I withdraw my skepticism.
In my opinion.
The headline is a bit misleading. You can’t maintain something if you don’t have replacement parts. That being said, I wonder why the pilot had so much difficulty landing that he decided to punch out?
Quote:
The widow Schmitz and her lawyers hope to learn through the legal discovery process whether the aforementioned components were proven counterfeit and the information concealed by the USAF. The plaintiffs also question whether the Air Force had met its own standards of reliability insomuch as the USAF Safety Center recommended in 2012 that sequencers of the type suspected to have failed in Lt. Schmitz’s ejection seat be replaced with more reliable hardware. Delays in replacing subject sequencers resulted in the Air Force continuing to use them longer than intended—long enough, in fact, for the specimen in Schmitz’s F-16 to fail.
In point of fact, Schmitz’s seat—owing to an acknowledged shortage of spare parts—had not been serviced in three-years. Notwithstanding implicit knowledge that doing so could result in fatality, the Air Force neglected to adequately maintain the ejection seats in its aircraft—so reported Military.com.