This is brilliant!! "How?" F16 shoots itself

Hi Guys and Girls,

Just found this:

www.defenseindustrydaily.com...

Near the bottom in the Europe section. (No direct link to the article. Sorry.)

Extract:-

Europe
Local media reports, that a Dutch F-16 fighter jet shot itself with its own autocannon during a military exercise. The jet suffered considerable damage, but the pilot was unharmed. The incident already happened in January and has been investigated ever since. A pair of the fighter jets were training together and shooting ground targets with their six-barrel Vulcan autocannons. It is still unclear how the aircraft managed to hit itself.

Personally I'd love to know how that happened. I've seen air-soft, paintball and 0.177/0.22bb's (.50 steel bb round coming back at 450ft is a little scary) rebound back at the source. But that seems unlikely with high speed pointy rounds. I love the dutch but less than lethal rubber rounds for the air-force seems unlikely.

Any thoughts?

RAB

Is it banking so hard it enters the firing line?

..since bullets don't turn

a reply to: RAB

Warped/corroded barrels is the leading theory. It happened previously and they found that the gun occasionally misaligned due to corrosion.

Heres another way.

In 1956, the Grumman aircraft corporation was testing its new fighter, the F-11 Tiger, off the coast of New York state. The pilot fired a long burst from its guns and moments later suffered mysterious, catastrophic damage that caved in the windshield and mortally wounded the engine. What happened? The pilot had shot himself down.

Oopsie

Speed and a bad angle of attack when firing can do this.

The aircraft catches up with its own bullets.

This has happened since the first jets.

www.check-six.com...

www.militarytimes.com...

bookpalace.com...

a reply to: RAB

Sadly, the F16 suffered of depression and tried to commit suicide.

a reply to: Trueman

Don't worry Trueman. I have no doubt the the Dutch authorities will offer top end psychological help and counselling to the poor F16.

And if that falls theirs always Prozac to help the F16 level out. Hmm maybe that's what the 737 Max 8 needs? (Sorry not funny!)

RAB

You can definitely do this if you're not careful.

The bullets come out going faster than you, but are decelerating after the leave the barrel. A bullet is experiencing zero thrust and higher drag than aircraft initially (drag is a factor of velocity squared). Slows down relatively fast. If the barrel isn't aligned properly, you can be lobbing them in your own way. Or you can simply fly yourself into their path given enough time if you dive out and pour on thrust. Also, happens when bullets lose energy to a ground strike, but bounce right back up in the air in the path of the aircraft.

Also possible with certain A2G rockets. Or any folding -fin rocket that doesn't work properly. Like the submarines and destroyers who had to dodge (or were hit by) their own torpedoes.

There were a few incidents of the A-10 taking damage from its own 30mm gun during development of that aircraft.

The way the gun was used in strafing runs--fragments of the depleted-uranium slugs ricocheted from the ground target and impacted the jets. It forced a change in tactics used during gun employment against ground targets.