(suspenseful music) - Hi, I'm Tracy Latourrette, call sign "Jackie 'O", Colorado's first lady fighter pilot.

We're at Wings Over The Rockies Air and Space Museum in Denver, Colorado.

We're getting an inside look at the F-16.

- My baby.

- Like an old friend, right?

- It represents 50 years of American air power and ingenuity.

- The legacy of the F-16 is that it's brought more combat, air power en mass to just about every battlefield that we've been on in the last 50 years.

- We have 24/7/365 pilots and maintainers that sit alert day and night with jets that are ready to be scrambled at a moment's notice.

- It's flying a rollercoaster that you're in charge of.

- We're still building amazing F-16s today, and every time they build another one, it's slightly better than the last one.

- The F-16 has been my joy for over 30 years.

Eat, sleep, breathe F-16.

- It's time to go "Behind The Wings".

(plane engine roaring) I flew the F-16 in the Colorado Air National Guard on international and domestic missions.

Today, the Viper is pivotal to US air power and in air forces around the world.

It was introduced half a century ago to solve a critical problem.

One of the key lessons from air combat in the Vietnam War was that bigger isn't always better.

Since World War II, American fighters had steadily grown in size, but in Vietnam, smaller, more agile MiG fighters often outmaneuvered the larger US Air Force and Navy aircraft in dogfights.

In response, the Air Force launched the lightweight fighter program in 1971.

General Dynamics and Northrop competed in a fly-off and the General Dynamics design, the F-16, emerged as the winner.

Colonel Christopher Melka, call sign "Kojack", is the deputy commander of the 140th wing and has flown F-16s for his entire career.

- If you think about back in the seventies, mostly our third generation aircraft, the F-4, F-104, F-100 were the workhorses during that period of time weren't very cost-effective aircraft, pretty expensive to operate, burned a lot of gas, and so, during that time, the Air Force, along with the brilliant mind of John Boyd, came up with and devised the F-16.

So, the goal was to have a low-cost, lightweight fighter that was also a multi-role fighter.

It's been the most widely deployed Western fighter, one of the most widely exported Western fighters to our other partner nations throughout the world.

It's generated the most combat sorties out of any US fighter aircraft in all the conflicts that we've employed it in.

- First flown in 1974 and entering service with the US Air Force in 1978, the F-16 soon became a major player on the global stage.

In 1975, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, and Belgium seeking to replace their aging F-104s became the first foreign buyers, and eventually, 21 other countries would adopt the F-16.

Making it the most widely-used, fixed-wing military aircraft in the world.

- One of the first tests that they did was actually, designed to be just a high-speed taxi test.

And as the aircraft was going down the runway and the pilot started to put pressure on the stick, he ended up overcorrecting and he elected that it was safer to take the aircraft off than it was to continue the taxi or try to abort that taxi.

So, it's first flight was never intended to be its first flight.

It was actually, a high-speed taxi that turned into a takeoff.

It looked a little squirrely when he was in the pattern, but he got it back down safe.

- The F-16 saw its first air-to-air combat with the Israeli Air Force in 1981 and played a central role in the Israeli strike on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor that same year.

(explosion blasting) Since then, the F-16 has seen combat in Operation Desert Storm over Iraq, Afghanistan, and Bosnia.

It also serves with the Thunderbirds' aerial demonstration team, NASA, and the US Navy as an aggressor aircraft.

You are no stranger to combat sorties, Kojack.

How has the use of the F-16 changed over the years?

- When you look at probably Desert Storm as its debut, it was thousands and thousands of sorties that were generated by the F-16 during that conflict, and it was a absolute workhorse.

So, if you think about what happened back then, it was doing some air to air, however, it was primarily doing a lot of destroying targets on the ground.

Then it kind of evolved into a lot more close air support towards the end of that conflict.

And I'd say that that's kind of where the F-16 has had the most of its combat time has been in the close air support role.

- The F-16s capabilities have been a continual evolution with every significant modification or upgrade known as its next block.

How have you seen it evolve over that time?

- So, I first flew the aircraft at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, and back then I flew block 25s, and throughout that time it started off no beyond visual range capability and then they started introducing the AMRAM into at least the block that I was flying.

And then since then, the sensors have really come a long way with the evolution of the aircraft.

(plane engine roaring) - The F-16 introduced multiple innovations that transformed fighter aircraft design.

