General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is a single-engine multirole fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics for the United States Air Force .
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28 Facts About F-16
2.
The F-16 has an internal M61 Vulcan cannon and 11 locations for mounting weapons and other mission equipment.
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3.
The F-16 has been procured to serve in the air forces of 25 other nations.
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4.
YF-16 was developed by a team of General Dynamics engineers led by Robert H Widmer.
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5.
The chief reasons given by the secretary were the YF-16's lower operating costs, greater range, and maneuver performance that was "significantly better" than that of the YF-17, especially at supersonic speeds.
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7.
Korean Aerospace Industries opened a production line for the KF-16 program, producing 140 Block 52s from the mid-1990s to mid-2000s .
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8.
Model tests of the YF-16 conducted by the Langley Research Center revealed a potential problem, but no other laboratory was able to duplicate it.
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9.
BAE Systems offers various F-16 upgrades, receiving orders from South Korea, Oman, Turkey, and the US Air National Guard; BAE lost the South Korean contract because of a price breach in November 2014.
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10.
F-16 resumed production in 2019, though engineering and modernization work will remain in Fort Worth.
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11.
F-16 is a single-engine, highly maneuverable, supersonic, multi-role tactical fighter aircraft.
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12.
Highly agile, the F-16 was the first fighter aircraft purpose-built to pull 9-g maneuvers and can reach a maximum speed of over Mach 2.
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13.
F-16 was designed to be relatively inexpensive to build and simpler to maintain than earlier-generation fighters.
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14.
F-16 has a cropped-delta wing incorporating wing-fuselage blending and forebody vortex-control strakes; a fixed-geometry, underslung air intake 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; and a tricycle landing gear configuration with the aft-retracting, steerable nose gear deploying a short distance behind the inlet lip.
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15.
The F-16 has a moderate wing loading, reduced by fuselage lift.
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16.
F-16 is the first production fighter aircraft intentionally designed to be slightly aerodynamically unstable, known as relaxed static stability, to improve maneuverability.
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17.
The F-16 is entirely reliant on its electrical systems to relay flight commands, instead of traditional mechanically linked controls, leading to the early moniker of "the electric jet".
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18.
The F-16's controls suffered from a sensitivity to static electricity or electrostatic discharge .
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19.
Furthermore, the F-16's canopy lacks the forward bow frame found on many fighters, which is an obstruction to a pilot's forward vision.
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20.
F-16 has a head-up display, which projects visual flight and combat information in front of the pilot without obstructing the view; being able to keep their head "out of the cockpit" improves the pilot's situation awareness.
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21.
F-16 is being used by the active duty USAF, Air Force Reserve, and Air National Guard units, the USAF aerial demonstration team, the U S Air Force Thunderbirds, and as an adversary-aggressor aircraft by the United States Navy at the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center.
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22.
F-16 had been scheduled to remain in service with the U S Air Force until 2025.
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23.
On 8 February 1995, a Turkish F-16 crashed into the Aegean sea after being intercepted by Greek Mirage F1 fighters.
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25.
On 23 March 2014, a Turkish Air Force F-16 shot down a Syrian Arab Air Force Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23 when it allegedly entered Turkish air space during a ground attack mission against Al Qaeda-linked insurgents.
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26.
F-16 models are denoted by increasing block numbers to denote upgrades.
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27.
The F-16 design inspired the design of other aircraft, which are considered derivatives.
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28.
F-16 has been involved in over 670 hull-loss accidents as of January 2020.
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