F-16 Fighting Falcon Review and Video

The Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon is a multirole jet fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics for the United States Air Force. Designed as a lightweight, day-time Visual Flight Rules (VFR) fighter, it evolved into a successful multirole aircraft. The F-16 Fighting Falcon's versatility is a paramount reason it has proven a success on the export market, having been selected to serve in the air forces of 25 nations. The F-16 Fighting Falcon is the largest Western jet fighter program with over 4,400 aircraft built since production was approved in 1976. Though no longer being bought by the U.S. Air Force, advanced versions are still being built for export customers. In 1993, General Dynamics sold its aircraft manufacturing business to the Lockheed Corporation, which in turn became part of Lockheed Martin after a 1995 merger with Martin Marietta.

The F-16 Fighting Falcon is a dogfighter with numerous innovations including a frameless, bubble canopy for better visibility, side-mounted control stick to ease control while under high g-forces, and reclined seat to reduce the effect of g-forces on the pilot. The F-16 Fighting Falcon has an internal M61 Vulcan cannon and has 11 hardpoints for mounting various missiles, bombs and pods. It was also the first fighter aircraft deliberately built to sustain 9-g turns. It has a thrust-to-weight ratio greater than one, providing power to climb and accelerate vertically — if necessary. Although the F-16's official name is "Fighting Falcon", it is known to its pilots as the "Viper", due to it resembling a cobra snake and after the Battlestar Galactica starfighter. It is used by the Thunderbirds air demonstration team.

The F-16 Fighting Falcon is scheduled to remain in service with the U.S. Air Force until 2025. The planned replacement is the F-35 Lightning II, which is scheduled to enter service in 2011 and will gradually begin replacing a number of multirole aircraft among the air forces of the program's member nations.

Specifications (F-16C Block 30)

General characteristics

• Crew: 1
• Length: 49 ft 5 in (14.8 m)
• Wingspan: 32 ft 8 in (9.8 m)
• Height: 16 ft (4.8 m)
• Wing area: 300 ft² (27.87 m²)
• Airfoil: NACA 64A204 root and tip
• Empty weight: 18,900 lb (8,670 kg)
• Loaded weight: 26,500 lb (12,000 kg)
• Max takeoff weight: 42,300 lb (19,200 kg)
• Powerplant: 1× F110-GE-100 afterburning turbofan
  • Dry thrust: 17,155 lbf (76.3 kN)
  • Thrust with afterburner: 28,600 lbf (128.9 kN)

F-16 Fighting Falcon Performance

• Maximum speed:
  
  • At sea level: Mach 1.2 (915 mph, 1,470 km/h)
  • At altitude: Mach 2+ (1,500 mph, 2,414 km/h)
• Combat radius: 340 mi (295 nm, 550 km) on a hi-lo-hi mission with six 1,000 lb (450 kg) bombs
• Ferry range: 2,280 NM (2,620 mi, 4,220 km) with drop tanks
• Service ceiling: 60,000+ ft (18,000+ m)
• Rate of climb: 50,000 ft/min (254 m/s)
• Wing loading: approx 40 lb/ft² (430 kg/m²)
• Thrust/weight: 1.095

Armament

• Guns: 1× 20 mm (0.787 in) M61 Vulcan gatling gun, 511 rounds
• Hardpoints: 2× wing-tip Air-to-air missile launch rails, 6× under-wing & 3× under-fuselage pylon stations holding up to 17,000 lb (7,700 kg) of payload
• Rockets:
  
  • 4× LAU-61/LAU-68 rocket pods (each with 19× /7× Hydra 70 mm rockets, respectively) or
  • 4× LAU-5003 rocket pods (each with 19× CRV7 70 mm rockets) or
  • 4× LAU-10 rocket pods (each with 4× Zuni 127 mm rockets)
• Missiles:
  
  • Air-to-air missiles:
    • 2× AIM-7 Sparrow or
    • 6× AIM-9 Sidewinder or
    • 6× IRIS-T or
    • 6× AIM-120 AMRAAM or
    • 6× Python-4
  • Air-to-ground missiles:
    • 6× AGM-45 Shrike or
    • 6× AGM-65 Maverick or
    • 4× AGM-88 HARM
  • Anti-ship missiles:
    • 2× AGM-84 Harpoon or
    • 4× AGM-119 Penguin
• Bombs:
  
  • 2× CBU-87 Combined Effects Munition
  • 2× CBU-89 Gator mine
  • 2× CBU-97 Sensor Fuzed Weapon
  • Wind Corrected Munitions Dispenser capable
  • 4× GBU-10 Paveway II
  • 6× GBU-12 Paveway II
  • 6× Paveway-series laser-guided bombs
  • 4× JDAM
  • 4× Mark 84 general-purpose bombs
  • 8× Mark 83 GP bombs
  • 12× Mark 82 GP bombs
  • B61 nuclear bomb
• Others:
  • SUU-42A/A Flares/Infrared decoys dispenser pod and chaff pod or
  • AN/ALQ-131 & AN/ALQ-184 ECM pods or
  • LANTIRN, Lockheed Martin Sniper XR & LITENING targeting pods or
  • up to 3× 300/330/370 US gallon Sargent Fletcher drop tanks for ferry flight or extended range/loitering time.

