The Insane Engineering of the F-16

This video is brought to you by Nebula. Watch our additional videos with F-16 test pilot David Kern by signing up for Nebula for just 2.50 a month. A fully loaded F-16 is a force to be reckoned with. An air superiority machine that countries around the world use to patrol their skies. A low-cost, lightweight, single-engine fighter, specifically designed to outmaneuver its opponents while carrying cutting-edge missiles that would hopefully mean it would never have to. The F-16 was born from the Vietnam War. Large, heavy, complex American fighters like the F-4 Phantom were the norm, but the F-4 frequently found itself on the rocks, at a significant disadvantage when facing the smaller, more maneuverable Soviet-made MiGs of the Vietnamese Air Force, as the Mig 21.

The Mig 21 was a small, single-engine, light aircraft with thin delta wings. The F-4 was fast, flying up to Mach 2.2, traveling farther and carrying more missiles, with a powerful radar. But its lack of low-speed maneuverability, poor visibility for the pilot, and easy identification due to jet engines leaving trails of black smoke made it vulnerable to Soviet interceptor sneak attacks. The MiG 21s frequently flew low to the ground, below radar, and ambushed incoming F-4s. Make a single attack run with your Atoll infrared-guided missiles and then use your low-speed maneuverability to turn and escape. From August 1967 to February 1968, American losses in Vietnam were staggering.

Losing 18 planes and shooting down only 5. For a nation accustomed to absolute air superiority, something was wrong. The introduction of the MIG 21 in 1966 forced the United States to adapt. Their large, heavy fighter-bombers, although useful, were at a disadvantage against these smaller, cheaper aircraft, and something needed to be done. The Red Baron study, commissioned by the US Army, began to identify and address the tactical and technical problems that caused the heavy losses that both the US Navy and Air Force were experiencing in the war. from Vietnam. And their findings led to the development of one of the world's most ubiquitous fighter aircraft.

An aircraft designed with a new physics-based doctrine at its core. Entering service in 1978 and standing the test of time, the aircraft is now confirmed to enter the battle for Ukraine's freedom, taking on the MiG's modern counterparts. This is the crazy

engineering

of the F-16. The F-16 was built from scratch with this classified 1966 document as a guide. An article full of mathematical models, graphs and equations, designed to answer a question. How to win a hand-to-hand dogfight. Created with the help of military supercomputers, it defined a new concept. Energy maneuverability. Created by Colonel John Boyd, an Air Force veteran of the Vietnam War and one of the members of the so-called fighter mafia, with the help of civilian mathematician Thomas Christie.

These graphs were the basis for defining the maneuverability of an aircraft throughout its speed range. Mach number on the x axis. Speed ​​of rotation in the y. A theory underlined by the management of kinetic and potential energy, speed and altitude. To change direction, a fighter jet must exchange energy from these reserves, and doing so as efficiently as possible is the key to outmaneuvering the enemy. . This is the energy-maneuverability diagram of the F-16. It's a complicated chart to read without a basic understanding. This line is defined by the maximum lift of the airplane. This is important because it determines the maximum spin rate at a particular speed in this region.

We need an elevator to turn. To begin a turn, the airplane will roll in the direction of the turn. This divides the lift the plane generates into two components: a horizontal component that makes the plane turn and a vertical component that keeps the plane in the sky. A steeper bank angle will increase the horizontal component and increase our turn speed, while taking lift away from the vertical component. This vertical component must equal the weight of the plane, or the plane will lose altitude. To compensate for this, the pilot will need to increase lift by increasing the angle of attack.

This is where the maximum lift problem arises. More lift means more force available for turning. To determine the maximum turn speed for an F-16 at Mach 0.4, we simply draw a straight line up and across our turn speed. 13 degrees per second. Now this is where things get interesting. This is the graphic of an F-4E. At the same speed, the F-4 can make a maximum turn of only 5 degrees per second. To determine a sustained turn, we look at this line labeled 0. Which means that no loss of altitude is required to make the turn. We can see that the F-16's best sustained turn is 14.2 degrees per second at 0.85 Mach at 7g.

