Background
The mishap aircraft, an F-16CJ with tail number 91-0340, was assigned to the 480th Fighter Squadron, 52d Fighter Wing at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany. On 8 October 2019, the pilot conducted a routine training sortie as part of the wing's local readiness exercise SABER FURY. The mission was planned as a suppression of enemy air defenses training flight. The pilot was flying as number two of a scheduled 4-ship formation, which departed as a 3-ship.
Sequence of Events
At 15:10:42 local time, shortly after take-off, the aircraft experienced a power disruption causing a partial electrical power loss (brownout). This failure impacted the pilot's primary flight and navigation instruments without corresponding fault indications. The embedded GPS/inertial navigation set also lost power and remained off-line. The resulting degradation and mismatch between primary and standby instruments led to spatial disorientation at low altitude and in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). The weather at the airfield had a ceiling of 500 feet and IMC up to 15,000 feet. After two failed attempts to activate the pilot activated recovery system, following two instances of visually acquiring trees below the ceiling, the pilot successfully ejected. The aircraft impacted in a forested area 8 nautical miles south of the base at 15:11:24L and was destroyed. There were no military or civilian casualties.
Cause
The Accident Investigation Board President found, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the cause of the mishap was the combination of two factors. First, the aircraft experienced a partial electrical power loss that caused a cascading failure of the navigation set and primary instruments, displaying unreliable data without fault indications and preventing full transition to standby instruments. Second, the weather conditions at the time of the power disruption caused the pilot to rely on flight instruments during a critical phase of flight. The mismatch in attitude indicator data due to the power disruption caused spatial disorientation and loss of aircraft control. The board noted that the absence of either factor may have prevented the mishap.