Romania Buys Second-Hand F-16i Fighters from Israel

Romania turned to Israel again to bring up to standards its military. The Israeli media made public that Romania signed a new contract with Elbit System, worth 150 million dollars, to buy F-16i and F-16b jet-fighters, replacing the current snot so old and outdatedt MiG-21 fighters.

According to Ynet, an Israeli web-site, Bucharest goes for the still very expensive fighter planes the Israeli aviation is now giving up to replace them with the more expensive F-16 fighters. The latter have a price-tag to steep for Romania to pay, comments Ynet.
The contract is pretty complicated, said Ynet, and was deemed so by the Israeli army too, since it put up a special coordination committee in charge of it.

According to the contract provisions, Elbit Systems will take care of servicing and modernizing the fleet sold to Romania.
Elbit is the same company signing back in 1993 a contract with Aerostar Bacau for modernizing 110 MiG-21 fighters Romania had.

The recent Israeli-Romanian contract needed USA approval, since the planes were built by the American company Lockheed Martin, stated the Arutz Sheva web-site. It looks the US approval was granted to Romania, as a NATO member country; while the green-light for a similar deal between Israel and Venezuela was denied.