The F-4's best sustained turn is 10 degrees per second at 0.85 Mach at 5g. This is what it looks like in practice. It takes the F-16 25 seconds to complete a full 360-degree turn. While the F-4 takes 36 seconds. 11 seconds difference. The F-16 was a radically new way of thinking about fighter aircraft and that design philosophy can be seen in how the engine inlet was designed to deal with supersonic flow. To learn more about the F-16, we spoke with F-16 test pilot David Wren. So the entry of the F 16 is one of those things that tells you about the design philosophy of the airplane because up until that point, the thought process was that we wanted to go faster, we wanted to go higher, and nobody stopped to ask about it. what, because Turns out there wasn't a lot of fighting, there wasn't a lot of dogfighting in that Mach two plus range.

In fact, very little happened and it had no great tactical application. And so, as John Boyd and the rest of the team were looking at this light fighter design, which became the F 16, they said, well, where do we think the dogfights of the future will really happen? And they said, well, it'll probably be somewhere in that simulated mach 0.8 to 1.2 regime. That's where we really need to be in terms of optimizing aircraft performance. And we see that here in terms of the specific excess power table where you have this advantage here in that 0.8 M to 1.2 mach range.

That's where the thick part of the graph is located. That's where your fat is energy, that's where you have that advantage. So the F 16's propulsion system is not optimized to go above Mach two, although it can, and I've flown the F 16 at Mach two, you run out of gas pretty quickly, but you can go that fast. But in what we call the 0.8 to 1.2 mach transonic regime, you have a different design problem than some of the earlier aircraft. And you can see that in terms of the inputs. The inlets on the F four have this extension that goes along the cheeks of the plane forward, and then the actual inlet is set back, and what it's designed to do is connect a shock wave to the front of that inlet lip. and then recedes and expands throughout the body.

And that shock wave will basically cover the inlet which has some thermodynamic effects in terms of pressure recovery for the face of the fan because you don't want supersonic air to get all the way to the turbine. If there is a supersonic airflow hitting the front face of that jet engine, the jet engine will disintegrate. It is designed to absorb subsonic airflow. And then you have to place that shock wave at the front of the entrance. That's part of what slows down the airflow to eventually cause a normal shock inside the intake. It expands a little and then reaches the front face of the compressor or the fan face of the compressor.

Well, the F 16, and you can see it right here, has what we call a breastplate entrance. It's basically a flat-faced air intake. It's not that kind of overhang with a lip and then an inlet that's further back like you see on the F four or the F 15 or the F 14, the big 29, the s U 27, they all have more of that inlet. which is configured to generate an oblique shock wave in front of the inlet. They are designed to go faster. The F 16 has a bit of that. If you look at it from a side view, you can see how it has a small protrusion on the lip and nose that helps generate a shock wave, but it's not as efficient at exceeding Mach 1.2.

And that's fine. In reality, it can go that fast, it can go faster, but the engine works a little bit harder as you get into this simulated range of 1.4, 1.5 compared to something like an F four or an F 15. That's where it really They start to stretch. his legs and run. These design optimizations to optimize maneuverability at these speeds can also be seen elsewhere. The location of the air intakes beneath the aircraft is a marked difference from the F-4's twin side-mounted intakes. And the thin, elongated wing that smoothly integrates with the fuselage with these wing extensions ahead of the main wing.

These are called leading edge strakes. This air intake ensured that the F-16's engine did not run out of air during high-angle attack maneuvers. With the front of the aircraft helping to channel and divert air directly into the air intake. However, this comes with some problems that need to be solved. During takeoff and landing, this air inlet is only 100 centimeters from the ground, this combined with the extremely thin wings makes it difficult to position the landing gear. The front landing gear could not be mounted in front of the air intake, as they would throw debris into it, and they could not fit on the wings, since the thin, aerodynamically optimized wing did not have enough space.

The F-16's landing gears are stored just behind the air intake, and to provide sufficient stability and grip on landing, they require a unique folding mechanism to rotate them outward and create as long a wheelbase as possible. The front landing gear, which can be steered during taxi, also rotates 90 degrees to lie flat just below the engine inlet. Above the entrance is a boundary layer diverter channel. This ensures that the motor obtains a constant laminar flow. As air travels along the plane, it forms a layer of slowly moving turbulent air called the boundary layer. If this air is allowed to enter the engine, it not only reduces performance, but can also damage the engine.

