Yeah, that’s what I meant. I vaguely remember seeing an F-16 with PIDS a couple of years ago in real life, but I didn’t take any pictures.
And for some reason, it’s really hard to find images of Dutch F-16s fitted with PIDS, since 99% of photos show them with either drop tanks or standard pylons.
That said, I’m about 99% sure the Netherlands never operated PIDS+ as i have only seen sources about the normal PIDS, but having PIDS is already a major improvement over having none
That makes sense, as their integration never went trough, so (I speculate) that the only ones that had it were the trial ones they got.
Although it is said that they bought them:
Shown that they were put on the donated Ukrainian ones instead:
Yes, because as far as we know publicly the Netherlands pulled out from that project before the PIDS+ came into fruition. Although some sources state that the NLDs did buy them (after their ones went out of service, so most likely for the Ukranian refits): Missile warning and 3D Audio/ANR for Belgian F-16s - F-16.net
The situation you discribed seems the most realistic.
I do wonder what happened to the orders that seemed to have been placed in 2017, as several articles, mention this
Given that roughly six years passed between the public report’s about this purchase and the Netherlands beginning to donate F-16s to Ukraine, I would have expected there to have been enough time to see Dutch F-16s operating with the upgraded pylons.
So I assume those upgrades were either:
cancelled,
or delivered somewhere like late 2023 and were instead immediately transfered to Ukraine.
It’s skin is obviously still being worked on. So far the main thing I have found is that this one has a LITENING II pod instead of the LANTIRN that the belgian one has.
Also as of this moment, the dutch F-16AM does get a radar HMD as well
Yeah, they said in the devblog feedback post that it would get the LITENING pod although they didn’t specify it would be the I or II variant. i still find a bit weird that they didn’t choose the Sniper pod instead, since both the Belgian and Dutch F-16s use it, and the Norwegian F-16 in-game uses it as well at the same br.
I hope it gets to keep the HMD. As far as I know, the JHMCS used by the Dutch can slave the radar. Right now, though, it seems like they simply copy-pasted the Norwegian F-16 as a placeholder , since that one already has an HMD and its 3D model is the closest match to a Dutch aircraft. as both the Dutch and Norwegian F-16s were built by Fokker in the Netherlands.
I hope so too. 13.7 without HMD is already a massive pain if your plane doesn’t have any other compensating advantage, which this F-16AM doesn’t really have.
Yeah, in my opinion, the European F-16s are on the weaker side at 13.7, so I’d be totally fine with them moving down to 13.3 and or getting hmd. Aircraft like the Su-30MK2 already sit at 13.3, and I’d argue those are much stronger BVR platforms. Aside from being weaker dogfighters, they don’t really do anything worse than the F-16s.
It looks like a skin for the Dutch F-16 has been added. Although I can’t check the dev server right now, so i took a screenshot from a recent video by MatAWG.
The skin depicts J-635, it was orginally built as an F-16A Block 15 in the early 1980s. It was later upgraded to F-16AM MLU standard in the late 1990s and appears to have remained in service until around 2019. F-16.net
it looks to be part of the family that the PIDs system is apart of, however, it appears to lack the MAW, could just be used as the BOL pylons on the F-15s and F-14s as extra countermeasures
Also very important to note is the programmable munitions on the inner wing hardpoints. This was previously only possible on Israeli F-16’s in-game, but it seems like the Belgian and Dutch F-16AM’s will also be able to do carry them as well.
