Which is Better? Flying the F-16 or the F/A-18?

It's probably one of the most frequently asked questions I get. What's it like flying the F-16 and the F-18, and which is better? Which would I go fly again if I had the option? Let's talk about it. What's up everybody? It's Monday, I'm Mover, and today we're going to talk about the differences in flying the F-16 versus flying the F-18 and the similarities. Just what's it like flying both jets? It's been a while since I've flown either of them, and absence makes the heart grow fonder, so there's some things that I remember, and there's some things that I don't. I flew the F-16 more, about a thousand hours, and the F-18 A through D, about 400 hours. So, got more time in the F-16, but I enjoyed both, and I love both jets. But today we're going to talk about just some of the basic differences. Not going to go into anything that'll get me put in prison. No tactics, no weapon systems, stuff like that. Just some of the basic, like, generalities as a pilot flying. I'll also try to stay away from Navy versus Air Force. That's probably a separate video altogether, but there are some differences, just service-specific that maybe other countries don't have, or whatever. So, let's get started. First off, just getting suited up to go fly the airplane. I've talked about this before. When you fly the F-16, everything you need survival-wise, for the most part, is in your seat kit. So, all you're basically wearing is a G-suit and a harness, and if you're in desert, that's it. If there's no overwater operations, you don't wear the horse collar LPU. You just wear the harness, which is awesome. It's very comfortable. You feel like you're not wearing anything at all. For the Navy, however, this is probably my biggest complaint. You wear pretty much everything on the vest, and that is because it's sea-based operations, so you probably need better access, and you can't rely on that seat kit. So, when you're suiting up to fly the F-18, there's two parts that are different. One, in the Viper, you put the harness on, you've got quick-release clips for the leg straps, and you can take those on and off, which means you can walk to the jet pretty much normally. In the Navy, however, and the Hornet, and the specifics of A through D, I don't know anything else, you don't. You actually have to step into the harness and swim into it and put it on, and then you wear your survival vest, which adds a ton of weight, which has your radio, has some survival equipment, and it has more stuff that you can get to. So, it's a little bit heavier, a little bit more uncomfortable, a little bit more of a burden. Also, and this is, I said we're not gonna talk Navy versus Air Force, but this is just a weird thing to me. The Navy, you wear your helmet out to the airplane. Air Force, you use your helmet bag for your helmet, which is a weird concept to Navy people, and you don't. So, you look a little cooler. No, scratch that. You look a lot cooler flying in the Air Force, step into the jet than you do in the Navy. I'm sorry. Waddling to the jet, there's just no way to make that look cool, even though you may feel the need for speed and do a high five. So, with that said, walking out to the aircraft in general, pre-flight, pre-flight's a pre-flight. The Hornet's a bigger aircraft. It's taller. There's more stuff to look at. The Viper is just smaller, so it's not immediately obvious. Getting in the aircraft, the Hornet has its own ladder, and if you go to the Super Hornet, I think it's got, it's actually a switch. It's not a manual ladder, but the Hornet has its own ladder. In the Viper, there's a ladder that the crew chief puts over the side, so you need that. Looking over the rail, both jets, pretty much the same thing. The Hornet had space behind the seat that you could store stuff, throw like, you know, if you're going cross-country, put a bag or a backpack or something back there. The Viper has no storage whatsoever. Getting into the aircraft, after flying the F-16 for four years, the Hornet felt like you were sitting in your living room. It has a ton of space, and the seat is upright, so you kind of feel like, after flying the F-16, you feel like you're leaning forward a little bit, but for the most part, not a big deal. But it has all kind of room, and you feel like you're, you've got a little bit more space. What's weird is, in the F-16, when you first get in, it's a little claustrophobic, because you're straddling the center display in the newer jets, or, you know, just in general. Like, everything is perfectly fit, and when you sit down, there's not a whole lot of room on either side. However, as soon as the canopy closes, that all goes away. Because there's no canopy bow, because there's nothing in front of you, you'll lose that sensation of being cramped, and suddenly you're sitting on top of the world. And that's what was really cool about the F-16. In fact, in the Hornet, once the canopy came down, you kind of felt a little bit more