F-16C Wearing A Slightly Modified “Have Glass V” Paint Scheme | World Defense

F-16C Wearing A Slightly Modified “Have Glass V” Paint Scheme

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F-16C Wearing A Slightly Modified “Have Glass V” Paint Scheme

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A U.S. Air Force F-16 from the 149th Fighter Wing, Texas Air National Guard with a new, darker single color paint scheme is on the ramp at the Iowa Air National Guard in Sioux City, Iowa on December 17, 2019. The Iowa Air National Guard Paint Facility in Sioux City finished painting the fighter aircraft recently and it is now ready to return to its home unit. The new paint eliminates the older two-tone gray as the standard paint scheme for F-16’s in the U.S. Air Force. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Senior Master Sgt. Vincent De Groot)

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he U.S. Air Force has just released an interesting series of shots of an F-16 from the 149th Fighter Wing, Texas Air National Guard out of the Iowa Air National Guard Paint Facility in Sioux City with what is said to be “a new, darker single color paint scheme […] that eliminates the older two-tone grey as the standard paint scheme for F-16’s in the U.S. Air Force.”

Indeed, the aircraft seems to show the Have Glass V, or “Have Glass 5th generation” paint, i.e. the evolution of the standard Have Glass program that saw all the F-16s receiving a two-tone grey color scheme made with a special radar-absorbing paint capable to reduce the aircraft Radar Cross Section. Indeed, all “Vipers” are covered with RAM (Radar Absorbent Material) made of microscopic metal grains that can degrade the radar signature of the aircraft. The Have Glass V is the latest version of the special paint, somehow similart to the one of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that has been applied to U.S. F-16s since at least 2012 when it started to appear on the F-16CM (formerly CJ) Block 50 Fighting Falcon aircraft.


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An F-16C Aggressor from the United States Air Force prepares for another sortie from Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. Note the light grey tail code and registration. (Image credit: RAAF)
Another shot showing the F-16C in Have Glass V paint scheme. Note the dark tail code and markings.

Many Squadrons, including the 64th AGRS (Aggressor Squadron) at Nellis Air Force Base, the South Dakota ANG 175th Fighter Squadron and 85th TES at Eglin AFB, Florida, fly or have flown Vipers painted with the new darker color scheme. However, it’s worth noticing a slight variant in the latest aircraft from the Texas ANG: while all the other Have Glass V we have seen thus far have a radome painted in “normal” F-16 paint and color, the 149th FW’s Viper seems to have a darker radome. Moreover, unlike all the others, the two-letter tail code, serial number and squadron markings are black in color, instead of light grey.



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Four F-16Cs from the South Dakota ANG 175th Fighter Squadron of 114th Fighter Wing took part in a deployment to Lask airbase, Poland, in Sept. 2016. One of those sported the Have Glass V paint scheme. (Image credit: Tony Lovelock)

 

Khafee

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The Aging F-16 Just Got a Stealth Paint Job


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The new paint is supposed to be radar-absorbent.

A Texas Air National Guard fighter squadron flying F-16s is one of the first units to paint its planes in a new, radar-absorbing paint scheme. The paint signals the Air Force’s reluctant decision to keep old F-16s flying through the 2020s, at least.

The Air National Guard’s paint facility in Sioux City, Iowa in mid-December 2019 rolled out a Block 30 F-16C with the new version the Have Glass paint jobs. The F-16C, a Block 30 model, belongs to the 149th Fighter Wing flying out of Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland.

“The new, single-color paint scheme is a recent departure from the older two-tone gray paint scheme normally associated with F-16’s that belong to the United States Air Force,” the Pentagon stated.

Most American F-16s for decades have worn a mostly light-gray paint scheme. Since around 2012, however, the Air Force under the Have Glass V initiative slowly has been applying a new, single-tone, dark-gray livery to some F-16s

The new ferromagnetic paint, which can absorb radar energy, first appeared on some of the roughly 200 F-16s the Air Force assigns to the dangerous suppression-of-enemy-air-defenses, or SEAD, mission. SEAD squadrons reside in Minnesota, South Carolina, Germany and Japan.

The Texas Air National Guard F-16 apparently is the first Block 30 F-16 to receive a variant of the Have Glass V paint. Where previous Have Glass V paint jobs included a lighter-tone radar radome, the current scheme covers both the radome and the rest of the plane in the same, dark tone.

No paint can compensate for a plane's shape. In particular, the shapes of its wings, engine inlet and engine nozzle. Square shapes, right angles and perpendicular planes such as engine turbines strongly reflect radar waves.

Even with Have Glass, the F-16 on average has a 1.2-square-meter radar cross-section, according to Globalsecurity, while the F-22 and F-35 boast RCSs smaller than .005 square meters.

So the Have Glass V F-16s aren’t stealth fighters. But they are stealthier than are F-16s with older paint schemes. Since Have Glass V undoubtedly is expensive, the Air Force logically prioritized repainting planes in units flying the dangerous SEAD mission.
 

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Block 60's Haveglass:

“One of the things they did on the Block 60s — was they did a coating on the Block 60 that’s got the texture of about 40 grit sandpaper — 60 grit sandpaper. It’s very, very rough.

It was designed for RCS (Radar Cross Section) reduction. Since then for the Block 70.
 
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