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http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-d ... m-1.581520 is well-informed but "unreachable"...Argentina to buy 18 combat aircraft from Israel
Some of the all-purpose Kfir jets will reportedly be assembled in Argentina by Israeli engineers
A high-level Argentine military delegation visited Israel recently to finalize the $500 million purchase of 18 Israeli fighter jets.
According to a report in the Buenos Aires daily Clarin,
Argentina wants to buy 18 multipurpose combat aircraft called "Kfir Block 60,"
since negotiations with Spain for 16 Mirage F1 fighter bombers fell through.
The deal has caused concern in the British government since it is suspected that Argentina could use the aircraft to intimidate the oil companies operating in Falkland Islands waters,
which are disputed by Argentina, according to Clarin.
If the deal goes through, 12 of the 18 planes would be assembled in Argentina in a plant set up and run by Israeli engineers.
Although the aircraft were designed over forty years ago,
the refurbished model comes with a reconditioned US J-79 General Electric made engine, an electronic sweeping radar EL/M-2032 from Elta Systems, an affiliate of IAI, according to a report in the site Defensa.com.
Argentina, which is undergoing a prolonged economic slump, could not afford to modernize its military and purchase front-line fighter aircraft, not even relatively advanced second-hand ones.
President Cristina Kirchner, however, promised her generals to renew their fighter fleet, after they were forced to retire the Mirage jets,
which were more than 40 years old, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz.
Israel Aircraft Industries built over 200 Kfirs. After two decades of service with the Israel Defense Forces, they were put in storage in the mid-1990s and replaced by F-16s. When IAI manages to sell some, it upgrades them with new avionics.
The Argentine deal comes at a low point in relations between Jerusalem and Buenos Aires in the wake of an agreement the Kirchner government made last year with Iran to jointly investigate the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Buenos Aires Jewish community building, that killed 85 people and is widely believed to have been carried out by Hezbollah with Iranian backing.
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