cramped, because you had that canopy bow, and you're like, okay, I'm sitting real far forward, compared to the F-16. But actual physical space, the Hornet has way more space. Strapping into the aircraft, the Hornet is more complicated. You've got leg guarders that have to retract your legs to get you to eject. The F-16 has no such thing. So the F-16, life support equipment-wise, it's pretty easy. You strap in, you hook up your seat kit, you put your lap belt on, a crew chief helps you out, because in the Air Force, the crew chief does help you out, helps you click your risers, and that's it. You're strapped in. Hornet, you don't get any assistance, which was weird. I'm used to spoiled Air Force guy. But you strap your harness in, and then the seat belt actually connects to the harness, and then obviously your seat kit, and then you've got two leg guarders per leg, one in your thigh, one just above your boot. And that takes a minute. It takes a little bit to get used to. But once you've got it on, you kind of forget about it. It's not a huge deal. Ground ops, a fighter's a fighter. They both are able to start without external power, or a huffer, or a start card, or anything like that. The F-18 uses auxiliary power unit, APU. The F-16 uses a jet fuel starter, or a JFS. And as long as the bottle is charged, starts right up, usually no issues. Ground ops in general, everything is stored on your data transfer cartridge. So usually all the mission planning is already done. So you plug that in, everything loads up. Same thing with the F-16 on the DTC. And then you go through the checks, flight controls, you know, it goes through a built-in test on both of them, because they're both fly-by-wire systems. Then you're checking everything else with the crew chief or a plane captain. What's interesting, in the Navy when I flew, all the plane captain operations are hand signals. So it's all visual. And in the Air Force, as soon as you turn the battery on, you're establishing communications with your crew chief, and you're talking. Everything is, there's no hand signals, really. You're just talking. It's like, hey chief, how you doing? We're usually first name, because why not? And we start going through the procedures, clear forward, clear to aft, fire to post, ready to start two, JFS, start two. And then we go through everything together, talking as we're doing it, versus the Navy, where it's all hand signals and stuff like that. Even the Navy, they check carrier-based stuff, like hook in the launch bar, even though you're not going to use that on shore-based. I was a shore-based adversary pilot, so I never did any carrier ops or anything like that. But we still went through it all, even though we didn't need it. So once you're started, taxied out, pretty much the same thing. You don't really notice much of a difference. This would be a difference between services and how it's done, so I'm not going to really talk about that. But for takeoff, the F-16 had variations of when you'd use afterburner versus the Hornet, where you pretty much use afterburner all the time. And that's because the F-16's higher thrust-to-weight ratio, just in general. Even though the Hornet can weigh more and it's got two engines, the Viper's got a higher thrust-to-weight ratio. So in a clean configuration, which is what we'd fly if we were going to go dogfight or basic fighter maneuvers, you'd do a mil-power takeoff, so military power, not using the afterburner. Sometimes we would do the afterburner takeoff, clean if gas wasn't an issue and we were going straight to the tanker or just fast jet Fridays or some kind of, you know, just a cool thing to let off steam. But typically, that's excessive, and we would just use mil-power. The Hornet, always used afterburner. I don't ever remember a time where we used mil-power takeoffs, even clean. So that's a little bit of a difference there. Takeoff considerations, it's pretty much the same thing. Obviously, you're two-engine now, so now you're talking about, you know, when can I go fly with one engine, when am I going to abort versus the F-16, which is single engine, so you're either going to go or you're not. As long as the jet's making power, you're taking off, and if not, you're going to try to stop and use the hook as appropriate. Both jets have hooks, by the way. F-16 has a hook. It's not meant for any carrier operations. It's meant for any case of emergency only. So taking off, the F-18 with the takeoff trim, it likes to fly off a little bit easier. The F-16, it seems like you have to put a little bit of abstract pressure to get it to go flying, but once it goes, it's pretty straightforward. And then once you're airborne, not much difference. Now you're just flying. I will say, airborne in general, the F-16 feels like you're on a magic carpet because you're on the nose of a bullet. You don't see your canopy rails all that much, depending on how you're sitting height, and there's nothing obstructing your view. So it's really, really cool just being