Avionics

• AN/APG-68 radar

F-16 Fighting Falcon
Role	Multirole jet fighter
National origin	United States
Manufacturer	General Dynamics Lockheed Martin
First flight	2 February 1974
Introduction	17 August 1978
Status	Active, in production
Primary users	United States Air Force 25 other users
Number built	4,450+
Unit cost	F-16A/B: US$14.6 million (1998 dollars) F-16C/D: US$18.8 million (1998 dollars)
Variants	General Dynamics F-16 VISTA
Developed into	Vought Model 1600 General Dynamics F-16XL Mitsubishi F-2

F-16 Fighting Falcon Design

Overview

The F-16 Fighting Falcon is a single-engined, supersonic, multi-role tactical aircraft. The F-16 Fighting Falcon was designed to be a cost-effective combat "workhorse" that can perform various kinds of missions and maintain around-the-clock readiness. It is much smaller and lighter than its predecessors, but uses advanced aerodynamics and avionics, including the first use of a relaxed static stability/fly-by-wire (RSS/FBW) flight control system, to achieve enhanced maneuver performance. Highly nimble, the F-16 can pull 9-g maneuvers and can reach a maximum speed of over Mach 2.

The F-16 Fighting Falcon is equipped with an M61 Vulcan 20 mm cannon in the left wing root with the F-16A distinguished by having four vents behind the port for the M61 cannon whereas the subsequent F-16C has only two vents behind the cannon port.

Early models could also be armed with up to six AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking short-range air-to-air missiles (AAM), including a single missile mounted on a dedicated rail launcher on each wingtip. Some variants can also employ the AIM-7 Sparrow long-range radar-guided AAM, and more recent versions can be equipped with the AIM-120 AMRAAM. It can also carry other AAM; a wide variety of air-to-ground missiles, rockets or bombs; electronic countermeasures (ECM), navigation, targeting or weapons pods; and fuel tanks on eleven hardpoints – six under the wings, two on wingtips and three under the fuselage.

General configuration

The F-16 Fighting Falcon design employs a cropped-delta planform incorporating wing-fuselage blending and forebody vortex-control strakes; a fixed-geometry, underslung air intake inlet supplying airflow to the single turbofan jet engine; a conventional tri-plane empennage arrangement with all-moving horizontal “stabilator” tailplanes; a pair of ventral fins beneath the fuselage aft of the wing’s trailing edge; a single-piece, bird-proof “bubble” canopy; and a tricycle landing gear configuration with the aft-retracting, steerable nose gear deploying a short distance behind the inlet lip. There is a boom-style aerial refueling receptacle located a short distance behind the rear of the canopy. Split-flap speedbrakes are located at the aft end of the wing-body fairing, and an arrestor hook is mounted underneath the aft fuselage. Another fairing is situated at the base of the vertical tail, beneath the bottom of the rudder, and is used to house various items of equipment such as ECM gear or drag chutes. Several later F-16 models, such as the F-16I variant of the Block 50 aircraft, also have a long dorsal fairing “bulge” that runs along the “spine” of the fuselage from the rear of the cockpit to the tail fairing; these fairings can be used to house additional equipment or fuel.

The F-16 Fighting Falcon was designed to be relatively inexpensive to build and much simpler to maintain than earlier-generation fighters. The airframe is built with about 80% aviation-grade aluminum alloys, 8% steel, 3% composites, and 1.5% titanium. Control surfaces such as the leading-edge flaps, tailerons, and ventral fins make extensive use of bonded aluminum honeycomb structural elements and graphite epoxy laminate skins. The F-16A had 228 access panels over the entire aircraft, about 80% of which can be reached without work stands. The number of lubrication points, fuel line connections, and replaceable modules was also greatly reduced compared to its predecessors.

