Blast from the past...
From the Flightglobal archive : Click to enlarge. This news clipping from 1979 says a lot about why the F/A-18 was selected over the F-16. Quite simply, the Hornet came with more attractive offsets and the AIM-7 BVR missile. Very much a "big deal" back then. Back in those days the F-16 was still very much a short-range, fair-weather day fighter. It would not become the multirole fighter we know of today until the F-16CD variants were introduced in the mid-eighties. The F-16s production numbers would not become stratospheric until the Reagan administration relaxed sales restrictions on military hardware , increasing demand for the Viper internationally.