able to look around and stuff like that. The F-18, you could get in positions where you're trying to rejoin on somebody and the canopy bow is blocking your field of view or something like that. So it was nicer for the F-16 having that bubble canopy. The F-18 has autothrottles, which is nice for station keeping and just flying basic formation, especially not when you're in close because you'd never use that close together, but when you're out line abreast where you're making more subtle changes, it was nice to be able to set an autothrottle or to engage the autothrottle and kind of position keep without having to modulate the throttle as much. So the F-18 autopilot, now this was versus the Block 30. Other blocks have the ability to fly courses. The Block 30 just had heading hold, attitude hold, altitude hold, stuff like that. It did not have the ability to fly course. Other blocks did and I didn't fly those as much. But the F-18 could fly a course. It could fly a heading. It had all kinds of better automation features. And like I said, with the autothrottle, that was nice to be able to station keep and do other things. The whole point of the automation is to kind of let you reduce your cross-check time of focusing on flying formation and let you worry about, okay, what's my mission planning stuff? Really, is it that big of a deal? No, because in the Viper, you're setting known power settings anyway. So you can pretty much station keep. Plus, the F-16s I flew had data link. So it was really easy to cross-check data link and look outside versus the F-18 that flew did not have data link. So it was all visual anyway. Okay. So once you're in the airspace and when you're doing the mission, let's just talk overview tactically speaking. The F-16, I felt the, what they call the PVI, the Pilot Vehicle Interface. I felt like it was better meched than the F-18 because for me, and this could have been different in a Super Hornet, for me in the F-16, everything was hands-on throttle and stick. So if you were working the radar or working systems, you could pretty much, with a few exceptions, you were pretty much always had your hands on the throttle and stick. And you were using that to get you through menus, get you through all kinds of stuff. And if you need to, you'd come up to the upfront control, type something in, you're right back, upfront control, et cetera. The Hornet, I felt like was more hands-off. You were up pushing buttons. You were, you're, you're not spending as much time with your hands on the throttle and stick because so much other stuff had to be changed when you were flying or fighting. So for me, the Viper was a little bit better for that. And that could be law of primacy too, because I knew the Viper better than I knew the Hornet. So I was kind of learning as I went in the Hornet versus the F-16 where I showed up, I had a full syllabus. And then by the time I got there, it was all ingrained. Because it was my first tactical aircraft, I felt like I was more comfortable using the F-16 to input coordinates or put a targeting pod on something or anything that was super technical. The Hornet was pretty easy, but I felt like the Viper was easier. A lot of people also ask side stick versus center stick. I think that's really what you get used to. What's nice about the Hornet is you could switch hands. And I know we talked about Tom Cruise, you know, left-handed flying. You wouldn't really left-hand fly and pull a lot of Gs. Usually it's just a momentary switch hands, do something, switch hands, do something. You're not really fighting with that left hand, but you could do that. Viper, your hand was always pretty much on your right side. And it was funny going from the T-38 to the Viper. Sometimes you get that phantom stick where you'd look and you'd try to grab the stick where you thought it was going to be in the center and it wasn't there. So I think the F-16 was just better. It just felt like you were wearing the aircraft versus the F-18 where you were in a jet and you knew you were in a jet. So, you know, if I had to compare T-38 to F-18, they were very similar, but nothing I'd ever flown was very similar to the F-16. It was just so different. As far as the actual flying characteristics, they both trim for 1G. You could let your hand off the stick and it would just fly for both the Hornet and the Viper. The Viper, I think, and I see this a lot, people talk about this in DCS, the Viper used no trim whatsoever. The Hornet, you did have to trim depending on, you know, your speed and configuration and stuff like that in some situations. But in the Viper, you rarely used, I mean, I can't think of a time where I used up-down trim, maybe roll trim, but mostly when you take off, it would be yaw trim and you'd center the ball. Because if you didn't have yaw trim just right, a lot of these jets were either bent or just didn't fly quite right after 30 years, but you would be in this yaw, which would also give you this rolling moment. So I think a lot of