50 years of F-16s: Still flying high, soaring higher

Having first flown on 2 February, 1974, the F-16 Fighting Falcon just turned 50. Inducted in the US Air Force (USAF) in August 1978, it has seen 45-plus years of operational life. With over 4,600 built, the aircraft was operated by 28 nations from Norway to Chile, Morocco to Singapore and numbers are still growing. The aircraft continues to be produced and ordered and has significant years of life ahead. Over 2,000 are still in active service across the globe and nearly 800 are flying with the USAF itself. The company advertises a combat success record of 75 versus one loss in aerial engagements. F-16s have struck an Iraqi nuclear plant, the Syrian Air Force, targets in Yugoslavia and Libya, the Iraqi military and most recently Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps. Once, designed by General Dynamics as a small, single-engine, lightweight, agile, less-expensive, air-superiority fighter, over the years, it did become bigger and heavier on its way to becoming a multi-role fighter. Further improvements were made mainly for export. The company was later taken over by Lockheed Corporation, which is currently a part of Lockheed Martin. The upgraded variants are destined to well fly past 1950. In early January, Slovakia became the latest country to take delivery of the first of 14 F-16 (Block-70) ordered. Ukraine will be the next recipient, and its first Western fighter jet is expected to face off with Russian fighters beginning in the summer of 2024. In addition to Slovakia, Croatia, and Ukraine, the Bulgarian Air Force expects delivery of the first eight new F-16 Block 70s by 2025 and the second batch of eight F-16 Block 70s in 2027. The USAF replaces the jet with nearly three times costlier F-35 Lightening II. It will be 2056 before the F-35 will hit 50 years since it first flew, and is a good chance that the F-16 would still be flying with some air force. The F-16 variant, F-21 is still vying for the Make-in-India 114 multi-role fighter aircraft (MRFA) order, Request for Proposal (RfP) for which has still to be sent out. It is interesting to chart its journey and the still unfolding future. The platform Based on lessons from the Vietnam War, it was designed with a high thrust/weight ratio to conform to the energy–manoeuvrability theory that entailed the least loss of energy during manoeuvres. Finally, it won the USAF F-XX programme competition defeating the twin-engine McDonnell Douglas competitor which later evolved as the F/A-18 Hornet, and was chosen by the US Navy (USN). That company has now been taken over by Boeing and aircraft upgraded to “Super Hornet”. The F-16 replaced the F-105 Thunderchief and F-4 Phantom II fighters in the USAF. The aircraft could operate at 9 ‘g’ compared to 7 ‘g’ limit of the F-4. The F-16’s airframe life is designed for 8,000 hours. The aircraft would supplement the F-14 and F-15s of the USAF. Four NATO allies Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, and Norway were part of the Multinational Fighter Program Group (MFPG) and were also on board for the USAF’s Air Combat Fighter (ACF) competition. The four European partners initially ordered 348 aircraft. 116 for Belgium, 58 for Denmark, 102 for the Netherlands, and 72 for Norway. The aircraft introduced many new features like a frameless bubble canopy for better external visibility, a side-mounted control stick, and a 30-degree inclined ejection for better g-forces tolerance, and a relaxed static stability/fly-by-wire flight control system for improved aircraft agility. The aircraft is also used by the USAF Thunderbirds aerial demonstration team and as an adversary/aggressor aircraft by the USN in its ‘Top Gun’ combat school. Some compare its production run to MiG 21 of which, much larger, 11,500 were produced in just 26 years. Nearly 675 F-16s have been lost in various accidents to date, but that number is not very large considering the number of years and extensive exploitation. Aircraft production The production plant in the USA was in Fort Worth, Texas. To make more room for assembly of its newer F-35 Lightning II fighter aircraft, the F-16 production was moved to Greenville, South Carolina. The last F-16 from Fort Worth was delivered to the Iraqi Air Force on 14 November 2017, ending 40 years of the F-16 production line. The first F-16 rolled off the Greenville line in 2023 and went to Bahrain. Production lines were also set up in the Netherlands and Belgium, which finally produced 184 and 164 units respectively. During the late 