The Mother of All Negligent Discharges

[SewTexas]

this is so not gonna look good on the resume

[Abraham]

It's probably what it looks like...an accident with someone's working life in tatters, buuuuuuuuut, an investigation is absolutely required.

[ELB]

A pretty amazing story, but...

To my (limited) knowledge the Gatling gun in an F-16 has to have both electrical and hydraulic power to fire, and there is a safety that prevents the gun from firing if there is weight on the nose gear. Plus, of course, ammo.

So a lot would have to happen/go wrong for the gun to fire on the ground.

I've seen a couple subsequent reports that a Belgian F-16 being worked on burned up, but no mention of gun fire. Hope we get to see the final report.

I agree with this assessment. LOTS of safety interlocks had to fail for the gun to fire. When weight is on the wheels, some systems are offline, namely radar and the gun unless it's in maintenance mode.

I talked to my boss (former F-16 instructor pilot, former maintainer on A-7s and F-16s, both of which have similar guns) about this when he come into the office, and he thought it a bit...unusual... as well. He noted that to fire it, at least from the cockpit, one would also have to set switch(es) to arm it (similar to what G26ster had to do in a Cobra) before the trigger would work.

He did suggest one plausible scenario: if there was a round in the chamber, a transient electrical impulse might trigger that single round to fire (similar to the Zuni rocket that lit up John McCain). He said that happened to one of his unit's A-7Ds, albeit while it was flying, not on the ground. It was approaching the runway with the cockpit arming switches in the off position when the gun discharged and put a single round in the runway.

However I suspect that the final story will be there was a small explosion that started the fire that destroyed the one F-16, and the sound of the explosion was initially thought by some people to be a round fired from a nearby F-16.

[PriestTheRunner]

It's probably what it looks like...an accident with someone's working life in tatters, brzrzrzrzrzrz, an investigation is absolutely required.

Not to make light of the situation, but Fixed That For You...

[Maxwell]

Just four more and he'll be an Ace.

Brutal

[crazy2medic]

Interesting the article used the term "bullet" not "shell"