Flight/Planes

I read this and it leaves all sorts of questions in it's wake...very interesting!

A lot of crazy things happen where black programs are involved. For example, some of us traveled on DoD "blanket" travel orders. This meant we could go anywhere in the world without our travel people questioning us or our actual destination showing on our orders. Blanket orders were uncommon, and caused problems going to some facilitates, especially those not controlled by the USAF. I sat for two hours in a USN facility "visitors' center" (glorified guard shack) with an unhappy Marine scowling at me before they were convinced my orders and I were legit.
 
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Yeah, this guy is posting on an aviation site I read. He's showing poor judgment in advertising who he is, Uncle Sam has a long memory.
Yes, I was rather surprised he named himself! Good grief!
 

Tony and I discussed this on PM last week. It's unclear if the a/c was an operational French AF jet flown by a military pilot or one bailed back to Dassault and flown by one of their company pilots. My feeling is it was the latter.

The USAF allows non-rated personnel to take "incentive flights" in high performance jets, but the aeromedical and training requirements are strictly enforced. If this had happened with a USAF a/c, just about everybody in the ops chain from the wing command down to life support shop chief would be court martialed. Same for the egress (escape system) shop chief who allowed a nonfunctional system to fly.
 
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A mishap like this has far reaching implications. The failure of the raft to deploy probably mandated a one time inspection of survival kit rigging for every seat maintained by that shop, if not the entire FAF. Also could have resulted in a change to tech manuals if a flaw in the kit packing/rigging procedures was discovered. Since this seat variant is used by military forces around the world, a change to tech data would have to have been disseminated via a technical bulletin of some type to all users worldwide.

The rupture of the selector valve is far more serious. Finding the cause of the rupture would have to have been the first step. There could have been any number of causes, including material defects, improper manufacture of the valve, poor maintenance, improper installation, etc. Also possible, but less likely, the cartridge fired in the system to send the ballistic signal back to the seat through the valve could have been either wrong or improperly manufactured, resulting in a a higher pressure than the valve was designed to withstand.

While the investigation of the valve failure mode was on going, almost certainly every two seat Rafael in the FAF, if not the world, was grounded. Once a cause was found, every valve would have to have been inspected and/or replaced prior to being cleared for flight. Selector valves are usually not logistically intense, meaning the number of spares would probably not have been sufficient to replace them all at the same time. And of course all the spares would have had to have been inspected/flight cleared as well. Throw in the fact European aerospace companies, and Martin Baker in particular, are not know for their effective spares support, could have kept these two seaters grounded for a long time.
 
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