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...BELGIUM AIR FORCE F-16 Destroyed..


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.... a Techie( ?  ) working on ANOTHER jet.. it needs a human touch to fire right... an aircraft can't fire on its own ... how can another fighter aircraft fire upon another unless a human being is involved!  :coolio:

(Headline.... is wrong!)

 

F-16 jet utterly destroyed in £35million airbase gaffe after another fighter plane accidentally opens fire on it -
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/f-16-jet-utterly-destroyed-13406979

 

Cool photo for a Diorama..🤗

 

I am very pleased THAT no was killed or injured.

Phewef !

 

 

 

 

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 You would have to try hard to accomplish that feat . It requires hydraulic and electrical power to operate the gun.

 

 I suppose the could have been running the engine but you still would need ( at the least ) a faulty squat  switch the circuit .

 

 When we first got the F-16's they told us there was no way the EPU. could fire on the ground but I saw one fire during an aircraft taxi ....

 

 I think the Belgian AF. is now operating on bare bones.

 

 Regards, Christian.

 

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18 hours ago, USAFsparkchaser said:

Ya I don’t understand how this happened on the ground WOW switches bad?

 

There are definite ways to bypass the switches, especially if the jet was being worked on.

 

I was only permitted to work on armed jets during one specific operation. I didn’t like it. It wasn’t wartime ops, it was G-8 protection, to keep jets over the summit 24-7.

 

Hopefully the WOW override box wasn’t connected. Although there are pin shorts that could fire a weapon system without an override of the WOW.

 

It takes a lot of effort to accomplish this though.

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On 10/14/2018 at 6:08 PM, Scooby said:

 

There are definite ways to bypass the switches, especially if the jet was being worked on.

 

I was only permitted to work on armed jets during one specific operation. I didn’t like it. It wasn’t wartime ops, it was G-8 protection, to keep jets over the summit 24-7.

 

Hopefully the WOW override box wasn’t connected. Although there are pin shorts that could fire a weapon system without an override of the WOW.

 

It takes a lot of effort to accomplish this though.

 

Not that tough to do. All you need are the following steps to be accomplished..

1 Gun Safe Pin removed.

2  Pull Probe Heat Circuit Breakers. Electric and Air on jet, run Safe For Maintenance as well as setting up the switches for the steps later.

3 Hydraulics on jet.

4 Pull NLG Wow Circuit Breaker and MLG Wow Breakers  that way the FCC (Fire Control Computer) is able to go ahead and work like it is in flight.

5 Select the gun from the MFD's and all associated systems have to be up n running.

6 if you have all the steps needed to get the system up n running as well as the AGE equipment up and running. All you have to do, is Pull the trigger.

 

Any Avionics troop is able to follow the checklist and job guides to do just this, Ive worked on many F-16's where our Ops Checks required all these and many other steps.

The Main step that shows a willingness to cause destruction is accomplishing step 1

 

William G

Ex-Avionics Pointy Head F-16 A, B, C, D

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8 hours ago, William G said:

 

Not that tough to do. All you need are the following steps to be accomplished..

1 Gun Safe Pin removed.

2  Pull Probe Heat Circuit Breakers. Electric and Air on jet, run Safe For Maintenance as well as setting up the switches for the steps later.

3 Hydraulics on jet.

4 Pull NLG Wow Circuit Breaker and MLG Wow Breakers  that way the FCC (Fire Control Computer) is able to go ahead and work like it is in flight.

5 Select the gun from the MFD's and all associated systems have to be up n running.

6 if you have all the steps needed to get the system up n running as well as the AGE equipment up and running. All you have to do, is Pull the trigger.

 

Any Avionics troop is able to follow the checklist and job guides to do just this, Ive worked on many F-16's where our Ops Checks required all these and many other steps.

The Main step that shows a willingness to cause destruction is accomplishing step 1

 

William G

Ex-Avionics Pointy Head F-16 A, B, C, D

 

And, the clearing sector clamp has to be removed and the gun gas purge door has to open. Granted, the gas purge door will open when the trigger gets pulled. Not to mention the computer has to be told the gun drum is loaded and the system is in dogfight mode. Many, many steps have to be completed to get the gun to fire.

 

Vern

462/2W1 F-16C/D

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9 hours ago, William G said:

 

Not that tough to do. All you need are the following steps to be accomplished..

1 Gun Safe Pin removed.

2  Pull Probe Heat Circuit Breakers. Electric and Air on jet, run Safe For Maintenance as well as setting up the switches for the steps later.

3 Hydraulics on jet.

4 Pull NLG Wow Circuit Breaker and MLG Wow Breakers  that way the FCC (Fire Control Computer) is able to go ahead and work like it is in flight.

5 Select the gun from the MFD's and all associated systems have to be up n running.

6 if you have all the steps needed to get the system up n running as well as the AGE equipment up and running. All you have to do, is Pull the trigger.

 

Any Avionics troop is able to follow the checklist and job guides to do just this, Ive worked on many F-16's where our Ops Checks required all these and many other steps.

The Main step that shows a willingness to cause destruction is accomplishing step 1

 

William G

Ex-Avionics Pointy Head F-16 A, B, C, D

 

I’m ex-Avionics too, that still takes an effort considering the person doing the work knows he has a loaded jet and should know the hazards.

 

Every accident is the result of a chain chain of events, break any link in that chain and the accident doesn’t occur.

 

You just demonstrated the number of links that added to the final result.

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10 hours ago, William G said:

 

Not that tough to do. All you need are the following steps to be accomplished..

1 Gun Safe Pin removed.

2  Pull Probe Heat Circuit Breakers. Electric and Air on jet, run Safe For Maintenance as well as setting up the switches for the steps later.

