The F-16 Fighting Falcon Multinational Weapon System, 1972 to 2019

About the Book

This book starts with an overlap of the period from 1963 to 1975, described in final chapters of the “Inside History of the USAF Lightweight Fighters, 1900 to 1975”. The next major portion of this book then describes the Transition Contract to “missionize” the General Dynamics YF-16 and Northrop YF-17 designs into a USAF Air Combat Fighter (ACF) and also to “navalize” both ACF designs for potential procurement as the USN Air Combat Fighter (NACF). The latter portion of this book describes the early F-16 Full Scale Development activities and then describes the numerous Block changes made to increase the capabilities of the production F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft. In the concluding chapter is captured the very purpose for the development of “the fighter pilot’s fighter” – the use of the F-16 in operations world-wide. The F-16 Fighting Falcon Multinational Weapon System became the cornerstone of the fighter inventories of over 25 free-world countries for the past forty years and remains in their future plans for a few decades. F-16C/D service life extensions and upgrades continue to be made.

About the Author

Herb Hutchinson is retired from a highly successful aeronautical engineering career spanning over 40 years from 1953 to 1994. After serving as an officer in the US Army in the Korean War, the initial 5 years of his engineering career were as a Wind Tunnel Test Engineer, an Aerodynamicist at Republic Aviation in New York, and Flight Test Performance Engineer at General Dynamics in Texas. The middle half of his career was as a Chief System Engineer (GS-15) for several USAF Weapons Systems, including the USAF Lightweight Fighter Program (the subject of this book) and the USAF F-16 Fighting Falcon Multi-National Weapon System, developed by the US Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Herb’s tactical call name, awarded by former F-16 pilots, is “Stuffer”. He has served as the USAF Representative on several US Presidential Advisory Committees and on USAF aircraft major accident and incident investigations. The final 13 years of his career were as a Manager of System Engineering at the Northrop Aircraft Division in California for a joint NATO Fighter Aircraft design with the Dornier Company in Germany, for the Tri-Service Standoff Attack Missile, and for the Northrop YF-23 Advanced Tactical Fighter stealth prototype (which competed against the Lockheed YF-22 ATF prototype - now the USAF F-22 Raptor). Herb graduated from the Brooklyn Technical High School (Arista), and received Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Aeronautical Engineering degrees at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. He is an Associate Fellow Emeritus in the AIAA, a Life Member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and is a member of Mensa. Herb and his wife Arline reside in the Heritage Ranch (at Lake Nacimiento) section of Paso Robles, California.