That’s impressive.
This is too
Like I said before, Putin should get a prize for promoting European military integration 
Well partially; the old players continue as before.
What a photo:
A house deep in the countryside here
LeSving wrote:
In the video one can also see the special characteristic of the Norwegian F-35s
Nobody dared to answer (for some reason or another) or perhaps nobody reads this thread anymore? We must not forget it’s a war going on next door. The future destiny in Europe for generations to come depends on the outcome of this war for – seriously!
Anyway, for both the F-16 and the F-35 to be usable on short runways in winter time, they have to have the ability to stop before the runway ends. All the Norwegian F-16s were built with a drag chute in the lower part of the vertical fin. For the F-35 they did a different approach. The drag chute is in a little hump on top of the aft fuselage (can be seen on some of the aircraft in the video above). This is detachable, and I think all F-35s can have this installed, at least structurally. So now you know
The initial F-16s (A/B) were built by a consortium in the USA, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Norway. The ones for the four European countries were built by Fokker in the Netherlands, engines were built in Belgium and odd parts were built in Denmark and Norway. Norway had to have a drag chute, but I think also the Dutch and Belgian version got it as well. Only the Danish and the US version did not have drag chute. In later variants, I think the Polish F-16s also have this, maybe also a few other.
We must not forget it’s a war going on next door. The future destiny in Europe for generations to come depends on the outcome of this war for – seriously!
That’s very true. The challenge is to have a discussion here without it being turned into a pro-Russian topic, which is not allowed. Actually as of some time ago both China and Russia have been blocked on the EuroGA server, due to extensive hack attempts and bots, zero GA-related activity, and the requirement to contribute on GA topics if wanting to participate in these other threads.
All the Norwegian F-16s were built with a drag chute
Every F16 I have seen has that “thing” there but maybe on some it is for flares (IR countermeasures)?
Peter wrote:
Every F16 I have seen has that “thing” there but maybe on some it is for flares (IR countermeasures)?
Not every one. Here is the “original” look. This is a Danish version. Flare dispensers are on the fuselage, on the underside. I think extra flares are also fitted on some of the pylons under the wing.
From pictures it looks like the newest versions of the F-16 (the ones that hardly looks like an F-16 anymore ) all have the chute, and also lots of sensors in that area.
Jesus, the F-16 is good looking I was a mechanic on the F-16 in the mid 80s. I sometimes slept in the shelter with it (with a hangover, or when it was on high alert intercepting Russian bombers. It was a cold war back then). The weird thing is that the F-16 when it came in the early 80s, was truly a technical wonder. Yet it was nothing more than a Spitfire on steroids. It was designed as a dogfighter, and the only weapons it initially had was a cannon and sidewinders. Nothing of the fancy stuff they have today. It couldn’t carry radar guided missiles for instance, or laser guided bombs. I guess very similar to the Mig-29s the Ukrainians have today (also a truly amazing aircraft in fact).
The Norwegian ones were upgraded all the time. A big upgrade in the 90s (Mid Life Upgrade, MLU). Then it became “modern”. New radar, new avionics, new weapon systems. Basically all the stuff that “changed the war” to a video game kind of thing on the TV. The MLUs are similar to the -C variants that the US still uses en mass, together with a host of other nations. They are still produced, and the newest versions are more like the F-35, only not stealthy, and not exactly a sleek, sexy dogfighter anymore Much, much better in a real war of course
A short month in the air force I had the opportunity to be on the aircraft they used for testing/integration of the Penguin missile on the F-16. It is a surface/air to sea, anti ship missile by Kongsberg, also known as the AGM-119 in the USA. It was originally used from boats. Being with those Kongsberg engineers, learning all I could about the missile and testing, was actually one major reason I went to university myself After the university I headed in another direction. A couple of years ago though, I was a supervisor for a Master student. She got a job in Kongsberg designing/testing new turbine blades for the F-35 engine
Today we have F-35s. The F-16s are however still fully operational, fully combat ready, only 57 left (of 80 something). And they are all in Norway. 32 have been sold to Romania, delivery within a year. 12 have been sold to Draken International, but awaiting approval from the USA that never seems to come (a factor 10 worse than Germany’s dragging about the Leopards). This means there are still 13 left that could be sent to Ukraine any time, possibly 12 more. These are perfectly good fighter planes that could go to war today. They also have proven themselves in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Libya as well as countless interceptor missions against Russian bombers. I mean – they work They are not the top of the top today, but insanely much better than the MiGs Ukraine have today, which are comparable to the original un-upgraded F-16s from the early 80s. It just hurts in my bones thinking about it. Politics…
Some Ukrainians (I guess) made a Ukrainian livery of the F-16 in DCS. This is probably very close to what they eventually would look like if/when they are let loose from the chains Rather cool I must say.
