Combat aircraft

Above: From

September 2008

until October

2014, the Belgian

F-16AMs fl ew

in Afghanistan

under Operation

‘Guardian Falcon’

from Kandahar.

Belgian Defence/

Vador

Right: The smart

bombs most

commonly used

by the Belgian

F-16AMs over Iraq

and Syria are the

500lb laser-

guided GBU-12s

and GPS-guided

GBU-38 JDAMs.

Belgian Defence/

Christian Decloedt

F-16AMs e ectively dropped bombs or

 red the 20mm internal cannon.

BAP duty

When Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia

joined NATO on March 29, 2004, the  rst

 ghter aircraft the North Atlantic Alliance

deployed to Šiauliai air base in Lithuania

to preserve the integrity of the airspace

of these countries were four Belgian

F-16AMs. Armed with a pair of infra-red-

guided AIM-9M Sidewinder short-range

air-to-air missiles, a pair of radar-guided

AIM-120B Advanced Medium-Range

Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) and a full

load of 20mm rounds in the internal

cannon, they ful lled the air policing role

for the  rst three months of a long-term

mission that is still continuing today.

On December 1, 2006 and September

3, 2013, the Belgian Fighting Falcons

returned to Šiauliai for two more

rotations of four months of collective air

defense. When tensions rose on NATO’s

eastern  ank as a consequence of the

Ukrainian crisis, NATO enhanced its Baltic

Air Policing (BAP) mission by extending

the area of operations to Kaliningrad and

in 179  ying days. They dropped 472

bombs, all of which were precision-

guided weapons. Around 45 per cent

of them were GBU-24 Paveway III and

GBU-31 JDAM 2,000lb general-purpose

or ‘bunker-buster’ bombs, which were

used to neutralize the extensive non-

hardened and hardened Libyan military

infrastructure, above ground as well as

underground.

The most recent operation in which

Belgian combat aircraft took part was the

war against so-called Islamic State (IS)

in Iraq between October 2014 and June

2015. Under the codename Operation
      ‘Desert Falcon’, six F-16AMs supported
      the US-led multi-national coalition
      against IS with CAS, air interdiction (AI)
      and air reconnaissance (AR) missions. The
      aircraft  ew from Muwa aq Salti Air Base
      in Jordan, around 480 miles (750km)
      from Iraq’s capital Baghdad. In 3,552
       ying hours, they accomplished 796
      sorties in support of Operation ‘Inherent
      Resolve’ against a wide variety of targets
      such as oil production infrastructure,
      command centers, heavy equipment,
      communication lines and even individual
      snipers. During 163 of these sorties, the

http://www.combataircraft.net // February 2018 61

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