Last of the Wunderwaffen is the shortest lived: the F-16 is to be found out in Ukraine
Unreliable and accident-prone, the F-16 “Fighting Falcon” jet fighter plane is more like a diseased crow on its last pair of wings - a flying tin-foil fuel tank wrapped around the fat US-made turd of a single thirsty jet engine nearly scraping the ground with the soft underbelly while sat on tarmac that flies worse than a MiG-29 and is less maneuverable and is otherwise nothing special and is a soft and flimsy jet plane with a huge unprotected canopy making the pilot especially vulnerable to all kinds of impact
In the summer of 2024, after some two years of training pilots to fly the same, the first six F-16 Fighting Falcons fighter jets were delivered to the Zelensky regime’s heavily depleted air force with much fanfare in a ceremony held at an undisclosed location accompanied with bloodcurdling threats mouthed by Zelensky’s officials, including himself, regarding their impending use against the Russians and the things that they could do to them – nothing short of winning the war single-handedly for the Zelensky regime, albeit rather belatedly.
As per usual much was made of their “superiority”, the advanced weapons that they supposedly carried or could be equipped with, their upgraded and improved “electronic warfare suites” and what not.
However, only two or three weeks later, on August 26, 2024, one of the F-16s either went down, or never got up, on its maiden combat mission and took the pilot along with it for company to the beyond – and coincidentally did so on a day of a massive Russian air and missile strike on Zelensky’s war making capabilities.
This may be the first kill of an F-16 in the Ukraine war but it is far from the first combat loss of the F-16.
About ten F-16 kills have been (very reluctantly and after years and years of lies and evasion) confirmed by their operators - F-16s have been lost to date mainly to Soviet-made weapons such as: at least three F-16s falling to Iraqi-operated SA-6 (2K12 Kub), SA-3 (S-125 Neva), shoulder-launched SA-16 (9K38 Igla) SAMs during the 1991 Desert Storm; one F-16 to 2K12 Kub (SA-6) SAM over Bosnia in 1995, and another one over Serbia in 1999; one F-16 to S-200 over Syria as recently as in 2018, a further five or so were lost to air-to-air missiles reportedly fired by a Mirage, various MiGs, or even other F-16s as in the case of a Turkish F-16 shoot-down by a Greek F-16.
Three or four crashed whilst on combat missions under unclear circumstances, including low altitude maneuvers, and could have been hit by ground fire, for a combined total of maybe 30 confirmed F-16 combat losses.
Many more kills are claimed by adversaries and some with good reason, especially by the Syrians over the IAF dating back to the early 1980s and, in the case of the Syrians, continuing up to the present time.
Over 800 F-16s have crashed since 1975 across all operator nations in various major accidents resulting in loss of aircraft, and frequently the pilot too, not thought to be related to combat.
While there is again a myth of superiority and invincibility that is quite intentionally spread by the manufacturers, the US military and other principal operators of the F-16 about the aircraft – likely in order to discourage attacks on the same and paint the aircraft as invincible and unassailable, the US-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-to-air- and surface-to-air systems or even missile forces and unmanned one-way drones like what likely happened on Aug 26, 2024 where a collision of the F-16 with a Shahed 136 drone or a near explosion cannot be ruled out.
Russia has many assets that can take down the F-16 Fighting Falcon, or any other existing or even future warplane for that matter, including near-autonomous self-aiming air-to-air missiles that have a range of over 300 km and the world’s best and most numerous air defense systems.
Also, the F-16 is not that hard to kill. Not at all.
It doesn’t require cutting-edge- or particularly advanced weapons to knock it down. Most of the known shoot-downs were achieved by Soviet designed and built SAM systems that stem back to the early 1950s and the F-16 is yet to face modern Russian, or anybody else’s, anti-aircraft weapons as it has never operated in near-peer conflicts.
In low altitude passes it can even be brought down by concentrated small arms fire or stray bullets or shrapnel and debris that will puncture and likely ignite the fuel tanks or pierce the canopy and kill the pilot.
Once the cobweb of lies and propaganda is torn down, the F-16 “Fighting Falcon” is more like a diseased crow on its last pair of wings – a flying aluminum () foil fuel tank wrapped around the big thirsty turd of a single jet engine, nearly scraping the ground with the soft underbelly while taxiing on the tarmac – that flies worse than a MiG-29 and is less maneuverable and is otherwise nothing special and is an ageing soft armor-less jet plane with a huge unprotected canopy making the pilot especially vulnerable to all kinds of impact in the event of a shoot-down, of which there will be many in Ukraine, no doubt.
By I.
Moscow, August - September, 2024
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post originally published on September 22, 2024
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