39 German Tornados grounded

The 39 most advanced German Tornado aircraft have been grounded. The ASST A3 versions of the Tornado, including 6 flying recon missions over Turkey in support of anti ISIS strikes have been grounded after the manufacturer found a fastener inside one of the cockpit instruments came loose. The problem can't be fixed by the unit, and requires the OEM to come up with a fix. Once the fix is found, it can be done on site by the OEM. The problem affects other nations aircraft as well.

This is just the latest problem the Luftwaffe has been hit with. Reliability rates for existing aircraft have been dropping in recent years, and their new aircraft have had problems from the manufacturer. They are currently looking at buying as many as 6 C-130J aircraft to perform missions their new A400Ms can't perform yet.

The problem is that the screws have apparently come loose on the housings of a cockpit device. A Ministry of Defense spokesman explained that the problem is "a fastener inside of a device." It is simply a "mechanical problem," he said, "the repair is not complicated, but also not something one can fix on one's own."
The manufacturer, which noticed the problem itself, must now deliver a solution that can be inspected and approved by the air safety experts at the ministry. Ultimately, the problem will likely be able to be dealt with on-site, meaning that planes will be repaired where they are currently stationed.
Grounded since Wednesday evening
Planes owned by other nations are also affected. As is normal in such instances, all affected planes will remain on the ground until the cause of the problem can be found and fixed. The Ministry of Defense grounded all affected planes Wednesday, "in order to guarantee that no danger to persons and materiel exists."

www.dw.com...

I swear that if there is ever world war three it will be over in about two weeks.
Not because of nuclear weapons but because all of the modern weapons will be broken down.

Dzus rail clip?

Well Tornado is getting long in the tooth. However, Luftwaffe Tornados are certainly not as well used as the UK's RAF

On the A400M, the Germans have only a handful delivered and the whole programme is a masterclass of delay. The UK had to lease C17s (if I recall) to plug the gap. It's a shame when the Europeans get together on high prestige military projects you just get delay. Could it be the French? Surely not.

a reply to: paraphi

It's more than that with the Germans. Pretty much everything they have is either coming apart, or isn't living up to its promise. They've had to stop delivery of the Typhoon once and had problems related to manufacture crop up several times. They're currently where the US is heading with regards to the Air Force.

originally posted by: Blackfinger
Dzus rail clip?

Nah that would probably be noticed by the operators, seems this was found by the manufacturer and hasn't actually occurred in use. Must have been a newer bit of kit? They would have stopped testing the older stuff?

Most equipment I worked with not on dzus rails had captive screws.

Wonder what it was, new screen for brimstone?

a reply to: Forensick

They put new screens into the recon version of them earlier in the year, and they were so bright that they could only be used during daytime operations, because they blinded the pilots at night. It could be from that screen, or something associated with it.

a reply to: Blackfinger
...Or one of those god awful Airbus style captive(selective interpretation) screws. Whichever it is surely something as simple as a squirt of torque stripe or Proseal 870 B half would stop any fastener from migration and at least give a visual indication of any pending problem?

LEE.

a reply to: Zaphod58

That´s so true. NH90s grounded, no spare parts, tornados grounded because of loose screws, newest upgrade on them made them unusable at night because the displays are too bright (god, it´s probably just a variable in the code or a resistor to change). Eurocopter and Eurofighter problems, only our tanks and ships seem to work fine.

Our cyber threat division is a joke, too. We do not even have decent programmers, they outsourced the governmental RAT "bundestrojaner", can you imagine that. Can you also imagine they had a backdoor for the backdoor, so to speak. They also had outgoing packets to "unknown servers" at the Bundestag for DAYS and no one had the balls to take an axe and cut the fibre optics and they had to replace the whole network gear, probably with some even more vulnerable models.. Our country is ruled by a -for the change- female idiot and the head of the division is a lamer / DUP (dumbest user possible).

There are fare more capable people to be found at a certain computer club in germany and surrounding special interest groups like phreaks, SDR. Offtopic again, but this riles me up! It makes me angry because we have so much talented people, yet I´ve never heard of recruiting those. Heck last time I checked some people have more bots and servers at their disposal than the whole bundestag together.