It was the first fighter intentionally designed to be aerodynamically unstable to improve maneuverability.

It also featured computer controlled fly-by-wire flight systems, which replaced mechanical flight controls.

Making it the first jet designed to sustain 9G turns.

The frameless bubble canopy improved visibility, while the jet could carry a wide array of weapons at speeds over Mach 2.

Brigadier General Micah Fesler, call sign "Zeus", is a commander in the Colorado Air National Guard who's flown the F-15, the F-16, and the F-22.

- You gotta think about this in the context of history.

and when this airplane was being designed at that point in time, we were trying to figure out how are we going to fight the Soviet Union.

And the way we chose to do that was to build a mix of long-range shooters and of lightweight fighters.

And this started out as the day VFR lightweight fighter portion of that equation.

And what we really saw is we started out with an air-to-air platform and they went, there's so much more here.

Because so many people were interested in buying this airplane, we've been producing it for years and years and years.

In fact, we're still building amazing F-16s today.

And every time they build another one, it's slightly better than the last one.

It represents 50 years of American air power and ingenuity.

- Though US production has ended, Lockheed Martin continues building F-16s for international customers like Bahrain.

With manufacturing now taking place in Greenville, South Carolina where the world's only F-16 production line is still active.

Seeing the F-16s in their early form finally coming to life, I didn't expect to be so emotional.

The US Air Force still flies F-16s today, but these aircraft are being built for our international partners.

How is the F-16 being used in the US and around the world today?

- About 1,000 aircraft are still in the US inventory.

We have about 700 aircraft in Europe and about 500 in the Asia Pacific region.

- So, I flew the block 30 version of the F-16.

The basic DNA is the same, but you've really transformed what the F-16 is here with the block 70.

- So, we do have a longer service life on these aircraft changing some of the materials as we build them.

We have more power, a stronger engine, we have some additional capability for munitions.

The F-16 block 70/72 is the most capable fourth-gen aircraft in the world today.

- Nothing flies like an F-16, but how cool to be able to see them before they ever take to the skies.

This is where it all begins.

Terry Taylor has been working on F-16s for over 30 years, including maintaining the legendary Air Force Thunderbirds.

Terry, I know how to fly these jets, but have no idea how they're built.

Show us how it's done.

- So, Tracy behind us is 134.

This is where the beginning of the aircraft is starting to be built.

From here, it's normally just two skins to actually start building the structural part of the aircraft, which is very important, because that's where that 9G capability comes in.

- So, she's already becoming a 9G jet.

I can't wait to see the wings go on.

Terry, she's starting to look like my beloved Viper.

- It's pretty much where everything's starting to come together.

You'll do the canopy, the aft transparency, all those items will start to get put on.

All your avionic side starts going into the forward part of the aircraft.

They'll be checking it to make sure everything is good within all your wires and stuff.

So, that just makes it easier toward the end when we start to put the aircraft together, we know that the center section and the forward section is good to go when it comes down to the electrical side of the aircraft.

- Now, you've had a really long history with this airplane too.

How does it feel to be part of the legacy of the F-16 continuing?

- I love what I do.

This makes me happy.

The F-16 has been my joy for over 30 years.

Your engineers to your supply folks to your tooling, everyone has a part in the process that we do here.

Eat, sleep, breathe F-16.

- What kind of modifications have you seen into the block 70?

- Most of it's gonna be structural.

You gotta be able to take this aircraft beyond the standard 6,000 hours, so 12,000 hours.

The internal structure of this vertical tail, the whole aircraft has been designed to take the war fighter, extend the mission, extend the maintenance, extend everything, so you got more time to be out there in the field turning and burning, pulling them 9Gs.

That's one of the big things that's really updated is the structure side of it.

This is where all the happening happens.

Mate, center section, aft section, and forward section all come together to complete the fuselage section of the F-16 for the block 70 and 72.

You have made it to the end of the line.

- Our work here is almost done.

The jet just needs to roll out for final assembly and flight checks.

Once the jet is fully assembled, it's prepped for its very first flight.

Chris Nations, call sign "Sasquach," is a test pilot who's flown over 47 different aircraft, including F-16s fresh off the production line.

I'd love to know the journey that brought you to the F-16.

- I got to start on the F-16 after going through pilot training back in the early 2000s.

Back then, the F-16 I was flying was the block 25.