Although the USAF’s LWF program had called for an aircraft structural life of only 4000 flight hours, and capable of achieving 7.33 g with 80% internal fuel, GD’s engineers decided from the start to design the F-16’s airframe life to last to 8000 hours and for 9-g maneuvers on full internal fuel. This proved advantageous when the aircraft’s mission was changed from solely air-to-air combat to multi-role operations. However, changes over time in actual versus planned operational usage and continued weight growth due to the addition of further systems have required several structural strengthening programs.

Wing and strake configuration

Aerodynamic studies in the early 1960s demonstrated that the phenomenon known as “vortex lift” could be beneficially harnessed by the utilization of highly swept wing configurations to reach higher angles of attack through use of the strong leading edge vortex flow off of a slender lifting surface. Since the F-16 Fighting Falcon was being optimized for high agility in air combat, GD’s designers chose a slender cropped-delta wing with a leading edge sweep of 40° and a straight trailing edge. To improve its ability to perform in a wide range of maneuvers, a variable-camber wing with a NACA 64A-204 airfoil was selected. The camber is adjusted through the use of leading-edge and trailing edge flaperons linked to a digital flight control system (FCS) that automatically adjusts them throughout the flight envelope.

This vortex lift effect can be increased by the addition of an extension of the leading edge of the wing at its root, the juncture with the fuselage, known as a strake. The strakes act as a sort of additional slender, elongated, short-span, triangular wing running from the actual wing root to a point further forward on the fuselage. Blended fillet-like into the fuselage, including along with the wing root, the strake generates a high-speed vortex that remains attached to the top of the wing as the angle of attack increases, thereby generating additional lift. This allows the aircraft to achieve angles of attack beyond the point at which it would normally stall. The use of strakes also permits the use of a smaller, lower-aspect-ratio wing, which in turn increases roll rates and directional stability, while decreasing aircraft weight. The resulting deeper wingroots also increase structural strength and rigidity, reduce structural weight, and increase internal fuel volume. As a result, the F-16’s high fuel fraction of 0.31 gives it a longer range than other fighter aircraft of similar size and configuration.

Flight controls

Negative static stability

The YF-16 was the world’s first aircraft intentionally designed to be slightly aerodynamically unstable. This technique, called "relaxed static stability" (RSS), was incorporated to further enhance the aircraft’s maneuver performance. Most aircraft are designed with positive static stability, which induces an aircraft to return to its original attitude following a disturbance. However, positive static stability hampers maneuverability, as the tendency to remain in its current attitude opposes the pilot’s effort to maneuver; on the other hand, an aircraft with negative static stability will, in the absence of control input, readily depart from level and controlled flight. Therefore, an aircraft with negative static stability will be more maneuverable than one that is positively stable. When supersonic, a negatively stable aircraft actually exhibits a more positive-trending (and in the F-16’s case, a net positive) static stability due to aerodynamic forces shifting aft between subsonic and supersonic flight. At subsonic speeds, however, the fighter is constantly on the verge of going out of control.

Fly-by-wire

To counter this tendency to depart from controlled flight—and avoid the need for constant minute trimming inputs by the pilot—the F-16 has a quadruplex (four-channel) fly-by-wire (FBW) flight control system (FLCS). The flight control computer (FLCC), which is the key component of the FLCS, accepts the pilot’s input from the stick and rudder controls, and manipulates the control surfaces in such a way as to produce the desired result without inducing a loss of control (known as "departing" controlled flight). The FLCC also takes thousands of measurements per second of the aircraft’s attitude, and automatically makes corrections to counter deviations from the flight path that were not input by the pilot, thereby allowing for stable flight. This has led to a common aphorism among F-16 pilots: “You don’t fly an F-16; it flies you".

The FLCC further incorporates a series of limiters that govern movement in the three main axes based on the jet’s current attitude, airspeed and angle of attack, and prevent movement of the control surfaces that would induce an instability such as a slip or skid, or a high angle of attack inducing a stall. The limiters also act to prevent maneuvering that would place more than 9 g's of force on the pilot or airframe.

Unlike the YF-17 which featured a FBW system with traditional hydromechanical controls serving as a backup, the F-16’s designers took the innovative step of eliminating mechanical linkages between the stick and rudder pedals and the aerodynamic control surfaces. The F-16’s sole reliance on electronics and wires to relay flight commands, instead of the usual cables and mechanical linkage controls, gained the F-16 Fighting Falcon the early moniker of "the electric jet". The quadruplex design permits “graceful degradation” in flight control response in that the loss of one channel renders the FLCS a “triplex” system. The FLCC began as an analog system on the A/B variants, but has been supplanted by a digital computer system beginning with the F-16C/D Block 40.

