F-16 fighter jet crashes in west Utah desert, pilot ejects safely

[bemildred]

Source: Salt Lake Tribune

A Hill Air Force Base pilot ejected safely from his malfunctioning F-16 fighter jet Friday morning during a flight over western Utah’s Test and Training Range.

HAFB spokesman Richard Essary said the pilot, whose identity was not immediately released, was undergoing routine medical evaluation.

The plane, part of the 388th Fighter Wing, crashed about 8:35 a.m. in an unspecified area of the remote and sprawling desert test flight area and Air Force emergency response teams were dispatched to the area.

A board of Air Force officers will be convened to investigate the accident.

Read more: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/54049805-78/pilot-utah-test-force.html.csp

[Jackpine Radical]

1. I just sent this link to My Favorite Wingnut with the caption

Obama Saves Pilot!
.
.
.
.
and the following comment:


(I assume this to be the case because I know you'd be blaming him if the pilot had been killed.)

[AnotherMcIntosh]

2. More of these F-16s seem to be crashing in Utah training exercises. How old was the plane?

[bemildred]

3. I dunno. OP says last time at this base was 2009.

But I'm no expert.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

8. You're right. The last crash AT THIS BASE was on June 22, 2009.

The link, of course, also indicates that there have been 11 F-16 crashes in Utah alone in the last 14 years.

That number is slight more than twice the number of U.S. planes downed by McCain during his flying career.

[Posteritatis]

5. Could be anything from 70s vintage to new; they're still occasionally building them

And part of seeing them crashing in the news regularly is because of that - there are a lot of F-16s out there, something like 4500 or so of them.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

7. Please excuse my skepticism, but where did you get "there are something like 4500 or so"?

How many squadrons do we have with F-16's? How many F-16's are in each squadron that has them?

[Posteritatis]

9. Any reference on the F-16 you can find will give you a number in that range

They've been coming off the assembly line since 1974 and there's dozens of countries that use them as their primary fighter. The scale of the production's common knowledge, and it's been the single most common fighter in the US military by a huge margin for almost all of that time.

Lockheed made a bit of a deal about the 4500th coming off the line just last month, actually, an export version headed to Morocco. Most of them are built in the States, with about a quarter put together abroad as licensed versions.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

10. Sure

[hack89]

11. The US Air Force has about 1200 F-16s in service. nt

[AnotherMcIntosh]

12. Maybe

[octothorpe]

13. They only have two!

Does that seem closer to what you want to believe?

[AnotherMcIntosh]

16. What I want to believe is that neither one of us knows.

Your claim of "two," of course, is incredibley inaccurate.

Why not make up a number like 1,200? Or if you don't like round numbers, how about 4,323?

Your guess is as good as mine, or anyone elses.

[Posteritatis]

19. Or you could spend thirty seconds on Google searching for a widely-known fact. (nt)

[AnotherMcIntosh]

20. It's a widely-known fact that there are "4500 or so"? hack89's "1,245," below, seems more accurate.

Plus his number is supported by wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Air_Force#F_.E2.80.93_Fighters

I think that I'll go with his number.

[Posteritatis]

22. Maybe you should click on the link referencing the specific fighter

You're just embarrassing yourself now by pretending to be an authority on something you knew not a thing about mere hours ago. You might want to stop doing that.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

23. The difference is that I have asked for the source of the superior knowledge claimed by some.

When I have asked for the source of such purported superior knowledge, I have only asked for information. Unless you have a comprehension problem, you can read my words which speak for themselves and understand that I have never claimed to know or not know, as you have, the number of F-16's.

If you assert that you know a particular number or statistic, and if you don't want to be asked about the source of such knowledge, the easiest thing to do is just post a link to support to alleged number or statistic.

[hack89]

14. Certainly feel free to chip in with a number of your own. Don't be shy. nt

[AnotherMcIntosh]

15. Some one else made up or came up with "4500 or so". Why isn't that more accurate?

If we don't have links to support our numbers or statistics, why don't we all make up our own? Wouldn't that be equally fair?

[hack89]

18. OK - here you go

Out of the 5,778 manned aircraft in service, 2,402 are fighters, and 1,245 of those are variants of the F-16 Fighting Falcon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Air_Force#F_.E2.80.93_Fighters

[caraher]

21. For those really interested in the ages of F-16s...

there's all kinds of data at F-16.net; the oldest active anywhere in the world is in Jordan and was delivered in January 1979. I haven't found anything on the particular plane that crashed, but I did find a link to an airshow a few years ago featuring an F-16 from Hill. That plane was an F-16C Block40D that would be just over 20 years old now.

[Chef Eric]

4. Uh-oh.

With one less fighter plane, how can this country ever defend itself against the Soviet Union. Oh wait...

[Kolesar]

6. Where is Winston Churchill and his tight sphincter when we need him !?

[AnotherMcIntosh]

17. That's what Crash McCain used to say.