From there we have evolved the F-16 and we continue to evolve it today all the way up to the block 70, which is what we're flying and talking about today.

So, the block 70 is 50 years of innovation built into the F-16 and continued improvement to make it one of the most advanced fourth-generation aircraft ever built.

- 47 aircraft you've flown.

The F-16, I'm sure is your favorite?

- For sure.

- Tell me what is it about the F-16 that makes it stand out above the rest?

- Obviously, I'm a little biased, but the F-16 is by far my favorite.

The really interesting thing about going through test pilot school is that you get to fly planes that don't necessarily fly the way you want them to sometimes.

Learning how to properly test a plane, that's quite the process, and you never finish learning that.

Some of those lessons, including what the jet should feel like, it's a electronic fly-by-wire system.

And so, you're a voting member as the pilot.

You say, "Hey, I want to go right or I want to go left."

And the jet processes that information and does whatever it thinks it can, but not taking you outside of its capability.

Understanding how those systems work, what the limits are, that takes time and takes many years of practice, but at the same time it's still flying a really fun jet.

- And you get to fly these jets brand new off the line.

Is there like a new jet smell?

- Oh, that's definitely a new jet smell.

I get to fly them hour one.

- So, what does a profile look like for your functional check flights?

- On that first sortie, I'm focused on the engine, the flight controls, and all the systems that prove its airworthiness.

Then the next flight is even more fun.

That's when I get to prove out the mission systems.

I get to take this brand new AESA radar.

It's like shining the brightest flashlight into the dark.

You can see so far out.

Also testing the automatic ground collision avoidance system, which has been an add-on to the F-16.

If that individual pulls too many Gs and knocks themselves out, the jet is ready to take over, reorient the aircraft away from the ground, and save the aircraft and save the pilot.

At least 12 aircraft saved 13 people who live today, because the system's been installed in the jet, that is worth its weight in gold.

- That's absolutely incredible.

I hope that they go back and modify the current F-16s with that mod.

- You say that, but we are, all the way back into the analog F-16s.

We have figured out a way to bring the analog flight controls into the 21st century.

- All right, we both know nothing flies like the mighty Viper.

- Well, the F-16 maneuverability is paramount.

It's flying a rollercoaster that you're in charge of, but at the same time, the F-16 still has that raw power that comes with a 30,000-pound motor where you're just thrusting yourself through the sky.

But to make it really fly at the edge of its capability, you have to be able to feel the jet, and the F-16 gives you that option.

- Oh, that sounds so good.

What are we doing standing in life support?

We've gotta go check it out.

Yay.

My baby.

- Like an old friend, right?

Coming back home.

- Yes, exactly.

Finally, the good part, Sasquach.

Okay, the block 70 F-16.

The DNA is basically the same as the old block 25 and block 30s that we flew.

What has changed with the overall blueprint now that we're into block 70?

- Obviously, from the outside, the jet looks fairly similar, but it's about what's inside, that's what really makes the block 70 stand out.

The first thing that you can't quite see is that the structure has been beefed up.

This thing now will last 12,000 hours of flight.

You know those old jets may be half that.

At the same time, you can see three different fuel tanks on the ground just like normal.

What you don't see is that we also can add or take off conformal fuel tanks.

Fuel tanks that sit on the actual back spine of the jet and that will give you another 3,000 pounds of gas with no drag penalties.

Some of the really cool things about block 70s though is integrated electronic warfare.

That's some of the stuff that you're gonna see out front.

That's because we've now integrated EW, that electronic warfare, into the jet.

- In previous models like I flew in the block 30, the engine was powerful enough that you could suck in a person in the intake.

I mean you really had to watch out.

- Yeah, as you can see, we're standing inside the danger zone.

We wanna keep people outside that when the jet is running.

We have both GE-129s and Pratt and Whitney 229s going into our block 70 and block 72 models.

And I'll tell you what, it is a rocket ship.

This thing will get where you need to go as fast as you wanna be there.

- You've got a rough job, but someone's gotta do it.

Let's go see the rest.

- All right, let's go check it out.

- So, the jet flies like a sports car.

You get to take it up on these functional flights.

What kind of systems are you checking?

- We do a full-fledge system checkout.

That first sortie, we go from zero knots all the way up to Mach 1.5, checking through our 93-page checklist.

