The Royal Jordanian Air Power’s F-16 fighters had been scrambled on April 14 to intercept Iranian drones en path to Israel, which had been launched on a strike mission underneath Operation True Promise in retaliation for an Israeli assault on an Iranian diplomatic constructing in Syria. The operation marks some of the important and direct navy interventions by an Arab state in assist of Israel in historical past, and highlights the shut ties which Tel Aviv has shaped with a number of Western-aligned Arab monarchies of which Jordan and Morocco have been the foremost. Amman has additionally performed a key function since 2011 in supporting Western, Israeli and Turkish navy efforts in opposition to its neighbour Syria, which had been a number one adversary of Israel and the US for the reason that early years of the Chilly Warfare. Jordan has acquired navy help from Israel previously, together with second hand navy plane delivered within the 2010s, with the 2 militaries exercising collectively often. These ties have brought on important controversy inside Jordan within the aftermath of the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip from November 2023, with the large civilian casualties that resulted main regional and Western sources to broadly declare a genocide of the Gazan inhabitants was underway. A big portion of Jordan’s inhabitants are of Palestinian origin, which has additional exacerbated the Jordanian state’s difficulties in sustaining its conspicuous alignment with Israel.
The Jordanian Air Power first acquired F-16 fighters within the late Nineties, and in contrast to these operated by neighbouring Egypt and Iraq these are geared up with comparatively trendy AIM-120 energetic radar guided air to air missiles. The nation presently operates an estimated 47 fighters, the primary 16 of which had been ordered in 1995 and delivered from 1997-98. The Jordanian Defence Ministry was introduced on January 19, 2023 to have positioned an order for 12 F-16 constructed to the newest Block 70/72 commonplace underneath a $4.21 billion contract, making the fighters among the costliest ever bought by the US or another nation. At little over $350 million per airframe together with related weaponry and upkeep gear, the plane price shut to a few instances as a lot as the identical fighters ordered by Taiwan in 2019, which had been bought for underneath $125 million per airframe. They price nearly 3 times as a lot because the $120 million per airframe that Israel is paying for brand new F-35 fighters, elevating important hypothesis of main corruption behind the deal. The Iranian strikes finally served to focus on that within the occasion of an expanded regional battle, Tehran and different Western Bloc adversaries will face not solely Western, Israeli and Turkish forces, but in addition supporting forces from a lot of Western-aligned Arab states.
