Forum: General F-16 forum

Hey guys I've been around your site many times before and I'm glad to have finally joined. Also there's a couple of question that has been bugging me for a while. Is there a chance that we might see F-16s past 2025 in USAF service? And even though the F-16 is still in production for allied countries and we are not buying anymore vipers. Are we at least still buying parts to keep them flying? Thanks in advance.

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Welcome

14 years is a long way off still but I would think a few ANG/Res squadrons may still operate the F-16 at that time and some perhaps in test rolls. Likely and sadly most still flying will be drones for target practice.

Parts won't be a problem, for the most part as still many foriegn operators will still be flying F-16s. The biggest issue will be air time hours in combination with how much the USAF wants to spend to update the airframes. By that I mean the F-16s flying lots of combat missions, OSW, ONW, OEF, OIF, Operation Deny Christmas etc put a lot of hours on the airframes. As for maintaining, difficult to tell, F-16s can get more hours out of them by updating and strengthening the airframe, but the USAF often retired the F-16s early.

Like to hear other peoples thoughts.

Jon wrote:

Welcome

14 years is a long way off still but I would think a few ANG/Res squadrons may still operate the F-16 at that time and some perhaps in test rolls. Likely and sadly most still flying will be drones for target practice.

Parts won't be a problem, for the most part as still many foriegn operators will still be flying F-16s. The biggest issue will be air time hours in combination with how much the USAF wants to spend to update the airframes. By that I mean the F-16s flying lots of combat missions, OSW, ONW, OEF, OIF, Operation Deny Christmas etc put a lot of hours on the airframes. As for maintaining, difficult to tell, F-16s can get more hours out of them by updating and strengthening the airframe, but the USAF often retired the F-16s early.

Like to hear other peoples thoughts.

Thanks for the answer and welcome. Also I highly doubt the F-35 will be able to fill the advertised numbers the AF wants. So new build vipers just seem to make so much sense.

Ever since I joined this forum and started reading about the F-35, I always get the impression, that the F-35 lobbyists deliberately cut the wings of the F-16 program as though they wanted to force the AF to buy the F-35. It looks to me as if they were doing everything they could to say one day "F-16 is no more, now you have no option but to buy F-35". They would gladly close down the production line just to make sure no one orders new Vipers over the F-35.
The new plane is fantastic, no one doubts it, but its cost is killing it. USAF would not be able to replace even a quarter of its Vipers with the Lightning II. Assuming the new plane is 5 times more expensive, even if it was 5 times better, it would still be just one plane, it can't be in 5 places at the same time. Compromising quantity for astoundingly superior quality is not always as great as it seems. Some 70 years ago the Germans learned it the hard way on the Eastern Front. I think in the long run the Viper will yet make the F-35 lobbyists go white haired.

Forum: General F-16 forum

F-16 parts and retirement