Who ever said the big bad US was to blame? On the contrary, I actually defended their move by saying I had nothing against Trump but eluded to that his protectionist policies is what killed this deal which I still believe could have been the case. It was obvious that even Israel to the last minute tried to persuade the US in letting the deal go through and as one of Lockheed Martin's biggest customers, the Israelis probably thought they could and convinced the Croatian side that they could. Croatia took this for granted and yes that was a major error!
I don't believe as you stated above that you can get 12 or so ready to fly F-16's from the US with weapons/training all included for the price as mentioned above. If that was the case, every Country in Europe or around the world who is looking to buy new fighters would have bought these years ago. Maybe even Serbia would be operators of these jets as they would have been cheaper than the 300 million they'll spend on their donated MIG-29s.
TripleDelta wrote:As expected, more information damning for the Croatian government has started to come out. A third leak recently revealed that not only had the US Embassy e-mailed the Croatian MoD the entire "non-paper" (which outlined in detail all US conditions and restrictions), it also dispatched the Military Attache to deliver the document in person and brief the MoD chiefs on its contents. The meeting is said to have occurred on or around 25 January 2018, roughly a week after the aforementioned e-mail.
The MoD had, once again, not disputed the authenticity of this information. If true, it would appear that the government knew the Baraks could not be delivered in their Israeli config some six to nine months before they were officially selected. This would point either to a belief that they could con out the US... or that the deal is far more rotten and damaging than is currently known.
As I wrote above, this just goes to show that what I thought about the Croatian MoD is most probably true. They convinced themselves that Israel would get the approvals. If on the other hand it proves that this was all about making some people a quick buck,,,,, well that would just be beyond sad especially when you consider the main person involved (Krstičević).