We are making sure that every subsystem, flight controls, that giant motor, and then everything inside that we can't see is all working.

- The carrying capacity is significantly increased.

How do you compensate for that?

- With extra fuel, with the conformal fuel tanks, we're talking almost 18,000 pounds of gas, which is intense.

Some of the main things that we've added with all the block 70s is a built-in parachute.

You gotta stop when you gotta stop, and it's a great way to do it.

We're on 4,600 plus F-16s that have been made.

In reality, when my job's done, the job for the jet is just beginning.

- So, when your work here is done, you're passing this jet off to its new owner, that's gotta be something pretty special.

What does that mean to you?

- It's kind of a bittersweet moment, because you watch something that you pour a lot of literal sweat into sometimes and you're handing it off, but you know it's going to good hands.

- [Tracy] Now, we're gonna head back to my old stomping grounds and check out the F-16 with the Redeyes at Buckley.

It's great to be back home at the place that made me a fighter pilot.

- This squadron, 120th fighter squadron, is more than 100 years old at this point in time.

It started out in 1917.

Horses outnumbered cars five to one.

The airplane was young and they were charged with figuring out how do we fly these things?

How do we fix these things?

How do we create a fighter squadron?

How do we create fighter tactics?

And they did this.

They went over and they fought in World War I and they were part of that core history and heritage.

And what that really is, is we generally, just go figure things out in the Air Force.

And this jet is a great example of that.

In the seventies when the F-16 was first being built, nobody had ever flown a fly-by-wire jet before.

We had never created an airplane that actually, was unstable, if the computer was not a part of it, and we did that.

- The global impact of this aircraft is absolutely incredible.

But the block 30 aircraft that we have here at Buckley, talk to us a little bit about how you see its life progressing.

- We expect that we're gonna be flying the block 30s into the 2030s.

What the Guard was able to do was actually, take this airplane, modify the software.

Those programmers have actually, turned it from the original unguided, bomb-dropping platform that it was to a platform with the most advanced radar of the F-16 fleet now.

These airplanes from the mid eighties have seen conflict from Desert Storm to today's great power competition in the Pacific and they have been modified every single time to do that.

From a perspective of the team of 1,100 people that are dedicated to flying these airplanes, we think a lot about the maintainers and we think a lot about the air crew flight equipment people who make sure that your helmet, your mask, and your G-suit, and all that stuff's working.

It takes tons of people to make this happen.

- Crew chiefs own these jets, and us fighter pilots just get to fly 'em.

Master Sergeant John Guardiano make sure that F-16s on base remain flight ready.

- From the start of our day to the end of our shift, a lot of things have to happen before we get an aircraft off the ground.

First thing in the morning we always do a pre-flight to make sure that the aircraft is safe and then we actually, do our checks to make sure everything is serviced.

We have avionics personnel and we have structural personnel, we have weapon system crew chiefs.

Really it takes a hard effort to make sure that our aircraft is safe, ready to fly, and we get to bring our pilots back home.

Because of the age of the aircraft, there are new problems that are presented to us as maintainers and it's my job to figure out the solutions on how we can get this aircraft flying again, if we do encounter major problems.

This aircraft was supposed to maintain about 8,000 hours.

We found out that we can actually, push this a little bit more due to the talents of our maintainers.

These jets may be old, but we're hoping to extend the life of it from another five to 10 more years.

If we end up having system issues with an engine for example, sometimes we would have to take it to the hush house.

And at the hush house, we do our tests for the engines to make sure that they're fully operating at maximum capacity all the way up to a full burner run, which is very exciting.

- While crews keep the aircraft in top-notch condition, F-16 pilots like Captain James Maier, call sign "Dangle", continually train for the air battlefield.

Tell us a little bit about the fighter squadron here.

- So, we have 24/7/365 pilots and maintainers that sit alert day and night with jets that are ready to be scrambled at a moment's notice.

If a scramble were to happen and you're on alert, there's a horn that goes off, you'll just go ahead and run outside of the hangar and hop in.

And then we have a procedure that's a little bit more abbreviated to get us airborne in a lot quicker amount of time.

- I remember going from a dead sleep to airborne, you know, just under the mach, you know, chasing after who knows what, still waking up going, how did I get here?

But the art of the dog fight is still something you guys practice every day.

Mission planning's complete and it's time for the flight brief.

Don't be late.

- Welcome to the flight brief.

