It can be said that the F-16 is America’s most successful 4th generation fighter. To date, they are in service in more than 20 countries
The latest variant in production is the F-16V, also known as the F-16E/F Block 70/72. The F-16V is equipped with the AN/APG-83 AESA active phased array radar along with the Sniper ATP avionics suite, and the AIM-9X missile. With modern equipment, the F-16V is considered to be capable of fighting on par with Russia’s Su-35 heavy fighter.
Lockheed Martin Corporation has decided to equip the F-16V with Northrop Grumman Group’s advanced APG-83, is a full-performance fire control radar. The APG-83 helps the F-16V acquire the air-to-air and air-to-ground combat capabilities of the 5th generation fighters. Northdrop Grumman, before providing modern radars for the F-16V, was known to be the supplier of AESA radars for the most modern US aircraft today, the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II.
Apparently the active phased array radar gives the fighter a new power. Many observers believe that the F-16V has the same combat ability, even more in some parameters than the Russian Su-35, which is only equipped with semi-active phased array radar. Due to the complexity as well as the expensiveness of this type of equipment, normally active phased array radars are only equipped on 5th generation fighters.
The US decision to equip new radars for the 4.5th generation fighters shows that it is likely that the 4.5th generation fighters will continue to accompany the 5th generation fighters for a long time. Compared with the semi-active phased array radar currently equipped on the 4.5th generation fighters, including the Su-35 fighter, the active phased array radar has a much higher sensitivity.
n the other hand, the life span of the F-16V’s fuselage is also more than twice that of Russian and Chinese fighters. The average life span of the F-16’s fuselage is 8,000 flight hours. Once overhauled, they can last up to 12,000 flight hours. Meanwhile, Russia’s Su-30/35 aircraft has a fuselage life of 3,000 flight hours. and after overhaul they can only fly another 1,000 flight hours. The long life of the fuselage will be very useful in maintaining the operation of the fighter, as well as in future upgrades.
The weak point of the US aircraft, it costs much more than the same Russian aircraft. Each F-16V is about 120 million USD/unit (according to the selling price for Taiwan), while the Su-35 is priced at about $100-105 million /unit, based on the order Russia sells to China and Egypt.
Approaching the F-16V fighter is also more difficult than the Su-35. The US only sells these fighters to its allies, and on political terms that not all countries accept. With Russia, customers only need money to buy Russian planes. But in return, the F-16V is more durable, and the maintenance cost is cheaper. Possessing outstanding combat capabilities with advanced avionics and a diverse arsenal, the F-16V is still a best-selling item in the US.
Except that AIM-9X was dodged by a Syrian 50 years old Su-22.
In Feb 2019, Paki F-16s launched at least 5, maybe 6 AMRAAM-C against an Indian Su-30MKI… All of these were either jammed or dodged…
Su-30 couldn’t fight back at long range since Russia was still refusing to export advanced R-77 versions.
R-77-1 outranges AMRAAM and there are more advanced versions with even longer ranges, one is equiped with Ramjet, just like European Meteor.
Many like to forget that Russia likes to export … special export versions that are deliberately degraded, and also doesn’t exports at all its most advanced systems…
F-22’s radar is about 25 years old.
F-16 is pretty expensive to run too, especially as it uses boosted versions of F100 or F110 that are less reliable…
BTW, the flyaway cost of a Rafale is €60M and the outdated F3 version was already on par with F-22… There are still no known counter-measures against Meteor or MICA while at $10-12k/hour, Rafale is half as cheap to use than a F-16 and can fly 3x more missions per 24h with more payload.
SPECTRA already made Rafale stealthier than F-35. The F4.1 upgrade campaign reinforces Rafale’s stealth, more powerful engines will become the standard allowing more payload than F-15E. MICA already had a 50% larger no escape zone than AMRAAM, MICA-NG with a 50% improved range now also outguns AMRAAM in max range, and keeps onboard fuel for the interception at long range…
The F-16V high price is due to the whole R&D was paid by the UAE, and L-M ripped them off of huge money… So the UAE gets huge royalties on each sale and clients are suckers : they can get MUCH better FOR CHEAPER from France…
unfortunately, jet fighter sales are more about politics than aircraft qualities… Until your aircraft get shot down…
Remember what happened when a F-22 trolled 3 Russian Su-25 at the job of hunting ISIS over Syria?
Suddenly, F-22’s RWR (radar warning receiver) started to beep… It was locked on by a Su-35 at 30,000ft altitude in its 6:00… Neither the F-22 nor the USAF’s AWACS saw the Su-35 coming…
During COPE India drills, USAF’s F-15 and F-16 couldn’t even detect Indian MiG-21 Bisons until these locked their R-77 on USAF’s planes…
Lock-Mart lies about F-35 abilities while all DoD’s DOT&E test reports prove that F-35 is a fiasco… RAND Corp’s simulations show that nonetheless F-35, but also Su-30 will totally annihilate a full F-35 fleet, and now Lock-Mart says F-16V is better?
Is there anyone sane left believing their lies?
F-117 was supposed to be invisible to radars and was shot down by the second oldest Soviet SAM system, actually, in terms of combat flight hours, F-117 eended with higher loss ratio than F-16…
Another funny fact : Mirage-2000 has always proven itself better than F-16 in air superiority.
Do you know that Rafale’s systems have been designed to fit as drop in upgrades to Mirage-2000 with no integration process needed?
Te Rafale-A demonstrator used F404 engine. When M88 became available, it took them 6 months to fit the M88, flight test it and validate it… M88 is smaller than f404, it’s also smaller than M2000’s M53… M53 brings 95.3kN thrust, weights 1.5t and takes 2.62m³ room. M88 is already available in 98kN version, after order, Safran can start delivery of a version with 115kN afterburner thrust and even demonstrated a 100kN dry thrust capability on a demonstrator. M88 weights 900kg, takes only 1.34m³ of room, is more fuel efficient and needs less air flow, therefore, rather than adding external conformal fuel tanks, no need to ruin the aerodynamics, M88 allows to stuff the fuel inside…
Thanks to DRDO+Dassault efforts, such mods are near all validated on Indian Tejas…The only problems : HAL stockpiled F404 and F414 engines by fear of another 1998-like set of sanctions, they also want to licence-build the Israeli AESA radar as they can take more margin than w. RBE-2/AESA… This is a pity: Thales created T/R modules each doing the job of two T/R on F-22’s and F-35’s radars. Thales also modified RBE-2/AESA to be stuffed into Tejas’ small nose…
BTW, M88 would reduce the M2000’s hourly cost to $6-7.5k/hour… F16’s all included hourly cost is $23k/h (source : USAF, 2013).
Annual costs are usually counted on an annual 480 flight hour basis, this implies 3 pilots trained with the average NATO 160 hours per pilot, thus this may vary, e.g. USAF pilots fly just a little over 120 hours, it’s pretty common that Greek, Indian, an even French or Israeli pilots go over 200h/year… USAF often pretend having much lesser annual costs than others… For sure: as many pilots prefer the deleter ambience in USAF for higher salaries in airlines, guess why it’s becomng common again to see the USAF pilots’ names painted on canopy’s frame? Co there’s a single pilot for the aircraft! For sure, with about 120-125 flight hours a year only…