Cockpit and ergonomics

One of the more notable features from a pilot’s perspective is the F-16’s exceptional field of view from the cockpit, a feature that is vital during air-to-air combat. The single-piece, bird-proof polycarbonate bubble canopy provides 360° all-round visibility, with a 40° down-look angle over the side of the aircraft, and 15° down over the nose (compared to the more common 12–13° of its predecessors); the pilot’s seat is mounted on an elevated heel line to accomplish this. Furthermore, the F-16's canopy lacks the forward bow frame found on most fighters, which obstructs some of the pilot’s forward vision.

The rocket-boosted ACES II zero/zero ejection seat is reclined at an unusually high tilt-back angle of 30°; the seats in older and contemporary fighters were typically tilted back at around 13–15°. The F-16’s seat-back angle was chosen to improve the pilot’s tolerance of high g forces, and to reduce his susceptibility to gravity-induced loss of consciousness. The increased seat angle, however, has also been associated with reports of increased risk of neck ache when not mitigated by proper use of the head-rest. Subsequent U.S. jet fighter designs have more modest tilt-back angles of 20°. Because of the extreme seat tilt-back angle and the thickness of its polycarbonate single-piece canopy, the F-16’s ejection seat lacks the steel rail canopy breakers found in most other aircraft’s ejection systems. Such breakers shatter a section of the canopy should it fail to open or jettison to permit emergency egress of the aircrew. On the F-16 Fighting Falcon, crew ejection is accomplished by first jettisoning the entire canopy; as the relative wind pulls the canopy away from the plane, a lanyard triggers the seat’s rockets to fire.

The pilot flies the aircraft primarily by means of a side-stick controller mounted on the right-hand armrest (instead of the more common center-mounted stick) and an engine throttle on the left side; conventional rudder pedals are also employed. To enhance the pilot’s degree of control of the aircraft during high-g combat maneuvers, a number of function switches formerly scattered about the cockpit have been moved to "hands on throttle-and-stick (HOTAS)" controls found on both of these controllers. Simple hand pressure on the side-stick controller causes the transmission of electrical signals via the FBW system to adjust the various flight control surfaces used for maneuvering. Originally, the side-stick controller was non-moving, but this arrangement proved uncomfortable and difficult for pilots to adjust to, sometimes resulting in a tendency to "over-rotate" the aircraft during takeoffs, so the control stick was given a small amount of “play”. Since its introduction on the F-16 Fighting Falcon, HOTAS controls have become a standard feature among modern fighters (although the side-stick application is less widespread).

The F-16 Fighting Falcon cockpit also has a Head-Up Display (HUD), which projects visual flight and combat information in symbological form in front of the pilot without obstructing his view. Being able to keep his head “out of the cockpit” further enhances the pilot’s situational awareness of what is occurring around him. Boeing’s Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System (JHMCS) is also available from Block 52 onwards for use with high-off-boresight air-to-air missiles like the AIM-9X. JHMCS permits cuing the weapons system to the direction in which the pilot’s head is facing—even outside the HUD’s field of view—while still maintaining his situational awareness. JHMCS was first operationally deployed during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The pilot obtains further flight and systems status information from multi-function displays (MFD). The left-hand MFD is the primary flight display (PFD), which generally shows radar and moving-map displays; the right-hand MFD is the system display (SD), which presents important information about the engine, landing gear, slat and flap settings, fuel quantities, and weapons status. Initially, the F-16A/B had only a single monochrome cathode ray tube (CRT) display to serve as the PFD, with system information provided by a variety of traditional “steam gauges”. The MLU introduced the SD MFD in a cockpit made compatible for usage of night-vision goggles (NVG). These CRT displays were replaced by color liquid crystal displays on the Block 50/52. The Block 60 features three programmable and interchangeable color MFDs (CMFD) with picture-in-picture capability that is able to overlay the full tactical situation display on the moving map.

Radar

The F-16A/B was originally equipped with the Westinghouse (now Northrop Grumman) solid-state AN/APG-66 pulse-Doppler fire-control radar. Its slotted planar-array antenna was designed to be sufficiently compact to fit into the F-16’s relatively small nose. In uplook mode, the APG-66 uses a low pulse-repetition frequency (PRF) for medium- and high-altitude target detection in a low-clutter environment, and in downlook employs a medium PRF for heavy clutter environments. It has four operating frequencies within the X band, and provides four air-to-air and seven air-to-ground operating modes for combat, even at night or in bad weather. The Block 15’s APG-66(V)2 model added a new, more powerful signal processor, higher output power, improved reliability, and increased range in a clutter or jamming environments. The Mid-Life Update (MLU) program further upgrades this to the APG-66(V)2A model, which features higher speed and memory.

