Breaking News! All-out War, USAF F-16 Strike and destroy Russia or Chinese stealth fighter jets
These innovative upgrades to the Fighting Falcon might not enable it to rival Russian or Chinese fifth-generation stealth fighter jets. Still, these upgrades may explain why the study recommends holding on to the Fighting Falcons.
The Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies recently published a study that recommends the rapid retirement and divestiture of the Air Force’s fourth-generation fighter jets.
Despite calling for “wholly divesting” those fourth-generation platforms, the study, titled the Future Fighter Force Our Nation Requires: Building a Bridge, recommends that the Air Force “keep” large numbers of the F-16 Fighting Falcon. Why? One pressing reason, apart from the fact that it costs less to operate a Fighting Falcon when compared with fifth-generation platforms, may relate to the success of the Fighting Falcon modernization program and its service life extension program (SLEP).
Today’s Fighting Falcon dates back as far as the 1970s, a circumstance that raises questions as to how the combat aircraft has sustained its combat relevance and performance into today’s modern and vastly more substantial threat environment. The SLEP improved the upper wing skin and fittings. Additionally, it adjusted the bulkhead and canopy.
Part of the equation relates to an effort to integrate some of the F-35 fighter jet’s technologies into the Fighting Falcon such as an Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar. The radar allows the Fighting Falcon to find, detect and track enemy threats at greater ranges. SLEP is expected to extend the flight time of Fighting Falcons from roughly six thousand to seven thousand flight hours all the way to eight thousand or more flight hours. On top of that, the upgrades have prompted the Air Force to have the Fighting Falcon fly up to twelve thousand hours. Lockheed Martin, which developed the AESA radar, claims it can track as many as twenty targets at one time, a scenario that allows the Fighting Flacon to be more effective in major-power warfare
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