The following is taken direct from the report in the Air Force Times last year.

“An Air Force investigation of a fatal fighter jet crash in 2020 quietly discovered that key components of the pilot’s ejection seat may have been counterfeit, Air Force Times has learned.

First Lt. David Schmitz, an F-16 Fighting Falcon pilot at South Carolina’s Shaw Air Force Base, died June 30, 2020, when his ejection seat malfunctioned as he tried to escape from a failed night time landing. He was thirty-two.

The Air Force’s official inquiry in the months following the accident found that electronics inside the seat were scratched, unevenly sanded, and showed otherwise shoddy craftsmanship.

Those details have come to light in a federal civil lawsuit filed by Schmitz’s widow, Valerie, who is suing three defense companies for negligence and misleading the Air Force about the safety of their products.

The case in U.S. District Court in South Carolina targets F-16 manufacturer Lockheed Martin; Collins Aerospace, which builds the ACES II ejection seat installed on planes across the Air Force; and multiple business units of Teledyne Technologies, which makes the seat’s digital recovery sequencer.

Six transistors “had no conformal coating, were heavily gouged, had arcing scratch marks, were considered obsolete and were suspected of being counterfeit,” the complaint said. A capacitor that may have been damaged while it was handled was “partially dislodged.”

Now, the plaintiffs are calling for a jury trial to recoup damages that could total several million dollars. The complaint accuses the contractors of wrongful death, accident liability, misrepresentation of the seat’s airworthiness, negligent supervision on Lockheed’s part, failure to warn the F-16 community and the public about the seat’s flaws, and violation of South Carolina law.

The full article can be read here : An F-16 pilot died when his ejection seat failed. Was it counterfeit