101–110 of 693 posts
An 80's movie dream is playing out for some rural kids, where they stumble upon a smouldering high-tech wreckage and as they explore it, men in suits pour out of black SUVs and talk to them in taciturn ways. Seriously though, these jets sound terribly overpriced for how unreliable they seem to be.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't the whole point of an F-35 that it is really hard to track with radar?
Outside of combat missions, stealth aircraft have little widgets on them which multiply their radar signature. Stealth aircraft are meant to be stealth only in real combat missions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luneburg_lens#Radar_reflector
(caption: "Luneburg reflectors (the marked protrusion) on an F-35")
edit: Also here (with quotes from a US Air Force Avionics Technician):
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/these-devices-make-stealth-a... ("How Luneburg lens radar reflectors are used to make stealth aircraft visible on radar screens")
Well they still missing an atom bomb from 1958 dropped by a B47 bomber near Tybee island Georgia.
Wait, whaat?
It's not the only missing nuke, either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Mars_Bluff_B-47_nuclear_w... is probably the (darkly) funniest one in the list. That one was recovered, but "the Air Force tried to nuke my kids' play house" is a story not many people can tell.
An 80's movie dream is playing out for some rural kids, where they stumble upon a smouldering high-tech wreckage and as they explore it, men in suits pour out of black SUVs and talk to them in taciturn ways. Seriously though, these jets sound terribly overpriced for how unreliable they seem to be.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the plane is in trim (does the F35 even have manual trim?) and/or on autopilot, I can see a long glide to somewhere with a stable flight path, at least until the loss of thrust due to fuel exhaustion leads to an aerodynamic stall. But in of these circumstances, there would have been no need for the pilot to eject. Strange indeed.
I heard a story about an FA-18 where the pilot passed out, suffocated and died, and the jet just flew until it ran out gas and went down in the ocean. We know the JSF is a giant expensive computer. I wonder what code is in the exception block for when the plane is working but the pilot leaves. Maybe it does just try and gently crash somewhere. It's more surprising it didn't have some sort of phone home, become a dron…
I doubt there's an exception block for that. What if there's a fault and it triggers while the pilot is still in the plane?
> It's more surprising it didn't have some sort of phone home, become a drone, style fall back mechanism. I certainly think that'll be on the Jira board next sprint.
I doubt it. All of those ideas seem to have deal-breaker drawbacks in a military system. What if there's a fault and it "phones home" during a mission, breaking radio silence? What if an adversary figures out how to activate drone-mode, then hijacks and crashes the planes when they need to perform?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m wondering where they get the keyboards for these; I have a IBM terminal keyboard and it only goes up to F-24.
You joke, but some people are still searching for the “Any” key.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They should be able to track gross location on radar. The stealth capabilities are mostly focused on thwarting precise location and missile guidance radars. The issue here is finding the precise crash site. General location should be known. Trying to find it under the tree canopy could be more challenging depending on how rural it is.
I think they do have the general location, they keep mentioning two lakes near the base. So I suspect it's at the bottom of one of them, although then it's odd they are asking for public help finding them.
It doesn't take a Mach 1.6 aircraft very long to go 25 miles. That's only about 75 seconds of flight time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Incompetence is positively correlated with salary and responsibility. The more money you handle on your job the likelier you are to be incompetent. It comes as no surprise to me that people responsible for these machines of war are more incompetent than you or me.
> The more money you handle on your job the likelier you are to be incompetent. And your source for this data is…?
