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The Lightweight Fighter Mafia
Conceived in the early 1970s by a small but vocal group of engineers and defense analysts known as the Lightweight Fighter Mafia, the F-16 was designed as an alternative to fighter aircraft that had grown increasingly heavy and unmaneuverable.
A team working out at the aerospace division of General Dynamics in Fort Worth, Texas (which Lockheed would acquire in 1993) was designing a new type of fighter to meet the Lightweight Fighter Mafia’s ambitious goals. They set out to trade excess weight and heavy payloads for speed and maneuverability, to develop a simple, inexpensive fighter that would fly so fast and turn so quickly that adversaries would be unable to strike it with either missiles or machine gun fire.
Beginning in 1975, the F-16 design team translated those ideas into the most advanced combat aircraft of its day, leaning on new technologies that had never before been integrated into a single aircraft. Its smooth blended-wing body provided extra lift and control; its critical fly-by-wire system kept the design stable and increased its agility; and its slightly tilted back ejection seat, side-mounted control stick, head-up display, and bubble canopy improved pilot survivability as well as visibility and control.
It was sleek and fast, but by the 1980s, the F-16 was tasked to take on more missions, including bombing targets and close air support. So, engineers at Fort Worth added more powerful weapons and targeting systems without diminishing the F-16’s unparalleled agility, transforming the Falcon into a true multirole aircraft.
Showdown in the Desert
The F-16’s new versatility was put on full display in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm; more missions were flown by the F-16s than any other aircraft. Pilots bombed airfields, military production facilities, and missile sites and then shot down a Iraqi Mig-25 in the tense months that followed the campaign.
Since its first production order in 1975, more than 4,500 F-16s have been produced for 26 nations around the globe. Although scheduled to remain in service with U.S. forces until at least 2025, when the fifth-generation F-35 will shoulder much of the Falcon’s workload, Lockheed Martin continues to produce new versions of the F-16 with a backlog of international orders from Morocco, Turkey, and Iraq.
