Why Modern Fighter Jets Don't Eject Spent Shell Casings
Story by Jonathan H. Kantor • 22h
When you fire a gun, whether it's a shotgun, rifle, pistol, or anything requiring a bullet, a shell casing is ejected or removed. At gun ranges, these spent shell casings are often recovered and recycled, which makes sense, as they're primarily constructed of brass. Recycling them is a no-brainer, but for much of aviation history, it didn't work like that. The P-51 Mustang flew throughout much of World War II, and its six .50 caliber machine guns dropped tons of spent shell casings all over the world's battlefields.
Modern fighters function a bit differently, and while they rarely fire their cannons, they are still installed. This is because, like many weapons, it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. Nowadays, cannons are reserved for close combat, but they're almost never utilized because air combat is typically conducted beyond line of sight. Missiles are fired at radar blips, and that's how dogfighting works. Still, they have cannons, including the F-35 Lightning II, so what happens to their spent casings?
While previous aircraft dumped them, modern fighter jets don't. Instead of ejecting the casings, they're collected in various systems for several reasons. For one, ejecting hundreds of heavy brass shell casings would continuously reduce the weight of the aircraft, which could destabilize flight. The main reason they're not ejected has to do with the potential damage they might cause. WWII fighters didn't fly nearly fast enough to create a problem, but modern fighters are supersonic, and they could damage themselves if ejected casings reenter aircraft systems as foreign object debris (FOD).
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/why-modern-fighter-jets-don-t-eject-spent-shell-casings/ar-AA1HcAXW?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=7c2b705e98b244d6ab6be9b3b467877e&ei=114
