commented the following:
«It seems to me that the President’s words are to be expected. That is to say, Argentina is going through a very difficult economic situation, we know that, and at the same time Argentina has a need to recover, modernize and update material for the Armed Forces that for many years were practically without purchases nor equipment.
There is a congressional law called FONDEF, the Congress and the national government that promoted it; that is to say, the government of President Alberto Fernandez promoted the existence of a specific item destined to favor that modernization and re-equipping.
And this process is going to take place, not in one, two or three years, but in several years and it is taking place, I repeat, this is part (in reference to the inauguration of the new area defense radar in the province of Entre Ríos) of that FONDEF.
As regards aircraft, Argentina has an aspiration of fourth generation fighters and has an aspiration to recover its submarine capacity, as it has the aspiration to acquire armored vehicles; those are three great objectives that persist, they are maintained, and obviously to achieve them, the technical capabilities of what is being sought must be taken into account, and at the same time, the possibilities of financing must be taken into account.
Nobody can say that Argentina can now spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the purchase of submarines, but it can have a strategy to develop this purchase with financing and over a period of years, which is what these large purchases and large achievements generally take.
It seems to me that (the President) has expressed himself clearly. Argentina cannot spend much more than what it spends from the budget, which it already does through FONDEF, and the large purchases will have to have resources provided by external financing«.
So much for the words of the Minister of Defense of the Argentine Republic, confirming that although the three major military re-equipment projects (supersonic multi-role 4/4.5 gen fighters, submarines and wheeled armored vehicles) continue to be fundamental for the Argentine Armed Forces, their completion will require excellent external financing conditions, or a significant extra-budgetary reinforcement to complement FONDEF. But the latter, as President Fernandez has already said, is not a priority for his administration.
