111–120 of 693 posts
The big question here is was it a Martin-Baker ejection seat? If so, there's a limited edition high end wristwatch in it for the pilot: https://us.bremont.com/pages/explore-bremont-partnerships-ma...
and a Tie https://martin-baker.com/ejection-tie-club/
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It’s definitely BS. Transponders aside, the US has radar and near real-time satellite imagery of every square inch of American territory. There is a zero percent chance they don’t know where this plane is.
Isn't the whole point of an F-35 that it is really hard to track with radar?
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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.
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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…
> 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. 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 mech…
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Wait, whaat?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_coll... 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.
Fortunately, the fissile nuclear core was stored elsewhere on the aircraft
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_coll... 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.
Fortunately, the fissile nuclear core was stored elsewhere on the aircraft While I'll admit that is very effective failsafe, did they actually require the crew to do bomb surgery with a demon core during flight if they needed to arm the device?
https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/mk6.htm
> This weapon was a capsule bomb, meaning that the nuclear material for the bomb was kept in a special capsule separate from the rest of the device for safety's sake. Just before the bomb was to be dropped from the delivery aircraft the capsule was inserted into the bomb casing and the weapon became armed. It was also the first atomic weapon to offer the delivery aircraft's bombardier the option of changing the detonation altitude while the bomber was in flight to the target.
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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…?
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.
An iPhone would be over a billion dollars if we only made 40.
You could argue that an iPhone would cost over a billion because you need to develop iOS. But why would you do that instead of modding android for 1/100th of the cost, if you're only gonna make 40?