A Republic of China Air Pressure F-16V fighter crashed throughout a routine coaching mission in January 6, after taking off at 6.17pm from Hualien Air Base, marking the newest of a number of fighter losses by the service to accidents in recent times. The fighter’s mission pc is reported by native media retailers to have malfunctioned, ensuing within the spatial disorientation of the pilot, with the mission pc having skilled an identical malfunction just a few days prior. A number of native sources reported that after F-16A/B fighters have been modernised to the F-16V normal, the frequency of mission pc failures elevated, typically resulting in system failures, and at instances inflicting the plane to carry out sudden “ghost turns” which place pilots’ lives in danger. A whistleblower reporting these software program points additionally claimed that after the flight management system was up to date to model 4.3 in 2024-2025, two incidents occurred on the Chiayi Air Base which noticed F-16s carry out violent “ghost turns” exceeding roll limits with out human management.
The whistleblower who revealed particulars concerning malfunctions with the F-16V fighters famous that their radar warning receivers have been detecting risk sources in wildly inaccurate instructions, rendering the risk response fully unreliable. He confirmed that the failure charge of the plane’s mission computer systems after the upgrades was very excessive, noting that failures at night time or in cloudy situations “can be extraordinarily harmful,” particularly since it could trigger all electrical programs to fail, whereas “even the backup perspective indicator can’t be trusted.” The insider stated that the sudden extreme “ghost turns” weren’t as a result of pilot G-force induced unconsciousness, however relatively an issue with the management stick. He added {that a} related incident additionally occurred final 12 months, however it was not made public.
Main software program points with American fighter plane leaving pilots disoriented, or else unable to regulate their plane, have been removed from isolate to the Republic of China Air Pressure F-16 fleet. On October 19, 2022, a close to deadly F-35A crash at Hill Air Pressure Base was attributable to a software program situation, which left the pilot unable to abort the fighter’s touchdown sequence because it stopped responding and sharply banked to the left. An F-35 take a look at pilot who noticed the incident recalled that the plane “regarded like a completely regular F-35 earlier than clearly going uncontrolled… When the oscillations have been occurring, I did see actually giant flight management floor actions, stabs, trailing edge flaps, rudders all appear to be shifting fairly quickly like, most likely at their charge limits, and big deflections.” The fighter put itself able with “nearly no likelihood of recovering,” he concluded.
In April 2019 a Japanese F-35 pilot was discovered to have misplaced spatial consciousness main him to crash instantly into the ocean, fuelling widespread hypothesis of software program associated points. The F-16V makes use of ‘4+ era’ avionics with many similarities with these of the F-35, with the Republic of China Air Pressure having begun working the fighters in November 2021, earlier than receiving the final of 139 F-16A/B fighters upgraded to the brand new normal in late 2023. Deliveries of F-16 Block 70 fighters, which use very related software program and avionics, has confronted repeated and constant delays as a result of manufacturing points in america. The Republic of China stays in a state of civil struggle with the Individuals’s Republic of China on the Chinese language mainland, and lacks worldwide recognition a claimant to sovereignty over the Chinese language nation. Its standing as an efficient non-state actor has made it extremely difficult to obtain armaments overseas, with the F-16 being the one fighter that has been provided, whereas efforts to obtain the F-35 have been rebuffed for over twenty years.
