50 years of the Lockheed Martin F-16

[chopper2004]

Eaarly RAF exchange _F-16

Originally Posted by gums

Salute!

Good points. Type.

OTOH, the roles and mission discussions played a role about going to production of the XL, especially when the Eagle mafia won the battle for the $$ with the Mudhen.

Without the endless deployments for interdiction and CAS that the Viper "enjoyed", the Guard and Reserve stateside units mainly trained for U.S. airspace sovereignty in the intercept role, and not for flying out 200 miles before the engagement.

I was not all that sold on the XL for CAS or CSAR, having flown 90% of my actual combat time doing that in the Dragonfly and Sluf. Then mainly interdection/SEAD at Red Flag in the Viper.

Thanks for all the comments, folks.

Gums sends...

Thanks Gums and happy new year.

Maybe you can answer this question please, can you remember any RAF exchange officers that first flew the F-16A back in the 80s. Pretty sure, there were one or two ETPS Test Pilot instructors who went over in the late 70s to fly the YF-16 (as wellas the new F-15A Eagle) according to Francis K Mason's book on Boscombe Down, The Testing Years,

I know of the current station command at RAF Lossiemouth flew F-16CJ in recent years on exchange

https://www.raf.mod.uk/our-organisat...f-lossiemouth/

and of course our head of Space Command,

https://hushkit.net/2020/11/20/flyin...-paul-godfrey/

cheers