We're gonna go out and do some BFM today.

Objectives will be kill, enter the turn circle properly, reserve energy while solving aspect, recognize attack queues, and then valid three dash one gun employment.

All right dude, so at the fight's on.

What you're gonna see is a jet about a mile away from you.

So, it's a small jet.

You probably could tell that at this point it's a Viper, I would hope.

What you're gonna start to see is your ranges decreasing.

As this adversary goes into his break turn, you're gonna start to see aspect grow.

Line of sight initially is gonna be relatively slow, but you're gonna start to see that move after in your canopy.

My offensive game plan here is I'm gonna go Min AB to stable low 0.97 Mach.

I'm gonna bump the nose up like two to three degrees and I'm just gonna level out and let that dude go into his break turn and wait to enter his turn circle.

So, this is a good opportunity to take a shot with the AIM-120, if you can.

Cool man.

So, if you get a kill, we get into a stack, whatever DLO is, we'll go ahead and call, knock it off there and then we'll set up for the next set.

It's a beautiful day, let's go fly.

(suspenseful music) - The crew chiefs and maintainers are already in motion, topping off fuel and making final checks.

- Every time I get into the cockpit of an F-16, I'm pretty much trusting them with my life, because they're the ones that are doing the final checks.

So, my life really is in their hands every time I fly.

- It really takes a whole team.

There is nothing like the rush you feel when that full afterburner throws you back in the seat and it's time to take off and fly.

- [James] You accelerate down the runway and you feel the afterburner kick in.

It's the best rollercoaster ride in the world.

- Check it out.

(plane engine roaring) That is the sandbox departure.

The F-16 is able to continue to accelerate, while it's climbing literally straight up.

Fights on.

(plane engine roaring) (suspenseful music) - [James] Every day you're trying to learn something with the intent being that, if we do have to deploy and go to war, that we're constantly getting better and able to go win that war.

- The jets just landed from their sortie and they're in de-arm where the crew chiefs are putting pins in the jets to make them safe to taxi back to the chucks and shut down for debrief.

- We have the ability to watch our HUD tapes and see all of our screens after the fact.

And so, in a fight like today, we will go ahead and take a look and see how we could have potentially done things better or seen what we did wrong.

- Yeah, we train like we wanna fight, because in the end we're always gonna fight as if we train.

So, if you ever are in that situation, wanna be darn sure you're ready.

The jet is absolutely incredible, but it's the resources behind the jet that keep it flying.

Master Sergeant Aric McIntyre has been part of Buckley's weapons team for 15 years.

So, you are one of the people that made it possible for me to hop in the jet and take off and go fly and employ these weapons.

Loading the weapons is no easy task and I know it takes a whole team.

How do you guys make it all work?

- Our weapons load crews are comprised of three members.

You have the load crew chief that's in charge of the overall operation, and then the other two members that prep the aircraft and prep the munitions.

We train each one of those members and certify them in that position.

And then the idea is that those crews stay together for years and when they come out and they're loading weapons, it's almost non-verbal.

You know where your guy's gonna be in that moment.

- We're gonna still be fighting with these platforms into the foreseeable future, because of that flexibility it brings, because of all the various capabilities that you can continue to strap on the outside of a platform that you really have a hard time doing when you're in those fifth and sixth-gen fighters.

And you think about that from a lightweight fighter designed to work in the day against the Russians in the Fulda Gap, to a block 70 coming off the line today that is capable of doing whatever mission you needed to do.

It's a unifier, right?

We go to all these countries our friends, our partners, our allies, you can find F-16 pilots in all of these places and it really builds those key relationships that we need when we go to war.

And that's really been the glue that has held so many air forces together and the workhorse that globally everybody has used to solve whatever problem they need to with a fighter, which is pretty darn cool.

- Looking back, what is the legacy of the F-16?

- The legacy of the F-16 is that it's brought more combat, air power en mass to just about every battlefield that we've been on in the last 50 years.

And if you think about it, we're still doing the mission to this day with this airplane.

You know, there's been no other fighter that has been around this long that has been this prolific.

- In 2023, a modified F-16, the X-62A Vista, became the first aircraft to use artificial intelligence to dog fight a human pilot.

while 50 years old, the F-16 remains a pillar of the air battlefield in the US and around the world.

We'll see you next time on "Behind The Wings".

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues)