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F-16 Pilot Takes the Mother of All Selfies, Good Luck Matching This

There are countless lists of locations most suitable to take selfies, and most of them include places like Disneyland, the Grand Canyon, or the Taj Mahal. We’re pretty confident few, if not none, of those lists include rural Romania.
Four F-16 Fighting Falcons flying over Romania 21 photos
Photo: NATO JFC Naples/Twitter
Four F-16 Fighting Falcons flying over RomaniaF-16 Fighting Falcon over the Nevada Test and Training RangeF-16 Fighting Falcons chasing KC-135 StratotankerF-16C Fighting FalconF-16 Fighting FalconF-16C Fighting Falcon taking off from New JerseyAggressor Squadron F-16 Fighting Falcon taking offRoyal Moroccan Air Force F-16Royal Moroccan Air Force F-16Royal Moroccan Air Force F-16Royal Moroccan Air Force F-16Royal Moroccan Air Force F-16Royal Moroccan Air Force F-16Royal Moroccan Air Force F-16Royal Moroccan Air Force F-16Royal Moroccan Air Force F-16Royal Moroccan Air Force F-16Royal Moroccan Air Force F-16F-16 Fighting Falcon in Operation Inherent ResolveF-16 Fighting Falcons over Niceville, Florida
Yet it is exactly from there that this most spectacular selfie (if not “the” most spectacular of the year) comes from. Well, not exactly from rural Romania, but from above it, where all the action was at the end of March.

Romania is one of the countries that make up NATO’s Eastern flank. That would be the side of the military alliance that is closest to Russia, and presently feels a lot of pressure from the Eastern giant as it tramples over what once was a beautiful Ukraine.

In fact, Romania borders Ukraine and was one of the focal points of NATO’s hardened stance in the region following Russia’s February invasion. The country now houses multinational battlegroups and brigades for land warfare, but also an increased military presence in the air, backed by the German Air Force (Eurofighter Typhoons), the Italian Air Force (also Eurofighter Typhoons), and the U.S. Air Force (USAF), mostly with F-16s. Romania, too, fields F-16s alongside a local variant of the MiG-21.

The selfie we have here, snapped from inside the cockpit of one of the F-16s, shows four of the Fighting Falcons, two deployed by the Americans and the other two by the local air force. When the stunning image was captured on camera, the foursome was flying together over Romanian airspace, at the end of March, during something NATO describes as a multinational effort, separate from air policing missions, meant to maintain “24/7 patrols in the skies along Alliance borders.”

As you can see in the image, which shows the planes flying very close together, the Falcons are armed to the teeth.
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Editor's note: Gallery shows other F-16s.

About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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