An E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack System aircraft suffered water damage to its radar antenna and other electrical systems after Northrop Grumman contract maintainers forgot to open up drain holes, according to an investigation report released Friday.
Northrop’s maintainers were required to make sure the drain holes weren’t obstructed as part of the pre-flight inspection process, the report said. But pre-flight inspections were conducted four times last July, and signed off on by Northrop personnel, without catching the drain hole obstructions. The damage wasn’t caught until the JSTARS was flown back to Robins and maintainers there conducted their own inspection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Investigators found that human factors \u2014 particularly Northrop personnel failing to properly conduct the pre-flight inspections that should have caught the obstructed drain holes \u2014 contributed to the problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The water damage affecting that JSTARS was known as a Class A issue, meaning it cost at least $2 million to repair. The issues discovered with the other JSTARS were Class C mishaps, costing $50,000 to $500,000 to repair, or Class D mishaps requiring $20,000 to $50,000 to repair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The incidents also raised concerns about the quality of work being done at Northrop’s Lake Charles depot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Officials at Northrop Grumman declined to discuss personnel matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The company “remains steadfast in its commitment to quality and safety to ensure the high-demand Joint STARS fleet is mission-ready for America’s war fighters,” Northrop spokesman Vic Beck said in a statement to Air Force Times. “Since this incident occurred in July 2016, we have implemented operational and process improvements in partnership with our Air Force customer.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack System aircraft suffered water damage to its radar antenna and other electrical systems after Northrop Grumman contract maintainers forgot to open up drain holes, according to an investigation report released Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":42843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":67,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[12,16,67],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3320],"class_list":["post-20455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education-transition","category-news","category-your-air-force"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"DOHH2SK7ARF7VHW2KS32IHJDJ4","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-air-force\/2017\/03\/18\/air-force-maintainer-mistakes-on-jstars-caused-water-damaged-electrical-systems\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n