“Because the engineers at Northrop Grumman engineered to a computer model that can simulate how an arresting wire acts when used for arrestment, and the model was wrong.”
The Navy’s carrier fighter could not catch the wire. The hook point sat a little over 7 feet from the main gear, and in the 2011 Lakehurst trials it never engaged once. An instrumentation tech called it on day one by looking at the jet. The pivot pin meant to last 25 arrestments galled after one or two. A wire model nobody properly validated cost years of redesign that one technician’s eyes would have saved.