The F-16 "fighting falcon" is more like a diseased crow on its last pair of wings - a flying aluminum (1) tin-foil fuel tank wrapped around the big turd of a single thirsty jet engine nearly scraping the ground with the soft underbelly that flies worse than a MiG-29 and less maneuverable and is otherwise nothing special and is a soft armor-less jet plane with a huge unprotected canopy making the pilot especially vulnerable to all kinds of impact.
General K. Sokolowski (ret.)
Rumors are a new reality
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The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: Rumors First F-16 Destroyed: Rumors have been circulating unchecked since Aug 26, 2024 that a first F-16 "fighting falcon" jet was destroyed in a missile strik...
As reported earlier, and the WSJ is chosen for some reason to admit it, via some hen journo whore, while still in denial that it was brought down, as per usual claiming an accident
Exclusive | U.S.-Made F-16 Fighter Jet Crashes in Ukraine - WSJ
archived 29 Aug 2024 14:47:28 UTC
The two top guns: one on the left is he who died on Aug 26 in an F-16 flying coffin
General Sokolowski's file on the F-16 says:
This maybe the first kill of an F-16 in the Ukraine war but it is far from the first combat loss of an F-16: about 10 F-16 kills have been confirmed - F-16s have been lost to date mainly to Soviet-made weapons such as at least 3 F-16s to SA-6, SA-3, shoulder-launched SA-16 SAMs during the 1991 Desert Storm, one F-16 to 2K12 Kub SAM over Bosnia in 1995, one F-16 to S-200 over Syria in 2018, air-to-air missiles fired by a Mirage, MiGs, other F-16s.
Three or four crashed whilst on combat missions, and some more in training, for a combined total of maybe 20 confirmed F-16 losses.
Many more kills are claimed, especially by the Syrians and the Soviets over the IAF dating back to the early 1980s.
General Sokolowski says that, while there is a myth of superiority that is circulating about the F-16, the U.S.-made fighter jet will likely go the way of the other Western wunderwaffen in Ukraine, and, if it is deployed at all in significant numbers, is in for a mass cull by Russian air and surface-to-air systems or even missile forces and unmanned one-way drones like what likely happened on Aug 26, 2024 - once the veil of lies and propaganda is stripped, the F-16 "fighting falcon" is more like a diseased crow on its last pair of wings - a flying fuel tank wrapped around a single thirsty jet engine nearly scraping the ground with the soft underbelly that flies worse than a MiG-29 and less maneuverable and is otherwise nothing special and is a soft armor-less jet plane with a huge unprotected canopy making the pilot especially vulnerable.
Which canopy could be the reason for Pilot Mes' death, by the way.
F-16 Top Gun Funeral
What is said to be a Russian long-range (up to 400 km) R-37 air-to-air chasing (and eventually catching) the eponymous F-16.
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(1) The Soviet Union significantly reduced the export of titanium during the late 1970s, so the manufacturers of the F-16 used aluminum instead wherever practical.
Update
On about the same date
A US airman dies in a dormitory "in Korea"
KUNSAN AIR BASE, Republic of Korea —
An Airman assigned to the 8th Maintenance Group was found dead in an on-base dormitory, August 28, 2024.