1980s and 1990s, Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) produced 232 Block 30/40/50 F-16s on a production line in Ankara under license for the Turkish Air Force. TAI also produced 46 Block 40s for Egypt in the mid-1990s and 30 Block 50s from 2010 onwards. Korean Aerospace Industries opened a production line for the KF-16 program, producing 140 Block 52s from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. In 2024, Argentina bought 24 F-16 AM from Denmark, beating a bid to acquire JF-17s from China. On 14 August 2020, 66 new F-16s were contracted for Taiwan. If India had selected the F-16IN for its Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft procurement, a sixth F-16 production line would have been built in India. Weapon carriage capability The F-16 has an internal M61 Vulcan cannon and 11 external store points with a capacity of up to 7,700 kg of stores. Early F-16s could carry up to six AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking short-range air-to-air missiles (AAM), as well as radar-guided AIM-7 Sparrow medium-range AAMs in a weapons mix. Later versions support the AIM-120 AMRAAM. The aircraft can carry various other AAMs, a wide variety of air-to-ground missiles, rockets or bombs; electronic countermeasures (ECM), navigation, targeting or weapons pods; and fuel tanks. Upgrades While many F-16s were produced according to block designs, there have been many other variants with significant changes, usually because of modification for role-specialization or technology upgrades and saw many airframe, avionics and weapon system upgrades. As early as 1981, Block 15 involved increasing the area of each horizontal stabilizer by 25 per cent to increase longitudinal stability. The analogue flight controls were replaced by a digital computer system beginning with the F-16C/D Block 40. The Boeing Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System (JHMCS) was available from Block 40 onwards. Initially, the F-16A/B had monochrome cathode-ray tube (CRT) displays; which were replaced by colour liquid-crystal displays on Block 50/52. The Mid-Life Update (MLU) introduced compatibility with night-vision goggles (NVG). In 2012, a key upgrade was an auto-GCAS (Ground collision avoidance system) to reduce instances of controlled flight into terrain. The original Westinghouse AN/APG-66 fire-control radar was replaced with the AN/APG-68 in the F-16C/D Block 25. The Block 40 onwards got continuously improving APG-68(V) variants. In February 2020, USAF ordered APG-83 Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR) that could be extended to 2048. The aircraft has come a long way since its initial aircraft engine was the Pratt & Whitney F100-PW-200 with 106.0 kN thrust. The United Arab Emirates Block 60 aircraft have General Electric F110-GE-132 (145 kN), the highest thrust engine developed for the F-16. The Turkish F-16 modernisation programme added new avionics and Turkish air-to-air missiles. A few older USAF F-16s are being converted into QF-16 drone targets. Originally planned to be phased out from the USAF in 2025, in 2022, it was announced the USAF would continue to operate the F-16 for another two decades. Major combat achievements In 1981, the Israeli government became convinced that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s nuclear power plant at Osirak was part of a covert nuclear weapons program. On June 7, 1981, Operation Opera saw eight Israeli Air Force F-16s, armed with two 2,000-pound Mk 84 unguided bombs, escorted by F-15 Eagle air superiority fighters, made a hole in the dome of the reactor with one bomb, and then put the remaining bombs through that hole, destroying it on the inside. Israeli Air Force F-16A Netz 107 with 6.5 kill marks of other aircraft is a record for an F-16. The same aircraft also has a kill mark of the Iraqi nuclear reactor. A year later, in 1982, the Israeli military invaded Lebanon to destroy Palestine-supported terror groups. This triggered a war between Israel and Syria. In a few days, Israeli fighter jets shot down a total of 85 Syrian aircraft, with no air-to-air losses of their own. Israeli F-16s accounted for 44 of those during this Bekaa Valley conflict. In January 1991, the USAF deployed 249 F-16s to participate in Operation ‘Desert Storm’. F-16s also patrolled the no-fly zones in Iraq. There were no aerial engagements, but the fleet flew 13,500 combat hours in Kuwait and Iraq, attacking ground targets using Maverick air-to-ground missiles, M61 Vulcan cannon, and delivering 21,000 tons of bombs. Three