As the turbine spins, it will pass through the boundary of slow air on one side and then through fast, free-flowing air on the other. This means that the force on the turbine blades changes with each rotation, causing cyclic bending. A recipe for failure due to fatigue. This boundary layer diverter separates this layer and deflects it under the wings. All of this ensures that the engine can operate at the highest possible thrust, even when the F-16 performs extreme maneuvers, which is exactly when it is needed most, as the aircraft loses energy to produce lift. It is essential that an aircraft like this can continue to generate effective lift during these maneuvers, but typical wings lose lift as the angle of attack increases beyond a certain angle, as the flow separates from the wing.

This is called stall. These cutting-edge strakes help mitigate that. They act similarly to the SU-34 hoaxes, one of the aircraft the F-16 will likely face in Ukraine, and 19 of them have reportedly been shot down so far in the war. Leading edge canards and strakes help produce lift during high angle attack maneuvers. Canards placed close to the wing, such as the Saab 37 Viggen, create a vortex that passes over the wing, ensuring that the wing continues to receive high-energy airflow during high-angle attack maneuvers, allowing it to continue generating lift during the development of the F.-16, General Dynamics considered a canard configuration, testing different configurations and geometries, including versions without strakes or canards with subscale models in a wind tunnel, testing their optimal maneuvering speeds between 0.4 and 0 .8 mach.

The goal was to maximize lift and minimize drag at high angles of attack, generating graphs like this one, which were used to compare designs. While refining the design, they consulted NASA and found an area to improve. The sharpness of the leading edge. General Dynamics had rounded the leading edge of the wing to weaken these high-angle leading vortices, but NASA advised them to sharpen the leading edge to strengthen them. The F-16 underwent a lot of iterative design in the wind tunnel phase before finally landing on the design we know today. With the long leading edge combination strake making the F-16 immediately recognizable, and this comes with an added benefit.

Provides enough muzzle clearance for the F-16's powerful 20mm rotary cannon. You can see the barrel of the M61 Vulcan hidden here, a minor hint of the weapon hidden inside the fuselage of the small plane. One of the first conclusions of the Red Baron's report was thatThe F-4's mediocre armament made it difficult for it to compete in close-quarters battles. It lacked an internal cannon, leaving the F-4 without offensive options in close-quarters battles, where missiles could not be used safely. The F-4 was eventually modernized with the M61 slung under the aircraft. But the F-16, which sought to address the problems of the past, came with the General Dynamics M61 Vulcan rotating Gatling gun as standard and was carefully packaged inside the aircraft, creating minimal aerodynamic drag.

The M61 is the smaller cousin of the A-10's GAU 8/A, and although its rounds are small in comparison. The noise it makes still has a big impact. A huge cannon for a tiny plane. The 6-barreled cannon fires from the top position. The Gatling gun rotates 16 times per second and fires 100 20mm rounds per second. With an ammunition drum capable of holding only 511 rounds, the entire ammunition drum can be unloaded in just over 5 seconds. Here the drum fits perfectly behind the pilot, and the vibration of the gun firing on the pilot's left side is jarring for many new pilots.

It's a very small fighter, and I think I've said it before, when you get into an F 16, you sit down and put it on. It's not like you're sitting on the plane. It's like you're using the jet and the gun is right here. As I sit in the cockpit, the barrels and muzzles of the guns are right behind here. It is simply out of our reach. Although it is very close. So when you fire the gun and you fire a hundred rounds a second of 20 millimeters, it's incredibly violent on the plane, but you're thinking about the target that you have to go and shoot.

And one of my experiences flying the F 16 was that I was teaching as an instructor pilot at Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix, Arizona. And then I had the privilege of hosting Air Force pilots, they wear wings, they graduated from Air Force pilot training, but they're not fighter pilots yet. And put them in an F 16 and then we would make sure everyone fired the gun during training. In fact, they had to qualify with the gun as a weapon. So the first experience for anyone who fires the gun in an F 16 is a bit of an emotional experience.

People said funny things, they cursed. It was all on the tapes, the HUD tapes, the HUD recordings, and we go back in the report and we laugh at the students because they knew they were going to fire the gun and it was always shooting at a target on the ground that's when they would do this for the first time. time, raf. And so it's a little intense. You're diving on the ground, you're doing 4, 50, 500 knots pointing at the ground. Obviously there is a survival instinct that kicks in there. You're trying to put the pepper on the target, you pull the trigger for the first time and the whole plane shakes violently.

