Anyone found an AMRAAM?
 

MADDOG.... :eek:

Blinking lucky nothing was in the way....

"But it's not ruled out it landed on the ground"

That's gravity for you, it sucks

I guess any particular details of investigation will be classified but still it is a good question how exactly did it happened. Press is reporting both Spanish Eurofighters serving policy mission in Baltics are called back to Spain with immediate effect. Whatever happened it is a good luck it was north-bound and did not captured any civil airliner around the area. Be it east-bound, there is Russian 76s Airborne Troops Division based in Pskov, well within AMRAAM reach from the firing point - imagine the consequences!

First of all, lucky it did not bring down an airliner. Scary to think about the potential outcome.

Would be interesting to know if it was an unintentional release (finger-trouble), launched as either a MADDOG or against a FCR target by mistake, or if it was an inadvertent release caused by a system malfunction. If not an airliner it could have been Pierre flying around in his Deux Mille, acting as opponent on a 2v2 training sortie, sucking it up or defeating it with electrons.

Would also be interesting to know how the Amraam is mech'ed on the Typhoon, and what procedures Pedro has in place for training flights with live missiles.
In the Viper it takes at least four switch actions to fire the Amraam. Select Master Arm switch to ARM, select A/A mastermode (or MSL OVRD/DGFT mode), designate on a target to get a FCR lock (or depress and hold manual range/uncage for MADDOG), press the pickle button. I assume its roughly the same steps in the Typhoon.

I always regarded flying an armed QRA jet as redair, on A/A training sorties as an accident waiting to happened, yet in my airforce we do it on a day to day basis. Of course we have procedures in place and so on, but it does not take more then a short lapse in concentration, in the heat of the fight, to forget that one has live missiles under the wings. It has happened before and it will probably happened again.

25 May 1982

14 Squadron Jag GR.1 XX963/AL shot down 35 miles north-east of Bruggen by 92 Squadron Phantom FGR.2 XV422. Pilot ejected safely. Definitely a Sidewinder, presumably an AIM-9L.

Because all the British Limas were elsewhere? :-)

I assume the world has moved on to employing pilots who 'just know' when they are carrying live weapons in peacetime!

CG

My lab techs at my uni in aerospace engineering lab worked with said Jag pilot as an apprentice, prior to him joining the RAF, hence I heard this story 2 decades ago.

cheers

And it was that sort of assumption that led to the F4/Jag shootdown accident in the first place....

Not sure how well versed you are in the full details of what happened that day but as I understand it and have heard it (from one of those involved) chuck in the standard pressurised exercise scenario in RAFG, then add a slightly unusual/possibly controversial decision from on high about the carriage of the weapons, then miss a piece of duct tape, then add a bit of pressure to get a trigger pulse on film, and.......

I know all those involved know darn well it shouldn't have happened, but I gather one well known aviation psychologist consulted at some point about the event said that given the nature of the training he was suprised it didn't happen more often...

So yes, I would hope the Forces have moved on from simply relying on duct tape to break a sequence of highly rehearsed motor actions.

That took much longer than I thought it would!:ok:

I get the complexities, but couldn't resist.

CG

Just glad it wasn't heading eastbound. That could have gotten rather nasty at the political level.
In 1987, one of our Tomcats hit one of our RF-4's over the Med. In that case we lost a bird.
In this case, nobody got hit, so there's a small blessing to this serious case of not having your head on right.

https://defenceoftherealm.wordpress....-by-a-phantom/

Remember it well as I was at Bruggen