I spent the Whitsun period plotting where the wreckage had come down...

As I remember the RAFG event (including discussions with Alastair) there was a late aircraft swap, no A/C ARMED boards, no white tape on the Master Arm, no Telford on the front scope (normal with live loads other than QRA/Battle Flt), a weapon system that looked and sounded pretty much the same with live or sim missiles, all nicely wrapped up with a Stn Cdr decision to fly armed aircraft for training and missiles that could only be flown once fully armed (motors, fuses and warheads). No human factors in play there, then. "March the guilty bastards in..."

ISTR the published BOI report made much of the organisational errors, which may explain why the Scottish officer made possibly the most successful intercept of his career - in the admin office, preventing copies reaching the 43 Sqn crew-room, presumably in case the accident was contagious. Unfortunately he couldn't do much about all the other copies on the Stn. :E

It wasn't "duct tape" that was specified, it was red 1/2 inch specific to task tape.
So specific that the bombheads managed to run out of it!!
And the holes in the cheese lined up just like that...in fact iirc they used black tape instead handy that, however I also remember a white cross being left in position from the adhesive on the back of the tapes....

In the early 1980s, a USAFE F-15 had an in-flight uncommanded sidewinder launch. It was retrieved only because a German farmer eventually noticed a hole in the roof of his barn, which led to finding similar breaches of the hay loft and concrete floor.

I would keep an eye on eBay over the next few days. I also bet the pilot concerned is spending every spare minute scouring the Estonian countryside; they probably told him its coming out his wages.

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away... I once worked on Typhoon & AMRAAM.
From what I can remember the switchology to fire one was not that complicated.
The system wiring and carriage is specifically designed to prevent inadvertent firing, in a whole variety of failure situations. I would be surprised if this is a system failure, if it is it has ramifications for all Typhoons/AMRAAM.

I would be interested to hear from the learned sky warriors here on what they think of the idea of conducting air combat training with live missiles only 50 km from the Russian border.

Would that not have been thought of as too risky? I could imagine intercepts being practiced, but full on hectic furballs with live weapons? Would this also not allow the Russians to easily monitor tactics/performance?

Has there ever been a case before where an AMRAAM fired without command from the pilot?

Surprised that while the press release stated 'launch', no-one here has considered the possibility what really happened was a 'jettison', where the missile was ejected in an un-powered, and un-targetted 'dead' state.

There have been many cases of unplanned, inadvertent jettisons, either through finger trouble or an aircraft fault. A lot less steps involved in a jettison compared to an actual launch.

Thats because Air to Air missiles and the way they are mounted on the missile rails, precludes jettison. As far as I know there are no aircraft that can jettison Air to Air missiles. For the missile to leave the rail it has to either move forward and clear the entire rail, or to slide aft. It does not just fall off like a bomb does when the hooks release the logs. Only way to get rid of a missile is to fire it. The Amraam will normally not respond to launch command (pickle) if the system does not have a target (FCR lock). That can however be overridden by a command to launch it as a Maddog. Sidewinders and the like will launch instantly when the pickle switch is depressed. They don't care if there is a target or not. They just go "whoosh".....

Regarding jettison of Air to Ground munitions, it takes as many steps (switch actions) to jettison them as it does to drop dem on a target. Only way to drop them in one switch action is to press the Emergency Jettison switch. This switch is normally guarded by some sort of breakable plastic or a flip away cover that prevent accidental activation. And should you use the Emergency Jettison switch, you will not only loose one bomb, but you will jettison all the stores that can be jettisoned including bombs and fuel tanks.

Regarding tactics close to the border, I am pretty sure that both the Spanish and French detachment in the baltic area, have very restrictive SOP's on what they can practice in that area, including which mode of operation they are allowed to use on their radars and EW systems. Most of the time they are probably only practicing close control intercepts to train the local GCI controllers.

orca beat me to it... orca, how did the jettison of the wing mounted missile work on the type you describe? Was it by jettison of the entire rack maybe?

Whilst AIM-9 & ASRAAM are rail-only mounted weapons that do not have a jettison capability, AMRAAM and AIM-9/ Sparrow/ Skyflash/ Phoenix have both rail and ejector carriage capability.

F4, F3, Sea Harrier, Typhoon, F-14, F-15 (and more) all have (had) the capability to carry their longer range AA missiles on ejector mounted stations. I know for certain that Sea Harrier had an AMRAAM jettison capability when carried on the fuselage gun-pod ejector stations, so assuming all the other 'ejector' mounted platforms did too.

It is a very long time since I worked on Typhoon, prior to it being in service. My memory is very sketchy but I can remember a few things.

Jettison
Two types: Emergency Jettison (EJ) and Selective Jettison (SJ)

EJ will dump everything that is allowable, by pressing the EJ button.
SJ will blow off the group of allowable stores previously selected by the pilot, by pressing the SJ button.
The system knows what stores are fitted and what stores cannot be jettisoned.

I have a vague recollection that wing mounted missiles could not be jettisoned because they were rail mounted, as mentioned a bit earlier in this thread.

In any case the EJ/SJ buttons are hard to hit accidentally, as you would expect; the last thing you want is to dump all your stores accidentally (including external tanks). They were mounted on the left panelling, not on the HOTAS, so hard to press accidentally.

The Late Arm and firing trigger are on the stick.

The Telegraph has stated that the missile was fired:
"A statement from the Spanish Ministry of Defence confirmed that a missile had been accidentally fired by one of their Eurofighter jets".

That there was so much concern about the missile hitting other airborne aircraft also suggests that it was fired rather than jettisoned.
Reports indicate that the likely location of the missile is ten's of kilometres from where it was released, again suggesting a fired missile rather than jettisoned.

There you go, I just learned something new. Thanks for the info JSF.