The mechanically scanned AN/APG-68 X-band pulse-Doppler radar, an evolution of the APG-66, was introduced with the F-16C/D Block 25. The APG-68 has greater range and resolution, as well as 25 operating modes, including ground-mapping, Doppler beam-sharpening, ground moving target, sea target, and track-while-scan (TWS) for up to ten targets. The Block 40/42’s APG-68(V)1 model added full compatibility with Lockheed Martin Low-Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infra-Red for Night (LANTIRN) pods, and a high-PRF pulse-Doppler track mode to provide continuous-wave (CW) target illumination for semi-active radar-homing (SARH) missiles like the AIM-7 Sparrow. The Block 50/52 F-16s initially received the more reliable APG-68(V)5 which has a programmable signal processor employing Very-High-Speed Integrated Circuit (VHSIC) technology. The Advanced Block 50/52 (or 50+/52+) are equipped with the APG-68(V)9 radar which has a 30% greater air-to-air detection range, and a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mode for high-resolution mapping and target detection and recognition. In August 2004, Northrop Grumman received a contract to begin upgrading the APG-68 radars of the Block 40/42/50/52 aircraft to the (V)10 standard, which will provide the F-16 Fighting Falcon with all-weather autonomous detection and targeting for the use of Global Positioning System (GPS)-aided precision weapons. It also adds SAR mapping and terrain-following (TF) modes, as well as interleaving of all modes.

The F-16E/F is outfitted with Northrop Grumman’s AN/APG-80 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar, making it only the third fighter to be so equipped.

In July 2007, Raytheon announced that it was developing a new Raytheon Next Generation Radar (RANGR) based on its earlier AN/APG-79 AESA radar as an alternative candidate to Northrop Grumman’s AN/APG-68 and AN/APG-80 for new-build F-16s as well as retrofit of existing ones. On 1 November 2007, Boeing selected this design for development under the USAF’s F-15E Radar Modernization Program (RMP).

Propulsion

The powerplant first selected for the single-engined F-16 Fighting Falcon was the Pratt & Whitney F100-PW-200 afterburning turbofan, a slightly modified version of the F100-PW-100 used by the F-15. Rated at 23,830 lb_f (106.0 kN) thrust, it remained the standard F-16 engine through the Block 25, except for new-build Block 15s with the Operational Capability Upgrade (OCU). The OCU introduced the 23,770 lb_f (105.7 kN) F100-PW-220, which was also installed on Block 32 and 42 aircraft; while not offering a noteworthy difference in thrust, it introduced a Digital Electronic Engine Control (DEEC) unit that improved reliability and reduced the risk of engine stalls (an unwelcome occasional tendency with the original "-200" that necessitated a midair engine restart). Introduced on the F-16 production line in 1988, the "-220" also supplanted the F-15’s "-100," thereby maximizing commonality. Many of the "-220" jet engines on Block 25 and later aircraft were upgraded from mid-1997 to the "-220E" standard, which further enhanced reliability and maintainability, including a 35% reduction of the unscheduled engine removal rate.

Development of the F100-PW-220/220E was the result of the USAF’s Alternate Fighter Engine (AFE) program (colloquially known as “the Great Engine War”), which also saw the entry of General Electric as an F-16 Fighting Falcon engine provider. Its F110-GE-100 turbofan, however, required modification of the F-16’s inlet; the original inlet limited the GE jet’s maximum thrust to only 25,735 lb_f (114.5 kN), while the new Modular Common Inlet Duct allowed the F110 to achieve its maximum thrust of 28,984 lb_f (128.9 kN) in afterburner. (To distinguish between aircraft equipped with these two engines and inlets, from the Block 30 series on, blocks ending in "0" (e.g., Block 30) are powered by GE, and blocks ending in "2" (e.g., Block 32) are fitted with Pratt & Whitney engines.)

Further development by these competitors under the Increased Performance Engine (IPE) effort led to the 29,588 lb_f (131.6 kN) F110-GE-129 on the Block 50 and 29,100 lb_f (129.4 kN) F100-PW-229 on the Block 52. F-16s began flying with these IPE engines on 22 October 1991 and 22 October 1992, respectively. Altogether, of the 1,446 F-16C/Ds ordered by the USAF, 556 were fitted with F100-series engines and 890 with F110s. The United Arab Emirates’ Block 60 is powered by the General Electric F110-GE-132 turbofan, which is rated at a maximum thrust of 32,500 lb_f (144.6 kN), the highest ever developed for the F-16 aircraft.