Portugal is shopping for a new fighter, but first it has to keep the old one flying. At its meeting on Wednesday 11 November, the Portuguese Council of Ministers approved a resolution allowing the Portuguese Air Force to spend up to €12 million on engine components for its F-16 fleet in 2026 and 2027.

According to the official communiqué of the meeting, the purchase will allow the air force to carry out a general overhaul of the engines in line with the manufacturers’ instructions, and will guarantee the operational readiness of one of the air force’s main capabilities. Portuguese media, led by the Lusa news agency and ECO, reported the decision on Thursday 12 November.

It is a modest sum by fighter standards. But it says a lot about where Portugal stands: an F-16 fleet that has served for more than 30 years, and a replacement decision that has not formally started.

What the government approved

The authorisation was item ten on a long list of decisions taken by the Portuguese government that day. It caps the spending at €12 million across two budget years, 2026 and 2027, and covers components for the jets’ engines rather than new engines.

It is not the only recent F-16 bill. ECO reports that on 21 October the government had already cleared around €4.4 million, plus VAT, for 300-flight-hour phase inspections and related maintenance on the F-16 weapon system in 2027 and 2028. Together, the two decisions show the Air Force planning to keep its F-16s serviceable well into the second half of the decade.

Three decades at Monte Real

Portugal received its first F-16s in 1994, ending a long gap in which the country had no dedicated air-defence fighter. A second batch followed in 1998, the jets went through the Mid-Life Update, and today they fly with two squadrons at Monte Real Air Base, near Leiria.

A report on Portuguese Air Force F-16s on a mission in the Azores.

The engines have a Portuguese story of their own. According to the Air Force’s official F-16 anniversary site, an engine conversion shop was set up at Monte Real in 2000 to convert the 25 engines bought for the second squadron to the digitally controlled F100-PW-220E standard. The Air Force says it was the only military operator to do that work at an air base, and that the know-how has saved it several million euros since.

Portugal has also been trimming the fleet. In 2013 it agreed to sell 12 F-16s to Romania, and in 2018 Bucharest announced it would buy five more.

The replacement race that has not started

Lusa notes that the F-16s are at the end of their life cycle. Four contenders are lining up to replace them: Lockheed Martin with the F-35, Saab with the Gripen E, the Eurofighter consortium with the Typhoon and Dassault with the Rafale. ECO puts the value of the eventual deal at around €5 billion.

Defence Minister Nuno Melo has repeatedly said the official process has not been opened. Speaking to parliament the previous week, he said the decision would only be discussed after the approval of the new Military Programming Law, expected at the end of the year, and at the level of the whole government rather than the defence ministry alone.

Until then, the money goes into the engines Portugal already has. Afterburner has followed the pitches from Washington, Airbus and Dassault. The €12 million approved on 11 November is the quiet part of the story: the price of keeping a 30-year-old fighter fleet ready while the politicians decide what comes next.

Sources: Portuguese Government (Council of Ministers communiqué, 11 November 2026), Lusa via Notícias ao Minuto, ECO, Diário de Coimbra, Portuguese Air Force (30 Years of the F-16), Air & Space Forces Magazine, ECO News

Header photo: Gerard van der Schaaf / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0