Status of the Air Force's F-16 Aircraft Program

The multinational F-16 single-engine fighter aircraft has been approved for full production; the first-production F-16 is scheduled for delivery in August 1978. The United States and four European countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway) plan to purchase 998 F-16s, and a letter of offer and acceptance has been signed for sale of 160 F-16s to Iran.

The significant advantages that this aircraft holds for NATO standardization and future cooperative ventures may far outweigh any risk caused by the accelerated pace of the program. However, a number of uncertainties about the F-16 remain: critical development and operational flight testing remains, issues of the F-16's ability to survive and remain invulnerable in battle remain unresolved, the F-100 engine problems are serious because it has only one engine, and the rate of loss due to engine malfunction is currently estimated to be three times higher than called for by Air Force specifications. The basic delivery schedule requirements have caused some degree of concurrency between full-scale development, production, and deployments, and this has created an element of risk for the production program that could complicate correction of subsystem design problems.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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