Taking a ride with the Martin-Baker ejection seat: Weapon of the Week

Eject, eject, eject

It's the last thing anyone strapped into a fast mover wants to hear

But if the moment comes and the decision is made, there's one manufacturer, pilot and passenger will likely hope they're strapped into

Martin Baker. And that's why they're the subject of our weapon of the week

For 80 years, the name Martin Baker, was one air crews could count on if things went wrong

We're proud to have recorded 7,77 injections live saved to date, of which 3,600 are U.S

aviators, live saved. The U.S. government, Air Force, Navy, Marines, is our biggest customer numerically

We have about 3,000 seats in the U.S. Navy, and 2,300 seats were the U

the US Air Force. In the eight decades since the English-based company got into the ejection seat

business, the expectation of what an ejection seat can deliver changed right along with the

aircraft at Flazin. In its earliest iterations, it was all about surviving the ejection. Now

Steve Roberts, head of business development for Martin Baker, says that's not enough. It's about

getting the pilot back in the fight, so escape an evasion, and they've now assigned a degree of

They're trying to make sure that there's a 5% risk of injury. Legacy seats in the past would have had a much higher risk of injury

Like any other engineering and manufacturing firm, Martin Baker continues to push for the kind of innovation that will continue to shrink that risk

This is the US 16e ejection seat developed specifically for the F It pioneered new technology with electronics with a new parachute with airbags we call

neck protection device. And again, it allowed a wider range of aircrew to be accommodated and also allowed safe ejection

at high speed and also for a much smaller and much larger range of aircrew

I want to kind of double tap on that a little bit because for the longest time, you know

The ejection seats, the planes themselves were made for a certain model of a person

Obviously, things have changed, and so the ejection seat needs to be able to accommodate different body types

How does it do that? So we do that by the seats of chair

So we have a whole seat tilt. So the seat can tilt from 22 degrees to 16.5 degrees

And the seat bucket moves up by about 7.5 inches. So it's a combination of, for the very large male, the seat will tilt fully back with a bucket fully down

For the very small female, the seat is tilted fully forward with a seat bucket in top position

Add that all up, and it comes out to the same piece of equipment being able to handle a 6'5 airman

geared out to 300 pounds, and a 4'11 airman weighing as little as 103 pounds

And one quick update to a number you heard earlier in the story, since our visit with Steve, the number of lives saved by a Martin Baker ejection seat grew by four to 7,781

The last three happened during a practice demonstration when two patrol to France Alpha Jet aircraft collided about 130 miles east of Paris

Both pilots and a passenger successfully ejected using Martin Baker's F10. Ellen's seat