Flight Control Flaw Suspected in Fighter Crash
The Lockheed YF-22 jet that crashed Saturday at Edwards Air Force base most likely suffered a malfunction in its flight control system, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Merrill McPeak testified Wednesday at a congressional hearing.
McPeak said he suspected that flaws in the system’s software or logic may have caused the aircraft to pitch up and down violently just before slamming into the runway. But he cautioned that he was simply speculating.
An accident investigation isn’t expected to report a finding for 30 to 45 days, McPeak said during a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee.
The YF-22 aircraft, a prototype of the future F-22, skidded several thousand feet and then caught fire, burning for an hour and a half. The Air Force said it would not conduct further test flights until the first F-22 is produced by Lockheed.
McPeak said the aircraft had been scheduled to conduct supersonic tests and had just been refueled by an aerial tanker when those tests were canceled because of problems with the telemetry system, which transmits data from an aircraft to ground controllers.
The YF-22 had begun a series of low-altitude passes over the runway to burn up fuel when the accident occurred, McPeak testified.
McPeak said the Air Force had obtained 90% of the data it was counting on from the test program.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, however, had anticipated using the Lockheed plane to conduct aeronautics research at the Dryden Flight Research.
