Vintage F-16s are reborn as drones.
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BY LAURA MALLONEE
LAURA MALLONEE (@LauraMallonee) writes about
photography for wired.
When the US Air Force launched the F-16 Fighting Falcon
in 1979, it had something no other military jet did: a com-
puter. Four, actually. Their electrical signals commanded
the aircraft instead of gears and pulleys, ushering aerial
combat into the digital era. Now, after fighting in the
Gulf and Iraq wars, some of these 49-foot supersonic
jets are speeding toward an autonomous future. Believe
it or not—we don’t blame you for thinking the buttons
in this cockpit couldn’t belong to a droid—they’ve been
retooled and given (short) new lives as drones.
Colonel Steven Boatright, commander of the Weap-
ons Evaluation Group at Tyndall Air Force Base in Flor-
ida, who’s flown Falcons for 25 years, says F-16s are
perfect for dronification, because their computer sys-
tems make them easy to modify. The Air Force began
converting the craft into QF-16s (the Q designating
drones) in 2010. This year, up to 32 will fly over the Gulf
of Mexico as elusive moving targets until they’re sacri-
ficed to missiles and guided bombs, helping Boatright’s
unit figure out how those missiles and bombs the gov-
ernment wants to buy actually work in stress tests.
To get these jets into flying, and dying, shape, Air
Force engineers resurrect old F-16s from a 2,600-acre
boneyard in Arizona. Then Boeing rigs them with $1.9
million in Drone Peculiar Equipment, including an auto-
matic flight system that triggers takeoffs and landings
at the press of a button. Soon they’re condemned to
Tyndall’s “death row” runway. They perform elaborate
maneuvers (barrel rolls, S turns), mimicking what ene-
mies might do in battle, until they’re shot down and sink
to the bottom of the ocean, the wreckage reincarnated
as a reeflike hangout for sharks and barracudas. (Ground
control can also blow up any erratic drone by remotely
detonating the plane’s AIM-9 warhead.) The boneyard
has enough F-16s to keep Boatright busy for the next
decade, and maybe even fuel a robot war. In March, Air
Force assistant secretary Will Roper cited QF-16s as a
potential host for a machine learning program called
Skyborg. That AI aims to turn drones into wingmen
capable of fighting and hurling bombs alongside humans
piloting the most advanced stealth aircraft by 2023.
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