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The United States Department of State has approved a Foreign Military sale for an estimated cost of $250.4 million to help Morocco sustain support for its current F-A6 fleet, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) said in a press release on Thursday.
This sale will allow the Kingdom to buy equipment needed for its F-A6 fleet, including «F-16 support equipment, spares and repair parts, personnel training and training equipment, publications and technical documentation, munitions support equipment, support and test equipment, integration and test, U.S. Government and contractor engineering, technical and logistical support services, and other related elements of logistics and program support», the same statement said.
According to the State Department, the new purchase «will improve Morocco’s self-defense capability» and will strengthen «the interoperability with the United States and other regional allies».
The same American agency recalls that Morocco operates an F-16 fleet and that purchasing the sustainment support will «ensure that [it] can continue operating their fleet in the future», adding that «the principal contractor will be Lockheed Martin Corporation, Bethesda, Maryland».
In March, Morocco requested to buy F-16C/D Block 72 aircraft and related equipment for an estimated cost of $3.787 billion. This Foreign Military sale, made to upgrade Morocco’s F-16 fleet, was approved by the State Department.
Morocco’s March purchase included twenty-nine engines (Pratt & Whitney F100-229) (includes 4 spares), twenty-six APG-83 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars (includes 1 spare), twenty-six Modular Mission Computers (includes 1 spare), among others.
During the same period, Morocco requested «upgrades to its 23 existing F-16s, which would bring them to F-16V standard at a cost of $985.2 million», Defence Web wrote on Friday.
