F-35 update - Ejection seat - AVweb

Air Force Wants F-35 Changes

By Russ Niles

 The Air Force is considering asking for a major modification to the F-35 that would further disrupt the delivery schedule of the complex program. Defense News is reporting the Air Force wants Lockheed Martin to cost out installing a different ejection seat. The current Martin Baker design can cause potentially fatal neck injuries to pilots weighing less than 136 pounds and put pilots weighing up to 165 pounds at greater risk from injury during an ejection. As a result, the Air Force has banned pilots weighing less than 136 pounds from flying the jet. Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch confirmed that the Air Force has asked Lockheed Martin to look into the costs and other issues involved in switching to the United Technologies Aces 5 ejection seat. "We believe it's prudent to determine what it would cost, how much [impact on] the schedule, what the timeline would be, if something else happened and we wanted to go a different way,” he told Defense News. The news comes a few days after the Marines announced they were pulling old F/A-18s out of mothballs in the Arizona desert to fill out their squadrons because of delays in getting their F-35s. Boeing has already made a couple of Hornets airworthy and there are plans to bring a total of 30 back to life. Only about 32 percent of its fleet of F/A-18s are airworthy and the Marines need at least 58 percent on the line to maintain operational readiness and do all the training and other flying the fighters have to do. Other F/A-18 users have bridged the gap between the 35-year-old Hornet and the F-35 with the Super Hornet but the Marines elected to gamble on the F-35, which was supposed to be available in 2006.