Forum: F-16 Armament & Stores

After looking at pictures of the Viper at Balad I noticed the jet was intact for the most part and I assume carrying munitions. This lead me to belive that the bombs did not go off. I know in Ammo we dont fight 1.1 fires unless we are trying to save someone. Does that rule apply on the flight line or do the fire fighters put the jet out regardless of whats loaded on it. Thanks for your feedback.

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the load crew is allowed to fight the fire until the munitions become engulfed in the flames. once that happens everyone has to evacuate to 4000 feet. well at balad anyways cuz of the missiles and bombs.

but they will never get set off during a fire, the HEI rounds will shoot off, and missile motors might fire but they wont come off a rail.

And what about bomb bodies? I've heard they will eventully cook of and go high order. Does that fact change the ROE on fightinfg the fire?

not sure how the fire department deals with it..

as a weapons crew we can only fight the fire until the munitions get engulfed.
when a jet crashed in balad the fire department had to get away from the jet cuz the 20mm rounds were shooting off. but the bombs and missiles were fine..

I see. Thanks for the input.

Nowadays, the USAF (and especially the USN) have gone to "Insensitive Munitions". There has been a lot of effort put into making sure that munitions don't go off when they are not supposed to. I can't speak on every munition in the inventory, but the more modern ones have a lot of design and testing on them to ensure they are as safe as possible (when you don't want them to explode).

Rocky

The bomb bodies will cook off if the fire is hot enough, like the Bone at the Deid did. But it seems to takes alot of concentrated heat in line with the bomb to do it. The B-1 landing gear was on fire, and right above the MLG is the 2nd and third bomb bays. So i assume that would play a big part in it. For the most part, the USAF munitions I saw when I was an ammo troop a few years ago, did not have the ablative coating on them. So I imagine since the fire on the Viper started in the engine and spread from there, the heat on the bomb bodies wasn't nearly as intense as the fire on the B-1 that cooked off. Still, if it were me, like the saying goes, grab the fire extinguisher, pull the pin, throw fire extinguisher at fire, and run like hell.

Elite 1K Joined: May 26, 2005 - 08:39 PM Posts: 1496

Yep, that ablative coating is used on Navy munitions to buy time to fight the fire because as the song goes "you're stuck on a boat in the middle of nowhere", clearing to 4,000' would involve swimming.

I'm stationed at Andersen AFB and we have "the worlds largest air to ground munitions stockpile" and there are only a handfull of coated bombs. Even stuff we got coming in off boats to replace the M117s going out are not coated. Guess I'll keep Crew Chiefing and running while others fight the fire.

Rocky_LC wrote:

Nowadays, the USAF (and especially the USN) have gone to "Insensitive Munitions". There has been a lot of effort put into making sure that munitions don't go off when they are not supposed to. I can't speak on every munition in the inventory, but the more modern ones have a lot of design and testing on them to ensure they are as safe as possible (when you don't want them to explode).

Rocky

One of the safety measures is the TIVS (Thermally Initiated Venting System) on AIM-120's. The basic idea is that a lateral charge will cook off at a lower temperature than the rocket motor. When the lateral charge fires it spilts the rocket motor in two preventing a full rocket motor cook off. At least that's how it was explained to me in Balad.

Forum: F-16 Armament & Stores

Fighting Fires Involving Munitions.