September 3 (SeeNews) - NATO member Croatia aims to buy 12 fourth-generation fighter jets by the end of 2020, a government official has said.
"Our aim is to know by the middle of next year what jets we can buy and have a contract signed by the end of next year," Robert Kopal, a special advisor to prime minister Andrej Plenkovic, said in a government press release on Monday.
"A tactical-technical study has shown that Croatia needs 12 jets and the supply process will officially begin with sending requests for proposals to countries whose planes meet the technical requirements of Croatia," Kopal added.
According to Kopal, one of the many parameters for choosing a plane will be the aircraft delivery date.
He also said that Croatia will launch two separate procedures - one for new aircraft and a second one for used jets, and will separately evaluate the offers it will receive in each procedure.
"After the evaluation, we are going to have a winner in the New category and a winner in the Used category, following which we will make the final decision," Kopal concluded.
In January, Croatia cancelled the purchase of 12 multi-purpose US-made F-16 Barak combat aircraft from Israel, after the $500 million (457 million euro) deal was blocked by the United States.
In March 2018, Croatia reached an agreement with Israel for the acquisition of upgraded F-16 fighter jets used by Israel's air force, to replace its ageing fleet of Russian-made MiG-21 fighter jets. The Israeli offer was picked in an international tender that also attracted bids from Greece, Sweden and the United States. The deal with Israel needed the US approval for the sale of a US-made product to a third party.
In December 2018, however, Washington said it believed that Israel had acted unfairly as the F-16s are US-made and are not supposed to be transferred to a third party without the US consent, Israeli TV broadcaster Channel 10 reported back then. According to the report, the Trump administration was angry that Israel had added advanced electronic systems to the F-16s in order to sweeten its offer in the Croatian tender.
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