I saw the video clip on the news and AOA (angle of attack) instantly came to my mind as well. I'm not sure what kind of drag the F-16 would encounter while dragging a failed turbine through the air (if it was indeed engine failure)... Unless the drag is exponentially huge, I could not see how an engine failure (while watching the video clip) could cause such a critical result.
My guess (and I stress "guess") is that the pilot transitioned from a dive to an attitude above the horizon too quickly and caused the aircraft to stall. The best way to understand this is to experiment with "angle of attack" on your microsoft flight simulator.. you'll see how easy it is to stall an aircraft at any airspeed by being abrupt on the controls. Flight Simulator affords me the safety of exploring "critical attack angles" in the lear jet without any worry what-so-ever
For you real pilots out there... its easy to experiment with AOA in say a Cessna 152 or 172 by leaning the aircraft on its side at low airspeed (airspeed indicator in the green at or below maneuvering speed) and yanking the control column to your lap and holding it there. The stall comes rather quickly with the stall warning blaring almost instantly.
We'll all have to wait and see what the NTSB has to say about the crash... but until then, its fun to bounce theories back and forth while we wait.
The poster was right about turbine engines not spooling up immediately... think of a turbocharged car from the early 80's... remember how the turbo lagged because of the time it took to "spool up"? Kinda the same thing. Pratt & Whitney engines have been called "push & wait" by many pilots.. you'll experience the same kind of "lag" time on many turboprops too.
-eric
"A good landing is any landing you walk away from"