‘It has to work’: Inside the military’s race to solve an ejection seat safety conundrum
Fear over a defective part led to grounding and inspection of hundreds of planes. After all that, only four problems were actually discovered. Was shutting down flight operations worth it?
By VALERIE INSINNA
on September 30, 2022 at 10:56 AM
WASHINGTON — It was during a routine inspection in April that an Air Force technician found a single faulty Cartridge Actuated Device in the ejection seat of an F-35 at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. The device — known colloquially as CAD — contained no magnesium powder, a necessary material for generating the explosive charge that allows a pilot to begin ejecting from an aircraft.
At first, the potential issue was believed to be confined only to the F-35. By late July, however, the problem appeared more widespread, potentially impacting hundreds of aircraft across the US military’s tactical and training jet inventory that use ejection seats made by Martin-Baker, the UK-based firm that is one of two suppliers of ejection seats for the Defense Department.
Word — and worry — spread within the military, especially after the Navy’s public disclosure of the issue on July 26 seemed to trigger a series of cascading announcements about aircraft groundings. The Navy and Marine Corps acknowledged it was grounding a portion of its F/A-18s and training aircraft on July 27 to allow for ejection seat inspections, and the Air Force followed suit the next day, announcing the grounding of about 300 trainers. On July 29, Breaking Defense broke the news that the F-35 inventory was also affected by the issue, with a portion of the F-35 fleet grounded until the jets could be assessed.
https://breakingdefense.com/2022/09/it-has-to-work-inside-the-militarys-race-to-solve-an-ejection-seat-safety-conundrum/