It's like someone turned on a chainsaw right in your left ear and the whole plane was shaking and your hand was on the accelerator. And I can always remember that every time I fired the gun, there was hard foam insulation that was right behind the closure panel, but the vibrations would cause some of those little pieces of foam to come off, come off. And they would go through the closure panel and every time I went to fire the gun to practice a straight line, I would come back, and when I got off the plane, I would see these little yellow flexes of foam everywhere. my green flight suit on my left arm.

The vibrations were so intense that you get used to it after the first time you shoot it, it's a bit of an emotional event. And after you're focused, I need to aim those bullets at the target. So the F 16 is incredibly well integrated weapons system wise with that weapon. And I will tell you that both for air-to-ground and also for air-to-air, the F 16's gun positions are incredibly precise. And even with the dynamics in the plane, even under maneuvers in terms of air-to-air shooting where we shoot at a banner, there haven't been many air-to-air dogfights with the gun in recent memory.

But the F 16 is accurate when shooting air-to-air practice targets to the point that it's almost not even fair. It used to be a kind of scoring ability. And now you can park the Pippa on the open target and it will destroy anything you aim at in terms of an air-to-air target. And then in terms of air-to-ground, you can be extremely precise. It's not exactly a laser beam, but you can be extremely precise. And there are even ways to attach other sensors on the plane and share information - even in a night-darkened close air support type of roll, you can hit whatever you want on the ground.

All from a weapon hidden in this small fighter plane. If we follow this trace of the leading edge along the wing, we arrive at another device designed to increase lift at high angles of attack. The leading edge flap. It is deflected downward during high angle attack maneuvers to delay stall and allow air to remain attached to the wing surface. Performing a sustained turn at 0.9 Mach at cruising altitude increases lift by 18% and decreases drag by 22%. You can see them in action here during the 5g takeoff I did with the Thunderbirds in 2019. The seam between the leading edge flap and the main wing is barely noticeable and a control system is installed on this wing, which is only about 4 centimeters. thick where the actuator system had to fit, proved a challenge.

The amount of torque required to drive a control surface like this at 0.9 Mach is not trivial. To solve this problem, energy is transferred from two hydraulic motors, which convert the pressure in the hydraulic system into rotational motion. The hydraulic drive motor is hidden behind the M61 rotating barrel, next to the hydraulic motor that drives the barrel rotation and ammunition drive system. This power must be transferred to the wing, and this is done through a series of torsion shafts, an angular gearbox, and another series of torsion shafts with rotary actuators in between. This leading edge flap is not controlled by the pilot, but is controlled automatically by the flight computer, and the F-16 was a pioneer in this regard.

The F-16 was the first fighter aircraft to have a fly-by-wire system that controlled every control surface. The F-16's leading edge flaps, flaperons, rudder, and horizontal tail are not controlled directly by the pilot. A fly-by-wire system that uses a network of sensors, cables and computers, as well as the pilot's own information to control the aircraft. The F-16 was employing this new technological magic to allow it to efficiently expend the energy provided by its single jet engine. Traditional flight control systems, up to this point, used a mechanical system connected directly to the pilot's controls to manipulate the flight surfaces.

These are images of the F-4 control system. A heavy and complicated network of cables, rods, linkages and hydraulic systems. It even has 2-kilogram weights attached to the pilot's stick. A mechanism designed to make pulling the lever more difficult as gs increases, an analog feedback system. To provide the pilot with analog feedback on speed, the F-4 also featured a diaphragm that diverted compressed air taken from this probe onto the vertical fin. This introduced a force that acted to push the stick rearward and instructed the pilot to adjust a trim setting. This system not only added an enormous amount of weight to the F-4, reducing its maneuverability, but it added workload to the pilot and was more vulnerable to damage in dogfights with little redundancy.

With a fly-by-wire system, none of this was necessary. The first batch of F-16s actually had a stick that was immovable. It was just a feeling of strength. A small amount of movement was later added after pilots complained. So the non-moving lever is a little known fact, you know, the original F 16, it was not a Lockheed Martin product, it was general dynamics and they had made the F one 11 previously, and the weapon system operator on the F one. 11 had a small joystick that they could use to direct the attack radar and that was a force-based movement.

It wasn't actually a joystick that moved, it was just the application of force. And so they took that same concept and then put it on the stick of the F 16. So it was kind of a general dynamic where we have a force transducer, a scepter control is what you would call that. So what it turns out is that the human body does very well at knowing where the hands of its extremities move, knowing the position of its body is something it naturally does quite well, and that's called proprioceptive feedback. Well, when I have a strength-based starter, I no longer get that proprioceptive feedback and it's very hard to judge.