F-16s were lost to surface fire, but none in air combat. F-16s flew operational missions during the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq from 2001 and 2003 respectively. In 2011, USAF F-16s took part in the intervention in Libya. On 11 September 2001, two unarmed F-16s were launched in an attempt to ram and down United Airlines Flight 93 before it reached Washington D.C. during the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, but Flight 93 was brought down by the passengers first, so the F-16s were re-tasked to patrol the local airspace and later escorted Air Force One back to Washington. Turkish F-16s have participated in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo since 1993 in support of United Nations resolutions. Turkey also used its F-16s extensively in its conflict with Kurdish insurgents in south-eastern parts of Turkey and Iraq. They shot down a Syrian Mil Mi-17 helicopter, a Syrian MiG-23 and also some UAVs. They also shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 and two Syrian Sukhoi Su-24s. During the Soviet–Afghan War, Pakistan Air Force (PAF) F-16As shot down between 20 and 30 Soviet and Afghan warplanes, though due to political reasons only nine kills which were made inside Pakistani airspace were recognised. The PAF F-16 claim of an IAF aircraft and a similar claim of IAF during air engagement on 27 February 2019 continue to be controversial. A Yugoslavian MiG-29 was shot down by a Dutch F-16 AM during the Kosovo War in 1999. In Libya, Norwegian F-16s dropped almost 550 bombs and flew 596 missions, some 17 per cent of the total strike missions including the bombing of Muammar Gaddafi’s headquarters. On 16 February 2015, Egyptian F-16s struck weapons caches and training camps of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Libya in retaliation for the murder of 21 Egyptian construction workers. The air strikes killed 64 ISIS fighters. And in October 2023 a US F-16 fighter jet shot down a Turkish drone flying over a US base in northeast Syria. On 27 October, two USAF F-16s struck two locations hosting Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps troops and their militias. The F-16 has four decades of combat record, perhaps the longest in the history of any fighter jet. Could the war in Ukraine get the fleet more operational laurels? A contender for India? Undoubtedly the F-16 remains a formidable aircraft with the highest numbers of any fighter still flying. They are still getting orders from medium and smaller air forces. The production lines are still open. Further airframe upgrades may not be possible, but avionics and weapon upgrades will carry on. In 2017, as India prepared for its 114 MRFA acquisition, Lockheed Martin agreed to manufacture F-16 Block 70 fighters in India with the Indian defence firm Tata Advanced Systems Limited. The new production line could be used to build F-16s for India and exports. In any case, they began manufacturing aircraft wings in India at the Hyderabad facility. Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin re-designated the F-16V Block 70 as the “F-21” in its offering for India’s fighter requirement. This was perhaps done to manage the Indian public opinion that F-16 was intrinsically associated with Pakistan. There also was the issue of a MiG-21 Bison flown by Wg Cdr Abhinanndan that had shot down an F-16. Currently, Pakistan has a fleet of around 75 F16s that include Block 15, Block 15 ADF and Block 52+. While India’s Atmanirbharta drive is pushing the LCA Mk2 variant which may come somewhat closer to the F-21 in capability, it is still 8-10 years before it can be operationalised to that level. The ground reality is that the LCA Mk1A will start inducting only this year, and the order book will take a decade to complete. The LCA Mk2 will make its first flight in 2025-26. On the other side, the process of starting the 114 MRFA acquisition has still to begin. Even if begun today, it will mean around six years to induct. The F-21 will have to compete with Rafale which has already been inducted by the IAF, and the Rafale-M has been shortlisted by Indian Navy. Having invested in one-time India-specific modifications, many analysts feel it may be better to acquire more Rafale in a G2G deal. Tough competition for IAF MRFA. May the best one win? Notwithstanding, the F-16 is still far from its sunset. The writer is Director General, Centre for Air Power Studies. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost_’s views._ Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .