By akademiotoelektronik, 09/11/2022

Air & Cosmos Major failure on an F-35: the South Korean fleet prohibited from flight & cosmos

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Défense

| Xavier Tytelman873 Words

After a major failure of the planeic of an F-35A having prohibited the release of the aircraft of the aircraft, the pilot managed to make a landing on the belly.The entire South Korean fleet of the 5th generation plane produced by Lockheed Martin is grounded.

A major failure on the planeic

An F-35A of the South Korean Air Force was forced to make an emergency landing without an landing train on January 4 at 1 p.m. local, on the basis of Seosan.According to the first elements shared by officials at the local news agency Yonhap, a major failure of the aircraft of the aircraft would have prevented the exit from the trains.According to the deputy chief of staff of the Air Shin Ok-Chul, audited by parliament the day after the incident, the F-35A was flying at low altitude when the pilot heard a seriesdetonation.After checks, "all the aircraft systems had ceased to operate, with the exception of flight and engine commands".After having hesitated to eject, the pilot finally decides to try to land without the wheels, after the track was previously covered by the emergency services of a layer of sparkling liquid reducing the probability of fire.The incident has been judged serious enough for the entire fleet of the 30 F-35 of Lockheed Martin to be prohibited from theft, but without an identical measurement being taken from other users of the plane,.

Even if the plane should be repaired, the sensitive nature of the equipment and the furtive coating of the F-35 will make these operations more difficult than on the previous generations of devices.The restoration of an American F-22 after the sagging of its landing gear, for example, required no less than 4 years of work ... The capacities of the South Korean Air Force should only bePartially reduced, the fleet of 60 F-15K Slam Eagles and 180 F-16 C/D (whose modernization at Standard V is in progress) to allow permanent missions to be ensured.

Previous accidents rich in lessons

This is not the first case of damaged or destroyed device following failures.The accident of May 19, 2020 during which a pilot had to eject at the time of his landing on the Eglin base of the Air Force had been attributed to an excessive speed of the pilot.But the complete survey, published in September of the same year, had also revealed that the F-35 had not issued the alarms expected in such a situation, and especially that it suffered from software defects on flight orders, those-I having prevented the pilot from catching up with his error, prohibiting him from making the gas delivery he wanted to initiate after touching the track with his main train.The pilot's helmet was also ill -aligned on the track and the plane knew a failure of an oxygen generation system causing "cognitive degradation".The investigation had also underlined the inability of the simulator to prepare the pilots in certain situations, the aerodynamic behavior of the plane not being faithfully represented as a simulator.The malfunction of the ejection system had also caused pilot injuries, canopy residues having housed in its forearms and eyes.The $ 176 million device had been declared lost, but no flight ban had been imposed on the fleet of devices.The full report of this accident is available at the bottom of this article.

Japan had recognized a certain number of incidents related to manufacturing defects specific to the assembly line of the F-35 present in the country, causing several emergency landings on the country's devices.The crash of a Japanese F-35 had also been attributed to these faults, the lost plane having in the past made two emergency landings and the pilot having announced on the radio his desire to put an end to his training.The investigation had finally concluded that the pilot was disoriented at the time of his impact with the sea without the entire report being shared, leaving doubts about the only human factor of the accident, of the pilots believing that a disorientationSpatial on a 5th generation plane could also have been linked to a new alignment failure of its helmet, the plane not having a head -up display (or HUD)...

The other problems encountered by Japanese planes were linked to problems on the assembly chain locally managed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

Several flight prohibitions

This is not the first flight ban for the F-35.After incidents on test devices in 2011, a short ban in 2014 following oil leaks in the engine, it is the accident of an F-35B in September 2018 which imposes a complete revision of aircraft.The contribution published in May 2019 had revealed the failure of part of the fuel supply circuit produced by United Technologies, having led to a loss of engine power and the crash of the plane.The equipment, then on 40% of the world's world fleet, had to be changed.

Other cases of limited prohibitions have enamelled the life of the program, such as the reservoir of the reservoir in 2016, or the restrictions specific to certain countries, such as Japan after the loss of its plane at sea and doubts about the causesaccident.This new accident is however observed with concern at Lockheed Martin, such software defect that can potentially touch the whole world fleet of the three versions of the 5th generation apparatus, a real spine of many air forces in the world.

F-35 LOCKHEED MARTIN F-35 F-35A South Korea F-35A South Air Force