US F-35s Ejection Seat Issue, All F-35s are Temporarily Grounded Worldwide
US F-35s Ejection Seat Issue, All F-35s are Temporarily Grounded Worldwide The U.S. military discovered a problem with the ejection seats used across its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter fleet in April but waited three months to ground those aircraft flown by the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps to fully investigate the issue. An ongoing investigation sourced the issue to the production line, prompting waves of temporary stand-downs this week. “During a routine maintenance inspection at Hill, Air Force Base, Utah, in April ‘22, an issue was discovered with one of the seat cartridge actuated devices in the F-35 seat,” Steve Roberts, a spokesperson for seat manufacturer Martin Baker, said Friday. Cartridges are the ejection seat component that explodes to propel an aviator out of the cockpit and prompts their parachute to open. The defective part was loose and missing the magnesium powder used to ignite the propellant that shoots someone to safety, Roberts said. The military tested 2,700 F-35 ...