This Thursday, Defense Minister Nuno Melo began to hear the head of the Air Force claim that Portugal is “lagging behind” by not moving towards replacing F-16 fighters with fifth-generation F-35s; and ended the day firing live rounds – 50 km from the border with the heavily militarized Russian enclave of Kaliningrad – from, among other things, the G3 assault rifle that the Portuguese military had used since the Overseas War, 60 years ago, and which in the case of the Fusileiros it is well upgraded only because in 2019 the then commander of this special forces, Nobre de Souza, “burned a lot of eyelashes” studying a better upgrade with a meager value attached to it.
Nuno Melo visited two National Forces stationed in Lithuania as part of NATO’s efforts in the Baltics. On an air patrol mission with four F-16s from Siauliai air base, Air Force chief Cartasho Alves stressed the urgency that these fighters are “30 years old”, their replacement “will already take 10 years to arrive” The “sovereignty and integrity of the national airspace” are at stake , while all of Portugal’s partners have already switched to the F-35. But it was on a mission with the Marine Corps, in the forest near Klaipeda, that Melo, after a military demonstration, tried out shooting with automatic weapons.
Author: Sergio A. Vitorino
Source: CM Jornal
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