Turkish F-16 fighter crashes near Syria, killing pilot

[Jimbuna]

Speculation is inevitable considering the current problems in the area.

[Platapus]

When I was working with the F-16 in the 80's we called them the "falling falcon". F-16's sometimes just stop flying.

A condition I doubt improves with age.

[Stealhead]

Always a trade off with any modern fighter design you want it to have high agility which means a very unstable platform that requires fly-by-wire to fly.If the computers fail or if an important control surface fails sometimes the computers even cant keep up and you have a 30 million dollar stone.

It does show you just how much a fly-by-wire system is doing when you look at an airframe so unstable that it requires FBY.Crazy to think that in the F-16 and F-22 to name just a few that the stick does not connect to any control surface but rather a series of computers that constantly receive inputs as to the conditions and also receive inputs from the pilot which it must then correlate.

Now an A-10 you'd need to rip an entire wing off in order for her to drop.Of course the Hog is not exactly a good dog fighter.

[mapuc]

I believe, I hope and I pray it was a technical issue that made the F-16 crash.

It would absolutely not be good for the region if it was the Syrians.

Markus

[MH]

Could be bird hit at low level and engine failure.
I doubt FBW issues very much , in particular in this jet.

[Wolferz]

Gremlins strike again.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[Stealhead]

Originally Posted by MH

Could be bird hit at low level and engine failure.
I doubt FBW issues very much , in particular in this jet.

An engine failure would cause serious control issues for the FBW in an F-16 actually.Remember the F-16 is a highly unstable airframe it needs the FBW to fly at all if the engine where to fail specifically at lower speeds and altitudes an F-16 would rapidly become uncontrollable.FBW is not a miracle worker even if it works perfectly if a major component fails it can not redesign the airframe to fly in a different manor.

The majority of F-16 crashes are caused by engine failures which is not a direct failure of the FBW per say but the FBW simply cant keep control once the engine fails and enough airspeed is lost.Of course all F-16 pilots(except IDF) are trained by the USAF and they know the points at which the aircraft is no longer controllable and can not be saved.

Interestingly doing some quick reading it seems that all operators of the F-16 are seeing an increase of crashes.Lockeed-Martin blames most crashes on pilot error of course.

The "old" saying is two engines are better than one when one engine fails the other engine will function perfectly long enough for you to fly into the ground.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by MH

I doubt FBW issues very much , in particular in this jet.

That's what they told us when Hill AFB here in Utah lost a bunch of them back in the late '70s. PR said no, everybody else said yes.

[Stealhead]

When the aircraft manufacturer tends to blame pilot error that makes me suspect that the FBW is to blame.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

That's what they told us when Hill AFB here in Utah lost a bunch of them back in the late '70s. PR said no, everybody else said yes.

In FY 1983, when I was stationed at Hill, half of the US F-16 crashes were at Hill (Utah Test and Training Range). Half. We spent a lot of time scraping F-16s and their pilots off the salt flats.