It's something that I think if you challenge yourself to go lift some weight at the gym and wonder how much it weighs without looking at it, it's actually a little hard to guess when you're in that few pound range. . And the maximum force you can exert on the side lever of the F 16 is 25 pounds. That's why it's a little difficult to distinguish between 15 pounds and 15.2 pounds. We don't do very well with that. We are much better off knowing how far we have come. And then the original F 16 controls wouldn't move, and what the pilots discovered was that they were having a tough time.

The test pilots at Edwards were having a hard time judging exactly how hard they would pull the controls, so they would think they were going to get a certain response from the plane and then they wouldn't, and then they would pull harder. too strong and then they would get a different response. There is a phenomenon called pilot-induced oscillations or pilot-in-the-loop oscillations. Sometimes it's just shortened to p i o and the F 16, even to this day, especially if you have a lot of wing provisions, can have a little bit of wing roll when landing. And if you watch some videos of the F sixteen landing, sometimes you can find if they have side tanks or they are bringing in some bombs that they didn't spend, you will find an F 16 that will do more or less this. small wing rock back and forth.

And that remains, to this day, an artifact of having a side stick that doesn't move much because it's one of those things that in terms of mind to hand, hand-eye coordination, you start to make a movement. . By the time you see the effect, it's more than you wanted. Then you take it out and put a correction on it. By the time the fix takes effect, it's more than you wanted. You see it, you come back. It's a feedback loop in our minds. And now p i o is a dirty word in aircraft design and no one wants PIO.

I will tell you that the oscillations induced by the PIO pilots are like snakes and some snakes are very dangerous and some are not. Therefore, the P I O remaining on the F 16 in terms of wing roll at the final moment of landing is not very dangerous. These pilot-induced oscillations can also be stabilized naturally by passive stability. Where the plane self-corrects naturally without pilot intervention. However, the F-16 was the first aircraft in history to eliminate passive stability and make the aircraft intentionally unstable in flight. This was done because it reduces the energy needed to fly and maneuver.

We can understand why this happens with a simple analogy. Here we have two situations, a ball placed on the top of a hill and a ball placed in a valley. If we push the ball to the top of the hill, even just a little bit, it will begin to accelerate down the hill and won't stop until we put energy into it to slow it down. This is an unstable system. The opposite happens with the ball in the valley. Apply a force and the ball will roll uphill and gravity will now provide a restoring force to bring it back.

It may swing back and forth several times before stopping, but it will eventually return to its original position. This is a stable system. We want to adapt our stability to find a balance between these two scenarios. Where we can cause a rapid change of direction with a small input of energy, and at the same time manage the amount of energy necessary to return to our original position. This is called relaxed static stability. The pitch stability of the F-16 is one of the areas where this idea was applied. One of the key factors affecting pitch stability is the location of the center of gravity and center of lift.

The F-4's center of gravity is located approximately here. This is the point where all the lift will act, it is like the fulcrum of a seesaw. As a result of the wing design, the center of lift is slightly behind the center of gravity. This would force the plane to pitch downward, but the horizontal stabilizer provides a force that counteracts the fall. This is not ideal, we are wasting energy on the climb down. We need upward lift to fly. It also increases the amount of energy the F-4 needs to input to change its pitch. When tilted up, the force on the horizontal stabilizer decreases due to reduced airflow and, as a result, the weight of theairplane, which acts through the center of gravity, in front of the center of lift, wants to move the nose down again.

But the pilot is trying to bank the plane and this natural stability opposes them. Therefore, more kinetic energy is wasted converting it into lift and drag with greater elevator deflection. The F-16 is different. Its center of lift is ahead of the center of gravity, thanks in part to those leading edge strakes that push the center of lift forward. This means that to balance the plane, the horizontal stabilizer needs to create upward lift. This is useful lift and reduces the energy needed to keep the plane in the air, and increases our maximum lift by pushing this line on our energy maneuverability diagram upward, increasing our turn rate.

However, it is an unstable system. When the plane pitches up, the angle of attack of the wing increases and lift increases. Because the center of lift is ahead of the center of gravity, this forces the nose to rise even higher. In an air-to-air battle, energy is not just a problem of burning fuel. It takes energy to maneuver, and as we expend it our ability to maneuver decreases until we replenish it by gaining speed or altitude again. Any fighter pilot will tell you that speed is life. And as a fighter pilot, energy management is one of the most important things you can do.

