The F-16 currently remains the most
popular aircraft in modern military
service, out of 4500 produced, nearly 2,700 currently remain in service in
around 26 countries. Needless to say the cutting edge fourth
generation fighter of the 1980s will
remain with us for a good while longer. The F-16 was born out of the conundrum
experienced by the air force in the
vietnam war.
Fast and heavy F-4 phantom fighters had
underperformed against the north
vietnamese air force due to their
immature long-range missile technology
and lack of aptitude for tight
maneuvering in dogfights. This led a faction known as the fighter
mafia to argue that air force had its
design priorities all wrong and that
what was really needed was a relatively
cheap lightweight airframe that
maximized energy for short-range dog
fights. Rather than another heavy twin
engine fighter like the F-15 eagle that
was then under development which would
doubtlessly be over reliant on defective
guided missiles.
Support for a light fighter eventually
consolidated in the pentagon due to
simple economics. The air force like the F-15 but realized
it was too expensive to equip all of its
fighter squadrons. So it came to seek a
high low force mix. Eventually two prototypes faced off in a
competitive trial in 1974. The northrop YF-17 and the general
dynamics YF-16, the latter was unanimously found to be
more responsive while the former evolved
into the hornet fighters now serving in
the marines and u.s navy.
The first production F-16 has went
on to enter service in 1980 joined by
the two-seat F-16B variant. The single engine F-16 leveraged new
design technologies to maximize
kinematic performance a powerful pratt
and whitney F-100 engine with the intake
slung under the fuselage could generate
an excellent thrust to weight ratio due
to the overall lightness of the falcon
propelling the F-16 to twice the speed
of sound at high altitude. Pronounced
strakes bulged out like the hood of a
cobra from the fuselage to support the
cropped delta wings enabling very high
roll rates.
A bulging bubble canopy afforded an
excellent field of view for the pilot who was lounged in a seat angled 30
degrees back so as to mitigate the G-Forces from violent maneuvers. The F-16 could pull off very violent
maneuvers indeed becoming the first jet
fighter able to pull nine gigaseconds in
a turn tighter than any other us fighter
until the advent of the F-22 raptor. This explains the type service in the
air force's thunderbirds aerobatics team.
In fact to maximize its maneuverability
the F-16 was intentionally designed to
be aerodynamically unstable a deficit
which its flight control system
automatically compensated for. This worked thanks to the F-16s then
revolutionary fly by wire control scheme
which basically meant that the pilot's
controls were interpreted via an
electronic interface instead of via
hydraulic or cable connected manual
controls. Not only were fly-by-wire controls more
reliable but they made it possible for
the flight computer to correct the
pilot's maneuvers as necessary to avoid
exceeding the falcon's tolerances.
Another feature was an integrated
throttle in the joystick known as Hands On Throttle and Stick (HOTAS) enabling
much smoother operation by the pilot. Fly-by-wire and hotas have since become
standard features in modern combat
aircraft. Unlike the early model F-14 and F-15s
the falcon was also designed as a
multi-role fighter and it could lug up
to 17,000 pounds of munitions or
electronic warfare gear on its 11
hardpoints including a new generation of
precision guided weapons such as
maverick missiles and laser guided bombs a 20 millimeter vulcan cannon in the
lower fuselage served as a backup weapon.
