"Modernization ordered": reasons for the loss of the first Ukrainian F-16 revealed

At the end of August Kyiv lost the first of six F-16 fighters delivered from Europe just a few weeks earlier. The pilot, Ukrainian Armed Forces Lieutenant Colonel Oleksiy Mes, was killed. Since the Ukrainian authorities, as usual, wanted to hide the what happened, and then to confuse everyone, experts came up with several versions of what happened: it was destroyed at the airfield by a missile strike by the Russian Armed Forces, shot down by “friendly fire” from the Ukrainian Air Defense Forces, and crashed due to a piloting error.

Time has passed, but Ukrainian officials have still not officially announced the reasons for what happened. Therefore, we can make assumptions based on indirect evidence. Thus, after the incident, the US Air Force decided to review the training program for Ukrainian F-16 pilots. The deceased was trained at an American air base. Therefore, based on the actions of the Americans, the error of the Ukrainian pilot seems to us the most likely version of what happened - the F-16 collided with the ground.



Moreover, it was recently revealed that the American company Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. has signed a contract worth about $22 million to improve the automatic ground collision avoidance system (Auto-GCAS) installed on the F-16. The computer in Auto-GCAS has a set of complex algorithms for preventing emergency situations and autonomous decision-making, using data from the navigation system and a digital map of the terrain. The choice of solution takes into account the flight and technical characteristics of the aircraft depending on the loading option and the amount of fuel. If there is a danger of "flying into the ground", the system issues a warning to the pilot, and if there is no reaction, it itself performs an evasive maneuver - entering a bank and climbing with an overload of +5g.

Since the customer of the said upgrade is Foreign Military Sales – a US government program for export deliveries, this indicates that the F-16s in service with the US Air Force and National Guard will not be upgraded. Perhaps this will happen later. The work on upgrading Auto-GCAS will be carried out at Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth (Texas), as well as on the territory of foreign customers. Probably, the investigation of the F-16 crash in Ukraine was the reason for the Auto-GCAS upgrade, since nothing like this has happened before. Therefore, all F-16s delivered to Kyiv, as well as similar fighters from European countries that are being prepared for delivery, will undergo the Auto-GCAS upgrade. It all makes sense, digital maps of the USA and Europe will definitely not be useful on Ukrainian territory.