A U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds F-16CM crashed Dec. 3, 2025, outside Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, after fan blades broke inside a section of the engine that maintainers cannot inspect, according to an Aircraft Investigation Board report released Monday. The pilot ejected and survived with minor injuries. The $33 million jet was completely destroyed.
The pilot, one of two solo performers on the demonstration team, was on a training flight and had pushed the engine to full thrust, known as Military Power, when two fan blades broke loose, causing “catastrophic engine damage and a significant loss of thrust,” the report found. For four minutes the pilot attempted to keep the jet airborne, including restarting the engine, but it produced no thrust. At 400 feet above the ground he announced “ejecting” over the team radio. The plane crashed four seconds later.
Board president Col. J.C. Brooks cleared the pilot, maintainers, and Thunderbird leadership of any blame.
“Before the flight, [Thunderbird] personnel performed all required inspections, documentation, and servicing. The pilot was current, qualified, medically fit, and performed appropriate actions. The scheduled mission was supervised correctly and released by pertinent authorities,” Brooks wrote.
The report identified the cause as “three misaligned, or turned, variable vanes in the 4th and 5th stages of the MA engine’s compressor section.” One 5th stage compressor blade and one 6th stage compressor blade “failed due to high cycle fatigue and separated during flight.”
The crash was the second in under two years linked to the same engine section. An F-16 at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, crashed in April 2024 after a fan blade in the same location broke free.
According to both accident reports, the Pratt & Whitney F100 engine produces thrust through 13 fans, or stages, each made up of hundreds of steel fan blades and vanes. Mechanics can inspect the first four stages from the front and stages 7 through 13 from the rear or via borescope access ports. The report states these ports “provide limited borescope views of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 8th, 12th, and 13th stages of engine compression, as well as the combustion chamber,” but “no APs exist which enable comprehensive inspection of the 5th and 6th stages of the engine core module.” Those stages can only be checked during major overhauls when the engine is removed from the aircraft.
Investigators could not determine when the damage in the hidden sections first occurred.
The board’s findings follow the release of the full investigation report to the public Monday.
Sources: Task & Purpose