It is part of your situational awareness in that combat field. You don't want to go slow and you don't want to put yourself in a place where you're vulnerable and now I can't turn, I can't move, I can't activate my sensors or my weapons where I need to. And that's not just an air-to-air issue that runs through every aspect of being a fighter pilot. And that's even participating in an air-to-ground field because a lot of times when you're participating in an air-to-ground, an interdiction mission, a strike mission or a close air support mission, well, you're supporting friendly troops on the ground, but you're also There are people who really don't like you around and they also have guns.

And then you have to maintain that energy to be able to evade, to be able to get out of the way if they shoot you. And so with the power management on the F 16, it's interesting that this airplane doesn't really speak to you in terms of feedback to the pilot. It doesn't really shake, rattle or vibrate like many other airplanes do. I have flown the F 16, I have also flown the F 15, the F 18, the A 10 and those airplanes will speak to you. Those other airplanes will speak to you a lot more than the F 16. The F 16 just feels smooth all the time, whether you're doing 200 knots and very slow or 600 knots and very fast, it just does what you ask it to do.

You think you move the controls a little bit and the plane responds. Managing its energy then becomes a situational awareness challenge for the fighter pilot. And a lot of that has helped now with the joint hull-mounted tail system or JE hemic is what it's called, where right there in your right eye, you have your airspeed, you have your altitude, you have your G, and so you'll be able to engage. visually in that fight. I can keep my eyes on the threat, the target, have situational awareness, and I don't have to look at my head-up display again or lower the console to see how fast I'm going and how high I am. going.

You have the feeling. You have an idea of ​​how the plane is responding. But that's where experience comes in and training with experience is imperative. It is imperative to maintain that energetic awareness in any type of fight. The F-16's unstable design helped fighter pilots like David manage power more efficiently, but to maintain control of an unstable fighter, a pilot would have to make constant small corrections. A task that was considered impossible before fly-by-wire systems were invented. The system consists of a network of accelerometers, gyroscopes and air speed sensors, all connected to a central computer that manages the work.

This instability makes the plane extremely agile, ready to change direction with very little energy. We were able to see this in practice on the first flight of the F-16 prototype, the YF-16. A flight that was never supposed to happen. It was intended to be a short test along the runway, but the plane's initial control logic would not allow the engine nozzle to open to cut off thrust if the wheels had left the ground. That is, even at idle, the plane generated too much thrust. The aircraft then turned to the left, causing the pilot to counteract it with a right turn command, but again the control logic of the first prototype was not activated, and the control input resulted in a turn greater than as expected at such a low speed.

Resulting in overcorrection, leading to oscillation. With this being the first fly-by-wire aircraft, there are many lessons to be learned along the way, but the benefits it now offers are game-changing. Helps the pilot get the most out of the plane. So, for example, on an F 16, the airframe is limited to nine G. So I can go and pull back on the controls on an F 16, and if I'm under 300 knots or something, actually more like 400 knots, I'm not going to get nine G. It's just that that's the amount of lift the airplane can do. But once I get above 400 or 450 knots, the wing of the F 16 is capable of creating at least nine G's.

In fact, it's capable of creating much more than nine G's. But what that fly-by-wire system does is that when I start to back up to the stop, it goes to nine G and stays there. Even if the aerodynamic effect of the entire fuselage wing is that it could generate 15 GSS or 20 gs, the fly-by-wire system says: Hey, I know you're asking for the best possible spin. I'm only going to give you nine thousand because we're not going to ruin the plane. Or again, in a low speed fight where I have to, it's less than 300 knots. I have to turn the nose to get closer to the opponent or maybe I'm trying to avoid an adversary's weapons system, suddenly pull the controls of an airplane and your angle of attack changes. increase rapidly.

Okay, with a lot of more conventional airplanes, you're worried about things like stall. Well, the F 16 doesn't really stop the same way, but that flyby cable system says, Hey, I know that if you go past an angle of attack of about 26 degrees, bad things are going to start happening. In terms of control, the F 16 stops behaving as expected above an angle of attack of 26 degrees. And then they fly down a cable system that just says, that's where I'm going to stop you right there, and I'm going to give you up to 26 degrees or nine G's and do whatever you need with that.

