BAE Systems have added another item to the long list of items that they have produced for the F-35 Lightning II, otherwise known as the Joint Strike Fighter–a new ejection seat. The seats will be installed in all F-35s. For interested parties, they’ve put the new system through a very rigorous barrage of tests and it has passed with flying colors.
There are three variants of the F-35 Lightning II including the Carrier Variant (designed for deployment on aircraft carriers), the Short Take Off and Vertical Landing variant, and the standard aircraft. The aircraft are designed to use mostly standard parts, but they vary where they must in order to meet the operational requirements of the intended customers. In short, the aircraft are designed such that a pilot could fly any variant with a little variant-specific training.
F-35 Ejection seat by BAE Systems plc, on Flickr
The most spectacular of the tests included a full scale model of the front of an F-35, a rocket sled, and more than 30 ejection tests. The team has posted some interesting images and video of some of the tests, including one of the high-speed ejection tests. By the way, that’s a mannequin not a person.
It doesn’t last long, but it doesn’t need to with a rocket sled traveling at more than 600 mph and an ejection seat that clears the aircraft in seconds from when the pilot pulls the handle. Still, they manage to collect more than 900,000 measurements every second.