Originally Posted by
johnwill
The hooks are not deployed in flight. Flight manual procedure is to land, lower the nose gear to the ground, then deploy the hook.
johnwill,
That has changed at some point between the time when you worked it and now. For as long as I have been flying the F-16, in case you plan on an arrested landing or in case of some electrical failures, the -1 and -1 Checklist states that the hook is to be lowered before landing. In case of some electrical issues it even states that the pilot is to lower the hook early, to avoid the possibility of loosing that capability due to later on loss of DC power (partial electrical failures with loss of some/all of the battery buses, which might also render the wheel brakes unserviceable).