Wingman by Mack Maloney

simply the best maneuvering fighter plane ever built.
    The cockpit was a video game come to life. It was crammed with science fiction-type avionics: a "heads-up display" which projected up on an invisible TV screen right in front of the pilot all of the critical control data needed to fly the plane. The pilot could keep an eye on the controls, know where he was going, know what his weapons status was and who he was shooting at-all without ever looking down at the control boards.
    But the HUD capability was just the beginning. The plane carried its own video recorder and playback for mission analysis-everything done during a sortie could be recorded and brought back ready for broadcast. The video capability also allowed the pilot to pre-record mission elements for playback during his flight. Seeing this in the cockpit, Hunter had to wonder whether anyone had TVs anymore. The F-16 had an autopilot that could do just about everything an average human pilot could-some claimed more. But it took more than an average person to understand the alphabet soup of subsystems inside the plane's cockpit: INS, TACAN, TF, IFF/ SIF, AAI, ILS, JMC, JVC, ADF UHF, BIT, DMT, ENG, PROG, TGT, HSI, and on and on. It was at once brilliant and bewildering. To the casual observer-and way back when to the uninformed Senate appropriations committee member-the cockpit looked impossibly confused, as if a mad scientist had had a hand in its design. Some pilots believed that was accurate.
    The plane was completely "fly-by-wire;" its flight control system was fully electronic. Unlike other planes, the control stick was not between the pilot's legs.
    Rather it was off to his right side. By using the stick, the pilot had at his fingertips his weapon release, display control, engine trim switch and gun trigger.
    The side-stick controller always gave Hunter the feeling that he was flying the plane from an armchair-in fact the F-16 had a recliner seat, tilted upward by 27 degrees.
    Both were essential to flying such an advanced supersonic fighter and that the F-16
    was. Wide open-at "full military"-it could haul ass at nearly three times the speed of sound.
    Of course, Hunter knew the reason to fly that fast and accurately was to get where you're going and shoot at something once you got there. Again, the F-16 came out on top. It was a technological schizo. Whether its mission was to dogfight an enemy-a match it almost always won, thanks to its M-16 20mm rapid fire cannon and four air-to-air missiles-or blast him on the ground, the plane could do both, no problem. It could maneuver like a fighter but carry enough ordnance-conventional free-fall bombs, dispenser weapons, napalm, you name it-to be a bomber. And with the fire control system up on the "heads up display," with everything else, the pilot never had to take his eyes off the target. And with multiple accuracy, "track-while-scan" high-velocity search, and quick-reaction, fingertip weapons firing additions, the plane was quick on the draw. If the pilot launched an air-to-air missile, the opponent usually had only seconds to live. It was that simple. Challenged to a duel, the F-16 was unquestionably the quickest gun in the West.
    If the mission was to bomb-tanks, troops or other airfields-then all the pilot would do is switch on the Doppler beam, sharpen the baby to 64:1, add the ground target indication/tracker and push the button. Anything targeted, moving or not, was instantly blown to smithereens.
    And it was good on gas . . .
    The F-16 was just under 50 feet long; its wingspan just a hair under 33. The tail rose 17 feet from the ground. It was deceptively small-a direct contradiction to the idea "bigger is better." In the world of the jet fighter, small is better. It means you're hard to detect, either on a radar scope or to the eye. Hard to see means hard to hit. Hard to hit extended a pilot's expectancy by a few minutes, or hours or even years. No wonder they all loved the '16.
    The plane could climb,