An airplane capable of performing 9g maneuvers is of little use if the pilot cannot remain conscious during them. The F-16 has some interesting cockpit adaptations for this. Traditionally, the control stick was mounted centrally, between the pilot's legs. This made it mechanically simpler, with the network of mechanical links central and symmetrical throughout the aircraft. It also allowed pilots to use both hands to move the control surfaces into position during high-gravity maneuvers while the air flowing through them attempted to push them down. For the F-16 this was not a problem, and the control stick was conveniently mounted on the pilot's right console.

A comfortable resting position that makes it much easier for the pilot to control the plane while he tries to remain conscious at 9 gs. The seat is also reclined 30 degrees, making the F-16 feel like an executive office in the sky with 360 degrees unobstructed thanks to the bubble canopy, but also offering significant benefits by increasing the pilot's g-tolerance. The most common g force a pilot experiences is directly downward. When you fly in a straight line, even the cells in your body have inertia in that direction, and when you suddenly tilt the plane up, those cells want to continue traveling in that direction.

This is not a big problem for the cells to remain stationary, but the blood cells can travel freely throughout the body. And in a scenario like this, they run in the direction of that travel, accumulating in their lower extremities. This deprives the pilot's brain of oxygen and, as a result, they may pass out. This effect could be minimized by placing the pilot face up, with the entire body aligned, the blood would not have to fight against gravity to reach the brain, but this position is not practical. The F-16 found a compromise with a 30-degree recline, reducing pressure on the heart by the equivalent of about 1 g.

The recline also makes it easier to position the pilot in the F-16's tiny forward fuselage. Another measure to increase the pilot's G tolerance is the G-suit. A pilot's G-suit contains multiple air chambers that are connected directly to the F-16. When the aircraft is ordered to perform a high-gravity maneuver, it immediately begins pumping compressed air into these bladders. This squeezes the rider's legs and limits the volume available for blood to pool. The F-16 is a 45-year-old aircraft, and there have been many advancements in aviation since its maiden flight, stealth technology and interconnected intelligence networks have been the main focus of fifth-generation aircraft like the F-35 which have been slowly replacing the F.-16, but one thing has not changed since 1975.

Physics. The F-16 pushes the limits of the maneuverability of a fighter jet and the pilots who fly it. It is a highly capable fighter aircraft that the world's strongest air force deemed capable of continuing in service until 2048. The aircraft will be an important asset in the next phase of Ukraine's freedom struggle, providing essential air support to the troops on the ground. as they try to advance through the entrenched Russian defenses. Ukraine has been successfully attacking long-range anti-aircraft batteries and captured oil platforms off the coast of Crimea that housed Russian sensors. All to clear the way for Ukrainian Su-24s to get close enough to launch cruise missiles, targeting high-value Russian assets in Crimea, including a kilo-class submarine.

The F-16 can also carry these cruise missiles. Every asset of the Ukrainian air force will play a vital role in Ukraine's fight for freedom. Having a real fighter pilot to add context to this story was incredibly valuable, as it helped us really understand the power of those power maneuverability diagrams. We ended up talking to David for almost two hours and ended up cutting an incredibly interesting story out of this video, about how he helped develop an automatic obstacle avoidance system for the F-16 that has saved lives. A fascinating system that works in a way he didn't expect, he had assumed it simply uses radar to measure distance, but that's not how it works.

You can watch that bonus video on Nebula right now, along with an uncut explanation of the power maneuverability diagrams. Access normally costs $5/month, but you can get access right now at the hugely discounted price of just $2.50/month by using the link in the description. Extra videos are just one of the benefits of Nebula. You'll also get ad-free versions of our videos at a fraction of the price of YouTube premium. With YouTube cracking down on ad blockers, this is the best way to support our channel without having to deal with ads that interrupt your viewing experience. Something I find really valuable when watching long videos.

When I travel by plane to record interviews, I often download videos from Nebula, which you can do by the way, and watch them during the flight. You'll also have access to our original WWII series, D-Day Logistics and the Battle of Britain. Plus Real Life Lore's modern conflict series that delves into conflicts like the war in Ukraine. Along with originals from some of your other favorite creators, including Mustard, Practical Engineering, Neo, and Wendover Productions. Nebula is simply the best place for our videos. No ads, extra videos and exclusive high-budget originals and all for the price of 2.50 a month.