About the seats, MK.10 appeared in the seventies and
the first advertized as zero-zero even though the Mk.9
was deemed capable of it in the sixties. To give a time
frame : the first live test was on a Martin-Baker sending
employee Doddy Hay up & down on April Fools in 1961.
Anything prior was not demonstrably a real zero-zero.
Back then, ejection seats were mostly manually activated.
With the years, the electronics getting smaller and more
powerful, ejection sequence went more and more automatic
until on modern jets a pilot can literally wake up away from
his plane with a slap of fresh air.
As all can see from
Oscar's post, most PAF ejection seats
save on the F-16s are prior to that Mk.10 I used as yardstick..
The Mk.10 is a nice piece of kit found on many & most jets
from Chendus to Kfirs, and even the Rafale demonstrator!
It just got left behind as even Wiki summarized easily :
The first successful emergency use of a Mk.10 seat involved a Red Arrows BAE Hawk on 17 May 1980
after the aircraft struck the mast of a yacht moored offshore at Brighton.[2]A fatal accident involving the Red Arrows
in November 2011 resulted in the temporary grounding of Royal Air Force aircraft fitted with Mk.10 seats.[3]
Checking those highlighted dates, a layman could guess just
about correctly that 30 years is the upper life limit of this product
past which technological advances make it obsolete even if
the seat itself still works fine.
The present series has differences that make it ... well, a different beast
having been developed along the Euro-Fighter program and entering
service in 1995. Here is a summary :
Mk.16
The Mk.16 ejection seat design optimises pilot field of view, improves comfort and pilot efficiency, provides integration with OBOGS, chemical defence and helmet mounted systems and incorporates a second generation electronic sequencer with increased reliability and maintainability. With the Mk.16, Martin-Baker is extending the limits of escape system technology while simultaneously improving aircrew efficiency, reliability and ease of maintenance coupled with lower life cycle costs.
Mk.16A
The Mk16A grew out of the early work undertaken by Martin-Baker on the EF Demonstrator in 1984. This aircraft was fitted with the Mk.10LX seat and through various iterations, the Mk16A was developed between 1990-95 culminating in the delivery of seven seats for the Development Aircraft (DA) programme. The development of the Mk16A ejection seat was carried out at Martin-Baker’s facilities at Denham and Chalgrove and Langford Lodge in Northern Ireland. Because of the capabilities and wide operating envelope of the aircraft, Martin-Baker was presented with a series of challenges which have had to be overcome during the development of the seat such as the accommodation of a wider range of pilot models covering height, weight and sex requirements as well as achieving compatibility with equipment such as the Head Mounted Display (HMD), Chemical and Biological protection units (CB) and general aircrew equipment. Furthermore, the Mk16A seat utilizes a second generation digital seat sequencer which incorporates a strategy of continuous sensing of external environmental parameters. Under certain speed and altitude conditions the recovery timings at which the parachute is deployed are varied in order to optimise the terrain clearance.
Mk.16E
The System Development & Demonstration (SDD) ejection seat that was selected by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company is a further development of the Mk.16 range that has already been successful with the Raytheon T-6 Texan II (JPATS), the Eurofighter Typhoon, the NASA T-38N and US Air Force T-38 upgrade programs. More importantly, the US16E will be common to all F-35 Lightning II aircraft variants.
Mk.16F
New generation lightweight fighter aircraft, such as Eurofighter and Dassault Rafale, demand significant weight reduction for all their subsystems in order to achieve a lower aircraft total mass. The Mk.16 ejection seat achieves its remarkably light weight by combining the twin catapult outer cylinder tubes as both propulsion system and as the seat's primary structure. The Mk.16 ejection seat design optimizes pilot field of view, improves comfort and pilot efficiency, provides integration with OBOGS, chemical defence and helmet mounted systems. Reliability and maintainability have been key elements in the design, resulting in an escape system that has full component accessibility in the cockpit. Modular construction enables the seat to be safely removed or installed in minutes without removing the aircraft cockpit canopy. These and other design features will ensure that this new generation of ejection seat succeeds the Martin-Baker Mk.10 as the world's most popular escape system.
So to be clear, replacing the seats is not easy and more of a MLU thing.
The idea is that after 30 years, both the seat and the aircraft it pops out
of should be replaced much sooner than any later.
Have a great day all, Tay.