3 Hydraulics on jet.

4 Pull NLG Wow Circuit Breaker and MLG Wow Breakers  that way the FCC (Fire Control Computer) is able to go ahead and work like it is in flight.

5 Select the gun from the MFD's and all associated systems have to be up n running.

6 if you have all the steps needed to get the system up n running as well as the AGE equipment up and running. All you have to do, is Pull the trigger.

 

Any Avionics troop is able to follow the checklist and job guides to do just this, Ive worked on many F-16's where our Ops Checks required all these and many other steps.

The Main step that shows a willingness to cause destruction is accomplishing step 1

 

William G

Ex-Avionics Pointy Head F-16 A, B, C, D

 

1 hour ago, admiralcag said:

 

And, the clearing sector clamp has to be removed and the gun gas purge door has to open. Granted, the gas purge door will open when the trigger gets pulled. Not to mention the computer has to be told the gun drum is loaded and the system is in dogfight mode. Many, many steps have to be completed to get the gun to fire.

 

Vern

462/2W1 F-16C/D

Does the F-16 gun system have a last round bypass switch on the exit unit attached to the ammo drum?

 

All Navy aircraft that used the M61 (A-7, F-14, F-18A-F) had a last round bypass switch that was on the exit unit attached to the ammo drum. It prevented the gun from firing unless rounds were present (i.e., the gun was set up to fire). You could set the switches up to fire, tell the plane it was loaded, etc but unless you physically mated that switch (with rounds) or disconnected it, you ain't getting squat.

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19 hours ago, GW8345 said:

 

Does the F-16 gun system have a last round bypass switch on the exit unit attached to the ammo drum?

 

All Navy aircraft that used the M61 (A-7, F-14, F-18A-F) had a last round bypass switch that was on the exit unit attached to the ammo drum. It prevented the gun from firing unless rounds were present (i.e., the gun was set up to fire). You could set the switches up to fire, tell the plane it was loaded, etc but unless you physically mated that switch (with rounds) or disconnected it, you ain't getting squat.

 

It does. My understanding is that switch shuts down the drive when it finds an empty casing, but it has been a while since I retired and my memory is not what it used to be. I didn't have to bypass it on a functional check, but I was checking for firing voltage and that the safety pin was functioning properly.

 

Vern

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14 hours ago, admiralcag said:

 

It does. My understanding is that switch shuts down the drive when it finds an empty casing, but it has been a while since I retired and my memory is not what it used to be. I didn't have to bypass it on a functional check, but I was checking for firing voltage and that the safety pin was functioning properly.

 

Vern

The Navy birds are the same way, the switch shuts down power to the hydraulic drive, thus stopping the gun from rotating. 

 

Sounds like they had rounds ran up to the gun, if not in the breech, so it looks like the gun was not in "clear", had hydraulic and electric power and the WOW switches engaged. To me, with so many interlocks in the gun system to prevent it from firing on the deck, someone had to set the gun up to fire, it didn't fire "accidently".

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So your saying that it looks like the gun wasn't properly cleared of ammunition from the last time that the rounds were fed into it and no one bothered to give it a second look before performing whatever PMCS they were doing at the time that it fired?

 

Not much different than idiots that shoot themselves while 'cleaning' their personal firearms then.

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One thing we don't know is if this was maintenance because of a failed or aborted flight.  If so they may not have gotten the ammo cleared.  I still would like to see where the aircraft that fired was located,  as some of the pics were showing at first made it seem that the bird was in the Hangar. but that seemed a bit off, there should not have been anything live on the bird.
I worked a few jets that were live for the gun but we had the carts removed from the TER so the 500# wouldn't be a tempting thing to play with on the ramp for a redball. But they still had the safing pin inserted.

 

I can say that it does take a lot of steps to do this.  I had to get Weapons out to assist with a broke jet because of a faulty cannon plug on the gun, and I needed their assist to fix the jet that they swore was an avionics job.

Edited by William G
grammar
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1 hour ago, Whiskey said:

So your saying that it looks like the gun wasn't properly cleared of ammunition from the last time that the rounds were fed into it and no one bothered to give it a second look before performing whatever PMCS they were doing at the time that it fired?

 

Not much different than idiots that shoot themselves while 'cleaning' their personal firearms then.

 

 I wouldn’t say the person was an idiot, complacency is a very common thing that very skilled people fall into. And as mentioned in the follow-up post to your post, we don’t know all the details.

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12 hours ago, William G said:

One thing we don't know is if this was maintenance because of a failed or aborted flight.  If so they may not have gotten the ammo cleared.  I still would like to see where the aircraft that fired was located,  as some of the pics were showing at first made it seem that the bird was in the Hangar. but that seemed a bit off, there should not have been anything live on the bird.
I worked a few jets that were live for the gun but we had the carts removed from the TER so the 500# wouldn't be a tempting thing to play with on the ramp for a redball. But they still had the safing pin inserted.

 

I can say that it does take a lot of steps to do this.  I had to get Weapons out to assist with a broke jet because of a faulty cannon plug on the gun, and I needed their assist to fix the jet that they swore was an avionics job.

If the gun system is working properly, is should go into clear after each firing (clearing sector solenoid) so that there are no rounds in the breech (chambered) until the gun spoils up again.

 

Not knowing all the details I can think of three scenarios as to why the gun fired;

 

1) Maintenance Malpractice - the maintainers screwed up and didn't follow procedures.

2) The gun failed to clear after last firing and the ground crew failed to ensure the gun was cleared prior to performing maintenance.

3) The gun failed to clear and EMI (stray) voltage got into the electrical system causing one round to fire. (seen this happen back in 91 to a Tomcat at Oceana)

 

Bottom line, someone screwed up royally and this wasn't a "oops, my mistake" kind of thing.

Edited by GW8345
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