Media Galleries : F-16 Fighting Falcon

More than 150 US Air National Guardsmen from the 187th Fighter Wing, the Alabama Air National Guard unit at Dannelly Field ANGB in Montgomery, deployed to Romania in August to participate in Dacian Viper 2012, a three-week joint exercise with the Romanian Air Force.

Pilots, maintainers, and personnel from the 132nd Fighter Wing, the Iowa Air National Guard F-16 unit in Des Moines, deployed to Afghanistan in February 2012.

The 4,500th F-16 Fighting Falcon built worldwide was delivered in ceremonies 3 April 2012 at Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth, Texas. Employees, customers, program officials, and national, state, and local elected officials attended. The milestone aircraft was an Advanced Block 52 F-16 for the Royal Moroccan Air Force.

The 149th Fighter Wing, the Texas Air National Guard unit located at Lackland AFB in San Antonio, trains both active duty and Air National Guard F-16 pilots in a variety of courses, from a basic course for new F-16 pilots recently graduated from undergraduate pilot training to a requalification course for experienced pilots.

The Block 52+ F-16 was chosen by Poland in 2002 after an exhaustive competition that involved several other fourth-generation fighters. The contract, signed in April 2003, included forty-eight F-16s, spare engines, missiles, precision-guided munitions, pilot and maintenance technician training, and a multibillion-dollar offset program.

The Türk Hava Kuvvetleri Turkish Air Force, or TurAF, celebrates the centennial of its air force this year with the creation of an F-16 demonstration team called Solo Turk. The single-ship team with three demo pilots flies an F-16C Block 40 from 141 Filo or Squadron (also known as Anatolian Wolfs), which is based at 4th Main Jet Base at Akinci near Ankara. In its centennial news release, TurAF officials said that, “The aim of our 100th year recognition is not just to celebrate our age, but to generate trust and interest in the Turkish Air Force from our citizens, especially from the youth of our country.”

The 2010 NATO Tiger Meet was hosted by 313 Squadron, the Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16 unit based at Volkel AB. This meet was the first time the yearly gathering of air squadrons with the Tiger mascot was hosted by 313 Squadron.

The 510th Fighter Squadron, the Buzzards, one of two F-16 squadrons based at Aviano AB in Italy, deployed to Bagram AB in Afghanistan from May through October 2010 for a scheduled Air Expeditionary Force rotation.

At high aircraft speeds through supersonic, the bump in the inlet works with the forward-swept inlet cowl to redirect unwanted boundary layer airflow away from the inlet, essentially doing the job of heavier, more complex, and more costly diverters used by current fighters. The flight test program consisted of twelve flights flown in nine days in December 1996.

Fighter Weapons Instructor Training originated with the air forces of Belgium, Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands in 1984 to train new weapons instructors for the F-16.