“The past week has seen Trump _____”

OH! I hadn’t considered the abuse of function for expediency.

If they were emptying the drum by putting the cannon in the clearing mode and running it via the weapons control in the cockpit (gear down lockout disabled for clearing?) it could be that the clearing mechanism broke or was overridden and the firing…

I’m pretty sure that even a very preliminary investigation can tell the difference between a fuel fire cause by static and a plane getting hit by 20mm rounds.

I’m guessing he might have set the gun off directly rather than firing it from inside the cockpit. A short on a switch or relay somewhere else, not turn off the safeties and hit the gun button.

Truly chilling.

What I’m imagining is something more basic. Like, he went to unload it, and instead of feeding the ammunition out of the drum and into whatever receptacle it goes into, it fed forward into the chambers, causing the gun to fire.

I would assume it has some sort of interlock that would normally prevent this, that was not…

It’s basically exactly like every time you accidentally honk the horn of your car when you’re cleaning the interior.

I know freak accident’s happen. A US Navy F-4 Phantom on the USS Forestall experienced a power surge on the aircraft carriers deck and launched rockets into an A-4 Skyhawk that caused a chain reaction that killed 134 Fatalities and almost sunk the Forestall.

That may be one of the most horrific sentences I’ve ever read..

M61 Vulcan 20mm cannons are typically loaded with API (armor piercing incendiary) and HEI (high explosive incendiary) rounds, either of which could easily ignite the fuel in the jet that exploded.

M61A, not M16A

I immediately thought “Ah, the classic Battlefield 2 manuever”

I do the same thing in GTA when someone spawns another jet. Sky is mine. 

I got a Presidential Emergency Alert for THIS???

Hannah Gadsby has taught us that what modern audiences really want from comedy is for it to not be funny.

we’re gonna look back at this quasi-fascist, joyless, humorless cultural hellscape and see how dangerous all this repression was. we need catharsis. we need to be able to laugh at fucked-up things. allowing every joyless scold who doesn’t like something to dictate everyone’s entertainment choices is not gonna end…

I’d love to think so, but there’s far too big a crowd looking to pounce on anything that can appear offensive if you turn your head and squint just right.

How dare you. Don’t you know that satirizing shitty behavior is the exact same thing as endorsing shitty behavior?

It is on tv, sometimes.

Yes, fun is dead.