Editing General Dynamics (section)

===F-16 success===
{{Unreferenced section|date=June 2020}}
In 1972, GD bid on the USAF's [[Lightweight Fighter]] (LWF) project. GD and [[Northrop Corporation|Northrop]] were awarded prototype contracts. GD's F-111 program was winding down, and the company needed a new aircraft contract. It organized its own version of [[Lockheed Corporation|Lockheed]]'s [[Skunk Works]], the Advanced Concepts Laboratory, and responded with a new aircraft design incorporating advanced technologies. The company submitted a design in a 1972 competition for a new lightweight fighter, which it won. This was the F-16 ''Fighting Falcon''.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Piehler |first=G. Kurt |title=Encyclopedia of Military Science |date=2013-07-24 |publisher=SAGE Publications |isbn=978-1-4129-6933-8 |location=Thousand Oaks, CA |pages=576 |language=en}}</ref>

GD's [[F-16 Fighting Falcon|YF-16]] first flew in January 1974 and proved to have slightly better performance than the [[Northrop YF-17|YF-17]] in head-to-head testing. It entered production as the F-16 in January 1975 with an initial order of 650 and a total order of 1,388. The F-16 also won contracts worldwide, beating the F-17 in foreign competition as well. GD built an aircraft production factory in Fort Worth, Texas. F-16 orders eventually totaled more than 4,600, making it the company's largest and most successful program and the world's most common fixed-wing aircraft in military service. <ref>2025 World Air Forces, ''Flight Global'', p. 10.</ref>