people, especially in DCS, when they're like, hey, I need roll trim, maybe check and see if your yaw trim is actually the issue, see if the ball centers. But in general, they're both easy to fly. You can take your hand off the stick and do something else and the jet won't do anything that really surprises you. It can and it can kill you. People have died because, you know, they've gotten gone heads down and next thing they know they're upside down. I will say the F-16 in weather had a lot higher likelihood of spatial disorientation because you had no canopy bow or at night. Night was real bad. I took off at Balad one night, one of my first sorties. And as soon as I got into the abyss of there's nothing, there's no cultural lighting, there's no nothing in the desert, I had a flight control issue and I looked down. And then when I looked up, I was upside down because I had just, I had let it decay. I wasn't paying attention. Next thing you know, I'm doing a nose high recovery at low altitude, which was kind of scary, but it is something that you will have to watch. But the Hornet is a little bit more forgiving in that regard, just because it's harder to spatially deal with that canopy bow and having that references outside. It just feels like you're more grounded. Now, as far as the actual instrumentation, the Hornet is kind of a make your, choose your own adventure. You chose what you had on your displays based on what phase of your flight. Well, the Viper didn't have that. So we had the HSI that was always there in the block 30 that I flew and the ADI, the attitude indicator that was always there. So it wasn't digital or anything like that. The Hornet, you'd have to choose if you wanted to fly with that or not, or if you wanted a different display. So in that regard, it kind of depends on what you want. But I thought that the Viper was much easier in that, except at night, the ADI was super hard to tell the difference between the light brown and the light blue, which has caused spatial disorientation with other people. In fact, a guy ended up ejecting because, you know, it was very hard to see. So that's just one thing in general. But when it came to just flying basic instruments and stuff like that, both have the HUD, both are very stable platforms and pretty easy to fly. So tactically as well, you know, you talk about the pros and cons, the F-16 9G aircraft. So it likes to be a little bit faster. It has angle of attack limiters. So AOA limitations. So it won't let you go beyond certain flight regimes. Now you can, you can depart control flight. In fact, I went out to Edwards and did the spin training because we had, we were losing aircraft because guys were departing in certain configurations. But in general, the F-16 was a pretty forgiving aircraft. And both jets, if you departed control flight, the procedure was just to let go. And usually that would recover. And if it didn't, then you had some extra steps you had to do. But the F-16 likes to fly 9Gs. It's got power. It's got thrust. I think the thing about that when dogfighting is the F-16 could fix your problems. So if you got yourself in a bad situation, you usually had enough excess thrust to kind of fight your way out of it versus the F-18, which we'll talk about the pros in that in a second. But the F-18, it was good in the slow speed regime, but once you got yourself into a bad situation, it was very hard to get yourself out because you didn't have the excess thrust. And once you'd cashed it all in, you're pretty much, that's it. Talking about the F-18, it's not a 9G jet. So your basic game plan didn't go anywhere near 9 or 8Gs or whatever. It would give you a G limiter based on your weight, and then up to 7.5Gs, which the F-16 would give you 9Gs no matter what. You didn't care what the weight was or anything like that. So you had to watch not to over-fuel in stores. But the F-18 would give you that 7.5Gs, but you rarely pulled that many Gs. If you were doing good, solid tactics, you really didn't need to pull a lot. You could go up to 8, and as long as there was no 8-11 code, it wasn't an over-G. But you really, I mean, that's not how you fought with the jet. The jet was more gentlemanly. It liked to be slow speed. It liked to do high angle of attack maneuvers. It was very easy to get the nose around, and it was very easy to be good with it because you weren't spending a lot of time at high G, which was easier on your body, easier in general. I love fighting with the Viper because you'd win a lot, and it was fun. But if you ask me which is better, well, I think the Hornet was more user-friendly in that it wasn't hurting you with 9Gs every time you go out. Now, granted, you don't have to pull 9Gs to win in the Viper. There's ways you can be very good at BFM without ever touching 9Gs, but it's just a higher G aircraft, and it definitely requires more respect because people have died because of G-induced loss of consciousness versus the Hornet, where it's a good slow speed fighter. It gets