The air force would install automatic ground collision avoidance systems (Auto-GCAS) on all of its F-16V jets by next year, Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said yesterday, two days after a fighter pilot went missing in an apparent mishap.
Air force Captain Hsin Po-yi (辛柏毅) was flying a Lockheed Martin F-16V on a routine training flight on Tuesday night when the jet vanished from radar over waters off Hualien County.
Hsin reported a software anomaly and displayed behavior consistent with spatial disorientation, the 5th Mixed Tactical Wing told a news conference the day after the incident.
Photo: Yu Tai-lang, Taipei Times
The military previously said that Hsin had reported his intention to eject from the aircraft three times, but the onboard software did not confirm a successful ejection.
The search for the pilot was ongoing at press time last night.
Koo told the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee that Taiwan’s 66 newly acquired F-16C/D Block 70/72 jets came with Auto-GCAS as a standard feature.
However, the air force operates 139 F-16Vs that lack the safety system, he said.
F-16Vs are older F-16A/B Block 20 aircraft that have been upgraded with the same advanced avionics and equipment in the Block 70/72 variants.
The US has been contracted to provide Taiwan with 141 of the jets.
Lieutenant General Lee Ching-jan (李慶然), the air force Chief of Staff, said that fitting F-16 jets with Auto-GCAS is a time-consuming process involving the integration of complex systems and additional pilot training.
Ensuring that the digital Auto-GCAS would function in fighter designs that fundamentally are based on analogue systems is part of the technical challenge, Lee said.
For the same reasons, the US Air Force has yet to fully outfit its F-16s with Auto-GCAS technology, he said, adding that test flights are still being conducted.
F-16Vs make use of “zero-zero” ejection seats that can be safely deployed from an aircraft with zero airspeed and altitude, Lee said.
The ejection seats utilized in F-16C/D Block 70/72 aircraft are capable of the same performance with enhanced ejection distance and limb protection, he said.
Floatation devices and rafts that automatically inflate upon impact with water bodies are standard features of the ejection seats in the F-16 variants that most foreign militaries do not possess, he said.
The air force continually searches for ways to improve pilot survivability, he said.
Major General Chiang Yi-cheng (江義誠), the air force’s inspector general, told Wednesday’s news conference that the service has grounded F-16s in Hualien County, Taichung and Chiayi County while safety and maintenance inspections are conducted.
Pilot training to counter the effects of spatial disorientation, recovery from unusual attitudes and flying by instruments would be enhanced in response to the incident, he said.
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