How long does it take to get someone up to speed on maintenance, perhaps with a video link to somebody experienced for the tricky bits?
I keep hoping that we’ll discover that there’s a batch of Ukrainian pilots currently being trained on Western aircraft and who are now ready to go…
It’s almost 40 years ago, thinks may have changed. But in principle anyone with a working knowledge of a screwdriver and a wrench (like any mechanic) is able to maintain an F-16 with no training whatsoever.
There are maintenance documents describing everything in every thing in the smallest of detail. I would think today it’s all digitised and much better.
The issue is more that there are so many different systems, and the complexity is high, that to do this effectively, it requires organisation, lots of stuff, and lots of people. It’s more like a factory than what you would think of maintenance on a GA aircraft. There are different levels of maintenance. Doing it effectively is a requirement. These aircraft only works in the air, and each flight hour is perhaps in the order of 100 hours of maintenance all together (or more). You just need a while bunch of people, a whole bunch of stuff, and you also need a minimum number of planes to achieve efficiency.
I was on “line”. That is the everyday stuff, more like the pit crew in a F1 race. More heavy maintenance was further back, on many levels, all the way to the factories.
Ukrainians have the basic infrastructure and competence in place. What they don’t have in place perhaps, is all the bits and pieces, and the organisation to do this effectively for the F-16. Their organisation is tailored around MiGs and Sukhois.
Thanks. Those maintenance:flying ratios are crazy!
An article from Foreign Affairs by David Milliband, ex Labour Party UK foreign secretary, asking why ~50% of the world’s population is ambivalent or pro-Russia. Many UN nations voted to condemn the invasion but almost none implemented sanctions.
The short answer is the West alienated a lot of the world through hypocrisy (perceived and real), including selective military intervention and selective foreign aid. There’s some interesting facts, e.g. the poorest countries take 80% of the world’s refugees, or >90% of Somalian aid comes from the US. It’s very much the big picture, and maybe worth a skim-read. I don’t agree with some of the arguments, but the overall message is good:
Western governments should frame the conflict as one between the rule of law and impunity or between law and anarchy rather than one that pits democracy against autocracy. Such an approach has many advantages. It correctly locates democracy among a range of methods for the promotion of accountability and the curbing of the abuse of power. It broadens the potential coalition of support. It tests China at its weakest point because China claims to support a rules-based international system. It also sounds less self-regarding, which is important given the obvious problems plaguing many liberal democracies. A coalition built around the need for international rules is far more likely to be broader than one based on calls for democracy.
To defend the rule of law, however, Western countries must abide by it and subscribe to it.
Unfortunately there is a lot of hypocrisy all around, we have what we have.
Much of the fence-sitting is not driven by disagreements over the conflict in Ukraine but is
instead a symptom of a wider syndrome: anger at perceived Western double standards and
frustration at stalled reform efforts in the international system. The distinguished Indian
diplomat Shivshankar Menon put the point sharply in Foreign Affairs earlier this year when
he wrote, “Alienated and resentful, many developing countries see the war in Ukraine and the
West’s rivalry with China as distracting from urgent issues such as debt, climate change, and
the effects of the pandemic.”
I can see his POV but it is also strongly coloured by the fact that
It’s like South Africa’s ambivalence; WW2 never touched it. Europe is very far away.
My view is that one has to accept today’s UN-recognised borders. So Slovakia is not banging on about getting back the bit stolen by Russia, and CZ is not giving up the Sudetenlands stolen from Germany (both post-45).
I can fully see the 3rd World is keen to punish Western “colonial powers” for their “interference”, military action to secure oil supplies (the US, post shale oil, would never do another Gulf War), and centuries of assorted bitterness, but they really need to move on. Plus they need Russian money. Money always talks.
And only rich countries can afford to impose sanctions. Hence Montenegro (where the buses only just run) loves Russians
