Where does the time go? It’s been 50 years since the F-16 prototype made an unplanned take off. Competing against the YF-17 prototype, it was a plane the Air Force didn’t want. It only had one engine; it wasn’t optimized to be a missile platform — it was built to be an agile dogfighter. The F-15 Eagle was the epitome of what the Air Force was looking for — but it was proving to be too expensive to fill out the fleet with it.
It took what was effectively a conspiracy within the ranks to give fighter pilots a plane that was more than just a truck designed to carry a load of missiles to shoot from a long distance.
...the F-16’s original proponents were something of an underground cell. Their association dated from an evening in the mid-1960s when a General Dynamics engineer named Harry Hillaker was sitting in the Officers’ Club at Eglin AFB, Fla., having an after-dinner drink. Hillaker’s host introduced him to a tall, blustery pilot named John R. Boyd, who immediately launched a frontal attack on GD’s F-111 fighter. Hillaker was annoyed but bantered back.
A few days later, he received a call—Boyd had been impressed by Hillaker’s grasp of aircraft conceptual design and wanted to know if Hillaker was interested in more-organized meetings.
Thus was born a group that others in the Air Force later dubbed the “fighter mafia.” Their basic belief was that fighters did not need to overwhelm opponents with speed and size. Experience in Vietnam against nimble Soviet-built MiGs had convinced them that technology had not yet completely turned air-to-air combat into a long-range shoot-out.
John R. Boyd was a seminal figure in not just military aviation but also in redefining the Art of War. The F-16 turned out to have some critical advantages its critics couldn’t dismiss. It used the same engine as the F-15, saving costs for both programs. Although it was a small aircraft, its aerodynamic performance allowed it to have sufficient operating range to be viable despite what looked like a small fuel capacity. It was affordable. And — it flew like a fighter pilot’s dream.
Although the Air Force is no longer adding F-16s to their inventory, they remain in use around the world, and are still being built for export. They are the planes flown by the USAF Thunderbirds.
David Rosa at Air & Space Forces Magazine has a write up of the plane shown above, flown by the Air Force F-16 Viper Demonstration Team. Via Roza:
...“When I was hired to be the commander and pilot in the summer of last year, I had made
F-16 in flight at Edwards AFB.
it known that I hoped to find a way to get our airplane painted in the prototype scheme to take America back to the beginning of the story that started 50 years ago,” Capt. Taylor Hiester, the demo team leader, said in the release.
The new paint job comes about four months after Edwards painted the tail of one of its F-16s in the same colors, also in celebration of the jet’s first flight.
“These custom flashes represent the 50-year legacy of both the F-16 and the 416th Flight Test Squadron team who ensure the Viper remains a dominant presence for decades to come,” the California base wrote in a Jan. 22 Facebook post.
The F-16 Viper Demonstration Team is appearing at air shows around North America. The 2024 schedule can be found here at this link. Here are the remaining dates.
May 17-19 - Hillsboro, OR
May 24-26 - Pierre, SD
June 22-23 - Dayton, OH
June 29-30 - Trenton, ON, Canada
July 13 - Goshen, IN
July 20-21 - Ypsilanti, MI
July 22-28 - Oshkosh, WI
August 3-4 - Rochester, NY
August 24-25 - Greenwood, Nova Scotia, Canada
August 31-September 1 - Batavia, NY
September 13-15 - London, Ontario, Canada
October 5-6 - Reno, NV
October 19-20 - Rome, GA
October 26-27 - Houston, TX
November 2-3 - Punta Gorda, FL
If you plan to take in the Viper Demonstration Team at an air show, be advised that it will be loud. and the show will depend on the prevailing weather. It requires clear skies for pilots to safely perform a show that shows off all the Viper can do.
How much longer can a plane like the F-16 remain a credible contender in aerial combat? In 50 years anti-aircraft missile systems have become deadly. Even though Ukraine is supposed to be getting them, it’s not likely they’ll be routinely flying attack missions or engaging in dogfights, not so long as the airspace is within the range of anti-air systems. It’s not a stealthy aircraft, and upgrading it to the most modern comm, data, and sensor systems is probably not cost-effective. Drones are also changing the whole way airspace is being used; air superiority is being redefined at warp speed. See the F-16 flying now while you can, because it’s highly unlikely they’ll ever end up on the air show circuit in private hands once the military stops flying them.
One more thing. Remember the YF-17 that the YF-16 beat out in the light weight fighter completion? Don’t feel too sorry for it. It became the progenitor of the F/A-18 Hornet, picked by the Navy and the Marines to replace the F-4 Phantom II and the LTV A-7 Corsair II. It’s flown by the Blue Angels and stars in Top Gun: Maverick, along with a swan song performance by the F-14 Tomcat.
