According to CCTV,Following the tragic tragedy in which the US military stationed in Japan dropped an "Osprey" helicopter transport plane, killing eight people, the US military stationed in South Korea also crashed the plane. The incident took place at Gunsan Air Base on the west coast of South Korea, which is the second-largest air base of the U.S. military in South Korea because it faces the Yellow Sea, where the U.S. military has deployed a large number of troops, including a drone attack squadron. The crashed F-16 fighter was supposed to participate in training as usual, but shortly after takeoff, it crashed into the sea near the base, and the pilot escaped in an emergency, and according to sources, he was already rescued at sea.
At the beginning of the month, the crew of the "Osprey" rotorcraft of the US military stationed in Japan was not so lucky, and all eight people were killed after crashing into the sea. The crash triggered a diplomatic storm between the United States and Japan, and the Japanese side demanded that the US military immediately suspend the "Osprey" and conduct a thorough investigation into the cause of the accident, but the US military turned a deaf ear to this for a time. In the eyes of the "rigorous" Japanese, this "Osprey" often has accidents, and it must be a problem with the quality of the aircraft itself, but for the Americans, if the potential equipment failure is really detected, how will this aircraft be sold in the future?
The two sides argued for a whole week before the US military announced a "temporary grounding," but so far, the US military stationed in Japan still has not produced an investigation report, only saying that it will do a good job. As early as May this year, an F-16 crashed in the farmland near the base during routine training, according to the ** report at the time, the fuselage of the aircraft was almost completely burned out, fortunately the pilot escaped safely.
In just a few months at the crash site, two F-16s of the US military stationed in South Korea crashed, and it is difficult to say that they were all accidental. Although now, the United States is still boasting that the F-16 is one of the most comprehensive fighters in the world, but this cannot hide the fact that this model has been in service since the 70s of the last century and has been in service for more than 40 years. There have been military fans who have made statistics,As the ace fighter of the US military, the F-16 has produced more than 4,700 units, and more than 700 have crashed around the world
First of all, an objective reason is that the F-16 is indeed a large number, and it participates in many training, Xi and various flight missions, and the appearance rate is high, and the accident rate is high, which is a normal phenomenon. In contrast, the number of accidents of the US F-18 "Super Hornet" and F-22 "Raptor" is much less, which is directly related to the small number of the two models and the fewer missions they perform.
F-16 fighter second F-16 as an "old aircraft", there are indeed flaws in the design, as a third-generation aircraft, F-16 is still a single-engine design, compared with the later twin-engine fighter, the crash rate is indeed higher, in addition to the biggest selling point of F-16 is strong maneuverability, which also objectively affects the reliability of the fighter.
Again, the F-16 is sold all over the world, and the natural environment of each country is different, and the level of pilot training is also different, which will bring challenges to the accident rate of the F-16. For example, Ukraine's ** Zelensky has repeatedly asked the United States to provide F-16s this year, but looking around the whole of Ukraine, they can't even find a few English-speaking pilots.
Finally, the aging and disrepair of different batches of F-16 is also a major annoyance. The first batch of F-16s in service have indeed been decommissioned, and in the United States, they have advanced fighter jets that can be replaced. But in other economically weaker countries are different, the F-16 fighter jets that were finally bought must continue to be used even if they exceed the service life, and even if they are subsequently repaired and upgraded, the probability of failure will be greatly increased.
Fighter planes fall every year, and this year there are especially manyUnder the influence of various factors, the failure rate and crash rate of F-16 fighters in recent years are indeed quite ugly, especially the successive accidents on the side of Japan and South Korea, and the United States cannot afford to save face. As for the accident in South Korea, what the specific cause is, it remains to be further investigated by the US military stationed in South Korea, and we can also make a continuous observation.