the nose in positions you want, and it's very forgiving in the high angle of attack regime until you get very slow speed, very low energy, and then it just can't get it back. That's where it struggles. It doesn't have the thrust to fix your mistakes like the Viper can because the Viper's not giving you high angles of attack. It'll give you what it gives you, and then usually you can unload, light blow, or get yourself back out of that situation. It's just two different mentalities. I wouldn't say one is better than the other. I'd just say the Hornet's probably easier on your body, but I never lost to a Hornet when I was fighting in the Viper. When I flew the F-16, we always fought Canadian Hornets, Navy Hornets, Navy Super Hornets. They would always come down to Homestead. Never lost. In the Hornet, I never got to fight a Viper, so I don't know from the other side. I did get to fight the Eagle, and I did better against the Eagle in the Hornet than I did against the Viper. When I fought the Eagle with the Viper, it was pretty neutral, and when I fought the Eagle with Hornet, it was pretty easy. So take from that what you will. But then again, it always depends on pilot. Any given Sunday kind of mentality, it doesn't really matter the aircraft. It just depends on who's flying and what tactics they have, what their configuration is. There's so much that goes into it. It's very hard to be specific. So that's air-to-air. Air-to-ground, what's nice is the way the targeting pod is mounted on the F-18, you did a left-hand turn, which is nice. The F-16, you did a right-hand turn, which you're like, what's the big deal? I think it's easier. I think every fighter pilot, we all like to turn left, which is weird because in the basic surface attack pattern in the F-16, you would do a left-hand pattern, but when you go out operationally and deploy, it'd be a right-hand pattern. So all the practice you did going left, and then you're like, oh, I'm doing close air support, now I've got to go right. So it'd be a right-hand orbit around the target. F-18, always left, which I think is how God intended. We're not ambiturners. We only turn left. But in general, I think it's pretty much the same. The HUD modes and the weapons of delivery modes, it's just Coke versus Pepsi. They're different, but they basically have the same function. And I think doctrinally, Navy versus Air Force just had different mentalities on how to do that and how to drop bombs, how to drop dumb bombs, how to drop laser-guided bombs. So it's just different techniques, but overall, it's pretty much the same. I didn't really find that there were big differences. I still, because I had flown the F-16 so much, would always feel more comfortable. If you ask me today, which would you go drop bombs in combat right now, it'd be the F-16 because that's what I know. The F-18 was fun to do, and I did a lot of close air support with joint terminal attack controllers, and I did a lot of dropping bombs, but I always thought that what I knew was the F-16. So coming back home, not a whole lot of difference. Again, Navy versus Air Force and how you come into the pattern, that's a doctrinal difference. That's not an aircraft specific difference. The patterns are different. Navy versus Air Force, we can talk about that on a different video, but just let's talk about landing. If you came in for an instrument pattern, the F-16 was far superior because it had more options. And I know that's changed since I flew the F-18. I think now they do have the ability to do civilian approaches, but when I flew the Hornet, all we could do was attack in approach or a ground contained approach like the PAR or the ASR. We could not do an ILS instrument landing system, which meant no real precision approach that was inside the aircraft. And so the F-16, super easy, right? It would put the little tadpole up there. You just put the flight path marker over the tadpole, and it would direct you right down all the way down to land. Easy day. I've been in some pretty nasty weather with the F-16 and no issues whatsoever. The only issue we really had was if it was raining, sometimes you'd have to put a little bit of yaw into it because you couldn't see out the front. Eventually they fixed it. They put rain X on the canopies, but sometimes it would just pool right there in front of you. So you'd have to do a little bit of yawing and you could land. F-18, you could reduce workload with that autothrottle because it would capture your angle of attack. And now you're just worried about flying a good solid glide path, but you had the HUD. You could put the two and a half degree line or a three degree wire down and kind of make it work. But as far as self-contained, especially if you're going cross country, the Hornet, we were limited. If the weather was kind of, you could just fly the TACAN and you had to go to a place that only had the TACAN. So you didn't have an ILS at civilian fields, which I think has been fixed. I'm not sure. I've heard they can