Fighter plane evergreen tree: F-16 revitalizes production and sales momentum-瞭望新时代网

Fighter plane evergreen tree: F-16 revitalizes production and sales momentum

2024-07-25

Seven years after the delivery of the last F-16 fighter jet at Lockheed Martin's Fort Worth production base, the unexpected recovery of international demand for the latest generation of multifunctional fighter jets has led to a new F-16 fighter production line starting to deliver brand new fighter jets. The factory located in Greenville, Texas is now the production center for Lockheed Martin's F-16 fighter jets. Here, a brand new Block 70/72 fighter is being manufactured for new and old F-16 customers in Bahrain, Bulgaria, Jordan, Slovakia and Taiwan, China, China. This fighter is informally called "Viper". This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first flight of the F-16. On December 13, 1973, the first YF-16 was taken offline in Fort Worth. Until November 2017, the last of the 36 F-16 Block 52s produced for the Iraqi Air Force was delivered, marking the end of nearly 44 years of F-16 production career at the Texas factory. During this period, the Fort Worth factory in Texas produced 3620 F-16 fighter jets. The F-16 fighter jet was initially produced by General Dynamics, and after Lockheed acquired General Dynamics' Fort Worth Conway division in 1993, it was produced by Lockheed Corporation. In 1987, during the peak of F-16 fighter production, the production line in Texas produced 286 F-16s annually. In addition, European partner countries that ordered F-16A/B fighter jets in large quantities in the 1970s and 1980s also produced F-16 according to the license, and other models were assembled in South Korea and Türkiye. Before the transfer of F-16 production to Greenville in 2019, a total of 4588 F-16s were produced worldwide. The Fort Worth factory now specializes in the production and final assembly of the F-35 Lightning II, while the Greenville factory has transformed from a major maintenance facility for the C-130 Hercules transport plane and the P-3 Orion anti submarine aircraft to the new home for the F-16 program. Caleb Hendrik, the F-16 production manager at Lockheed Martin in Greenville, said, "Now, we are producing F-16s here, maintaining some of the F-16s stationed on the US mainland, and conducting project management work at the same location." "The footprint and logistical requirements for F-35 production in Fort Worth are constantly expanding. We do not have enough space or capability to continue producing F-16s there," Hendrik explained. "Therefore, we have decided to complete the last batch of F-16 fighter jet production work in Fort Worth in 2017." Since then, Lockheed Martin has studied options to continue producing F-16s. New F-16 orders not only did not decrease, but continued to roll in. At the beginning of the increase in orders, Lockheed Martin decided to move the F-16 production line here. The all-new F-16C/D Block 70/72 fighter jets will be manufactured in the H16 hangar in Greenville, which was previously used for C-130 maintenance. In 2017, Greenville began preparations for the production line. In 2018, the production fixtures and specialized tools for the aircraft were transported by truck from Fort Worth to Greenville. In 2019, the initial production work for the new F-16 production line began, and the first hole was drilled in the middle fuselage of the Royal Bahrain Air Force's first new F-16. Hendrik said, "Subsequently, there was another surge in international demand for the F-16! I have been involved in many projects, including the F-22 Raptor fighter jet, C-130 Hercules transport aircraft, and F-35 fighter jet, and I have never seen such a strong focus on the F-16 fighter jet. For a project that we believe may be heading towards sunset, we are now intensifying production and producing four F-16s per month at the new full load production rate The order quantity of F-16 fighter jets is very considerable, with 140 aircraft currently under contract. These include Bahrain (16), Bulgaria (8), Jordan (12), Slovakia (14) and Taiwan, China (66). As of June 2024, 11 of them have been delivered (6 from Bahrain and 5 from Slovakia), and the remaining 129 fighter jet orders include 24 manufactured for an undisclosed customer. Bulgaria has signed an authorization letter to purchase 8 additional F-16 aircraft for its fleet. Hendrick said: "(By June 2024), we have delivered a total of 4599 F-16s during the entire project period. Based on the international interest in Europe, Africa and Asia, we believe that in addition to the backlog of orders at present, there is a sales potential of 300 F-16s. The 300 potential orders include Türkiye, which is in the process of purchasing an undisclosed number of F-16s." Block 70/72- the ultimate "Viper"? With the help of numerous customers of Lockheed Martin, the Block 70/72 modification of the F-16 has been improved based on years of incremental research and development work. Through the US Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, F-16 fighter jets are provided to international customers. The F-16C/D Block 70/72 fighter jet currently in production in Greenville integrates a large number of functions from the F-16V upgrade, which is being produced in four countries as an enhancement package for existing aircraft. Block 70/72 and the upgraded version of Viper or V represent new modules/capabilities of the F-16, "said Lockheed Martin. The core of the F-16V updated avionics kit is Northrop Grumman's AN/APG83 upgradable agile beam radar (SABR), which uses active phased array technology. This greatly improves the aircraft's detection and engagement range, fidelity, ability to detect low altitude small targets such as cruise missiles, and electronic countermeasures capabilities. In addition, its reliability is greatly improved as it does not require any components to rotate the sensor array. The F-16V also has a new central display (CPD) installed in the cockpit. This large multifunctional display enhances the two 4 × 4 inch (10.16 × 10.16 cm) displays on both sides of the head up display control interface, providing more space for displaying more detailed information. The Block 70/72 largely draws inspiration from the F-16V, but as a new type of fuselage, its lifespan has been extended from 8000 hours to 12000 hours. Compared to the early F-16A/B, about 70% of the fuselage has been improved based on years of historical technical data and the experience of structural improvement projects such as "Falcon STAR" and "Falcon UP", which have strengthened certain key parts of the F-16 fuselage that are prone to fatigue. The newly produced F-16 can also choose an engine, and the Block 70 uses General Electric's F110-GE-129 with a thrust of 29000 pounds (13154 kilograms of force); Block 72 uses Pratt&Whitney's F100-PW-229 with a thrust of 29160 pounds (13226 kilograms of force). The F-16 test pilot from Lockheed Martin stated that the F-16 Block 70/72 fighter jet drew on all the experience of the entire development process of the F-16V and solved many early problems. There have been significant improvements inside the cockpit. The large display screen in the cockpit allows pilots to visually view the map. Integrating the cockpit display screen with the aircraft's sensors maximizes the pilot's ability to effectively execute tasks. In addition, the new avionics equipment of Block 70/72 allows the front and rear seats of the dual seat F-16D to operate these systems simultaneously, while the traditional F-16 only provides a simple repetition of another cockpit information to the rear seat crew. Now, both people on the plane can interact with it at the same time, which has never happened before. One of the key features of Block 70/72 is the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System (Auto GCAS). It can save pilots when they are unable to save themselves. The design purpose of Auto GCAS is to control and restore safe flight in the event of pilot loss of driving ability. Usually, it is due to excessive flight overload, causing the pilot to lose consciousness or severely lose direction due to insufficient blood supply to the brain. Once GCAS recognizes an imminent ground collision, if it does not perceive any input from the pilot, it will take over control and provide the best solution, turning the aircraft's angle back into the sky, giving the pilot time to recover and regain control of the aircraft. Greenville began production of its first F-16, which took three and a half years from drilling the first hole to its maiden flight on January 24, 2023. Hendrik stated that the manufacturing process has now been shortened to 11-12 months. Hendrik explained, "We are renovating the facilities here and building new infrastructure to ensure we can accelerate production. We have a new logistics center to obtain the required parts, tools, and items faster." When production began in 2019, there were approximately 25 technical personnel on site. With the continuous expansion of production scale, the labor force of all shifts in H16 hangar has increased to nearly 700 people. With the help of core knowledge and experience in Fort Worth, Greenville established its own production base and began to be self-sufficient. The F-16 production line located in the H16 hangar consists of four main parts. The manufacturing process begins with the central fuselage section, which is manufactured by Lockheed Martin and joint manufacturer HAI. With the improvement of productivity, PZL Mielec, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin in Poland, will soon also produce mid body aircraft. The F-16 project includes 470 suppliers, with 28 international suppliers located in 12 countries and major components produced in 8 countries. At full speed production, Lockheed Martin will produce two mid fuselage aircraft per month, and the joint manufacturer will produce two mid fuselage aircraft per month and ship them to Greenville. Korean Aerospace Industries (KAI) also produces some components of the fuselage. Hendrik said, "Joint producers are crucial to the project because we have expanded production, stabilized the project, and with joint producers, we can effectively help us achieve a set schedule." The rear fuselage is currently only produced by AVIC, but production capacity will soon be increased by increasing PZL Mielec production. Hendrik said that the Greenville factory currently does not have the ability to produce the rear fuselage on site. The front fuselage includes the cockpit section, which can only be produced by Lockheed Martin in Greenville due to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). Once completed, the three main parts will be transferred to one of the four docking stations, where they will be carefully transported into place and connected into a complete fuselage. At full speed production, this process takes approximately one month. The joining process requires a large amount of manual shims, which Hendrik describes as "using aluminum sheets to fill tolerance gaps, then embedding and sealing them into the joining structure". These tolerances vary and are currently measured and marked manually by engineers, with a shift towards using 3D scanning technology and digital modeling to predict gaskets. The structure of the vertical tail and conformal fuel tank (CFT) manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) was also installed during this stage. All Block 70/72 F-16 fighter jets are equipped with conformal fuel tank piping, regardless of whether customers purchase these devices that can add 3000 pounds (1360 kilograms) of fuel capacity to the F-16 fighter jet. Block 70/72 also comes standard with a resistance umbrella. The two seater F-16D Block 70/72 comes standard with a "spine" for placing various mission systems and avionics equipment. The final stage of the manufacturing process in the H16 factory area is called integration and assembly. It has 4 workstations, here,

Edit：Xiong Dafei Responsible editor：Li Xiang

Source：XinHuaNet

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