F-35B has round explode during flight after leaving gun

[edpop]

https://theaviationist.com/2021/03/24/m ... -fuselage/

[spazsinbad]

USS Makin Island Flight Operations in the Indian Ocean [gun pod firing near ship] 24 Dec 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJUCttDdF9o

[spazsinbad]

ORIGINAL STORY:

Marine Corps F-35B in Arizona Damaged by Round Discharged from Jet Cannon
24 Mar 2021 Oriana Pawlyk

"An ammunition round that exploded following its discharge from a Marine Corps F-35B Joint Strike Fighter at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Arizona, earlier this month caused damage to the stealth fighter's fuselage, according to the service.

The F-35B, capable of short takeoff and vertical landings, was conducting a nighttime close air support mission on March 12 on the Yuma Range Complex when a PGU-32/U Semi-Armor Piercing High Explosive Incendiary-Tracer (SAPHEI-T) 25mm round exploded after leaving the fighter's cannon, Marine Corps spokesman Capt. Andrew Wood confirmed to Military.com on Tuesday.

The jet was attached to VMX-1, the Marines' Yuma-based test and evaluation squadron, Wood said.

The aircraft landed safely, according to a Naval Safety Center report, which first noted the incident. "The mishap did not result in any injury to personnel, and an investigation of the incident is currently taking place," Wood said in an email.

The mishap was labeled Class A, the most severe classification, indicating damage of at least $2.5 million or the loss of an aircraft.

It was not immediately clear if the round was fired deliberately. Citing the ongoing investigation, Wood did not provide further details.

The F-35 uses a GAU-22 Gatling gun. The GAU-22 is mounted in an external gun pod under the jet's fuselage on the Marines' F-35B and Navy's C-variant. The Air Force's A-variant carries the gun internally.

The Navy began evaluating its existing PGU-32 semi-armor piercing high explosive incendiary ammunition for the F-35B and F-35C in 2013. Live-fire testing from the gun pod began in 2016, according to The Drive....[then earlier testing]

....During the same tests -- which marked the first-ever shipboard hot reloads in the Indo-Pacific region -- Marines also tested the SAPHEI-T 25mm round, according to a release.

With a capacity of 220 rounds, the 25mm gun pod can fire at a rate of up to 3,300 rounds per minute."

Source: https://www.military.com/daily-news/202 ... annon.html

[ricnunes]

I can't "hardly wait"[sarcasm] for the F-35 haters to come here (or to any other sites over the web) and claim that this is another F-35 fault/failure when this seems clearly seems to be either a fault from the PGU-32/U round or perhaps from the gun (GAU-22) itself.

[charlielima223]

bad fusing me thinks...

[steve2267]

If memory serves, USAF had some issues with M61 Vulcan ammo some years back. Which prompted them to move away from 20mm shells with explosive fillers. But that's all my old memory banks are coughing up.

[energo]

If memory serves, USAF had some issues with M61 Vulcan ammo some years back. Which prompted them to move away from 20mm shells with explosive fillers. But that's all my old memory banks are coughing up.

Years ago I talked to an old timer and if memory serves me right there were reliability issues with US license produced NAMMO rounds years and years ago due to slight differences in the materials. Perhaps the same story?

[XanderCrews]

I can't "hardly wait"[sarcasm] for the F-35 haters to come here (or to any other sites over the web) and claim that this is another F-35 fault/failure when this seems clearly seems to be either a fault from the PGU-32/U round or perhaps from the gun (GAU-22) itself.

oh, I've seen worse

just send them this:

https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-sto ... r-missile/

[ricnunes]

oh, I've seen worse

just send them this:

https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-sto ... r-missile/

Absolutely!
But we all know that when these things happen with the F-35 that it's always much worse compared to any other aircraft (in the F-35 haters perspective, that is )

[Corsair1963]

Navy Downgrades Mishap To USMC F-35B Damaged By Its Own Round. It’s “Just” Class C Now.

Do you remember the famous mishap to a USMC F-35B damaged by the explosion of an ammunition round leaving its gun pod? It’s no longer a Class A mishap….

A U.S. Marine Corps F-35B made the news at the end of last month, when it was damaged by the explosion of a PGU-32/U Semi-Armor Piercing High Explosive Incendiary-Tracer (SAPHEI-T) 25mm round that had just left the fighter’s GAU-22 gun hosted in a GPU-9/A pod, flying a night CAS (Close Air Support) mission on Mar. 12, 2021.

The USMC F-35B, operated by VMX-1, the U.S. Marine Corps’ test and evaluation squadron based at MCAS (Marine Corps Air Station) Yuma, Arizona, was operating over the Yuma Range Complex, when SAPHEI-T round exploded after leaving the gun pod (often referred to as “GAU-22 pod” only, instead of GPU-9/A) the aircraft carries under the fuselage. The aircraft landed safely and no one was injured.


As most of our readers will probably remember, the episode made the news and generated a lot of comments (and some laughable headlines), mostly because the mishap was initially given the most severe classification, Class A, meaning a damage of at least 2.5M USD or the loss of the airframe.

However, that was the preliminary classification as the subsequent investigation, along with the search for the root cause of the incident (that has not been unveiled), assessed the exact level of damage the aircraft sustained. And, remarkably, as reported by Military.com, the mishap is no longer a Class A, but has been downgraded to a far less serious Class C.

According to the Naval Safety Center, Class C mishaps are those where total damage sustained by the aircraft ranges between 60K and 600K USD. While no additional detail about the mishap has emerged, the new classification seems to suggest a pretty limited damage to the aircraft or the GPU-9/A pod only.

Dealing with the latter, here’s what I wrote about this system, used by the STOVL (Short Take Off Vertical Landing) and CV (Carrier Variant) versions of the F-35 (the remaining one, the “A”, uses an internal GAU-22 gun).


The F-35B’s General Dynamics GAU-22 25mm uses a unique four-barrel configuration that was developed from the highly successful five-barrel, 25mm GAU-12/U gun also built by General Dynamics.

As often highlighted, although the GAU-22 gun pod was designed with LO (Low Observability) characteristics, the external pod unit degrades the F-35B’s radar cross section making the 5th generation aircraft more visibile to radars. Still, this is acceptable (as it is for the non-stealthy AV-8B Harrier jets they will replace) for the scenarios where the U.S. Marine Corps F-35B jets are called to carry out CAS missions (read here about the so-called “third day of war” configuration) in permissive airspace.



https://theaviationist.com/2021/04/02/n ... ass-c-now/