fly RNAVs now. I don't know what current is. I'm just talking when I flew it. Actual landing, the Hornet is way easier to land. I know they basically, I'm not going to say they frowned upon it, but most people did not flare the landing in the Hornet for two reasons. One, they're always practicing for the boat. And two, there was a small risk that if you flared, you wouldn't have enough weight on the planning link or the gear, and it could fold up on you and have an issue. I think if you kind of hybrid that, I never had a problem with it. I was always cognizant of that planning link failure because that's a big emergency, but you could flare it off and have a really, really nice landing. And it was very easy to always have a nice landing versus the Viper, which is kind of a, it's an art. It's an art to land that jet well. And I know, I remember an instructor in the B course telling me that he had a time period where he just forgot how to land the jet. I mean, not literally, but he had like this long period of time where he just could not land it well. And I think that's valid because it does take a little bit of finesse. It does tend to want to keep flying. So you get the little Viper hop, or sometimes you thought you were in a good position to have a good landing. And the next thing you know, you're floating and you're not landing in the touchdown zone. So it was very different and it's more difficult. And there's a lot more risk. If you over aero brake, you could scrape the speed brakes or the ventral fin. If you got too high of angle of attack, that could happen. If you got a gusty wind that increased your angle of attack, that could happen. So there was a lot more risk in damaging something with the F-16. And then when you're stopping the Block 30, this has changed in the later blocks, but the Block 30 had really not great brakes. So you could overheat brakes very easily versus the Hornet. Brakes are awesome. Never had an issue, always stopped in a very short distance. So I think in general, it was easier in the pattern for the Hornet than the Viper. But they're both, I mean, compared to like flying a T-38, they're both easy. I mean, they're both made to land fairly easily. So I don't think it's anything, you know, we're just talking minute differences. But if you said, hey, what's going to be your best landing? And I know guys that went and flew Fat Amy and the first time they landed it, it was easy. So compared to the Viper, it's always easier, but you just got to be a little bit better at it. That's it. So, you know, taxiing clear, you go and you shut down and it's not really much of anything. They're both pretty easy, pretty straightforward. So I guess the big question now is if I got the opportunity, which one would I want to go fly again? I think it's the Viper. I love flying the Hornet. If I could have stayed flying the Hornet in New Orleans, I think that would have been the best option of my career. Unfortunately, that wasn't an option. But, you know, if you said, hey, mover, Hornet or Viper in New Orleans right now, which you're going to go fly, I'd still take the Viper because I just I love that jet. It had all the thrust you ever wanted. You had to be careful, but it just you'll never forget your first love. And no matter how much I enjoyed the Hornet, the Viper is always going to be my favorite. And that's not to say the Hornet's not awesome. I know people that flew the Hornet first and then flew the Viper. And they're the exact opposite. I think whoever whatever you flew first is generally going to be your first love. And I just I felt like when I flew the F-16 that I was on top of my game because I was I was flying a lot. I was studying a lot. I was in the vault a lot. I knew everything I needed to know about that jet. And then the Hornet, we had issues. We didn't always have a bunch of flyable jets. We barely flew 400 hours in four years. That's not a lot versus a thousand hours in four years. So I always feel like maybe if I'd flown the Hornet a lot, I'd have different feelings about it. But if you could combine the two, that'd be perfect, right? If you had the angle of attack of the Hornet with the thrust of the Viper and then you had the life support system of the Vipers, you're not wearing all that crap with, you know, the room, the cockpit room of the Hornet, but you had the bubble canopy. Let's design an awesome jet. But anyway, let me know what you think. I mean, I know you guys have flown both in DCS and I know you've flown some of you have flown both in real life. And I think you'll you ask, you know, a dozen fighter pilots that have flown both what their preferences are. You'll get a dozen different answers. But yeah, I love them both. I miss it. I miss flying both. I think, you know, if I ever got the opportunity to fly one again, it'd be an awesome time. But for now, all we can do is reminisce and look forward to what's next. So hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thanks for watching. See you next time.