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F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

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Re: F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

#301
post #265

So a similar thing happened near some friends' in France. A military jet crashed into the forest near their house, but the air force couldn't figure out where it had gone. Eventually a farmer noticed that a new pond had appeared on his land. The jet made enough of a crater when crashing that drained the nearby swamp and created a new pond deep enough to conceal the full fuselage, thus completely hiding the airplane.…

I wonder if some of the "autopilot" functionality for military aircraft is to swan-dive into water/forest if everyone has already ejected.

If it's going to crash (and can't autoland, which it probably shouldn't attempt even if it could if something ejection-worthy happened), might as well obliterate the thing in a safe place.

Re: F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

#302
post #87

Maybe it's another Cornfield Bomber ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber ): > The "Cornfield Bomber" is the nickname given to a Convair F-106 Delta Dart, operated by the 71st Fighter-Interceptor Squadron of the United States Air Force. In 1970, during a training exercise, it made an unpiloted landing in a farmer's field in Montana, suffering only minor damage, after the pilot had ejected from the aircraft…

I've always wondered what his squadronmates changed his callsign to afterwards.

O'Chute

Re: F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

#303
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes the aircraft analogy uses all one-off parts, no? It would be interesting to see if there's any data available on this. I would expect big ticket items like the engines to be bespoke, but even they would likely use some common parts. I'd imagine it's not likely every seal or bolt would be unique to that airframe.

Cheap Chinese phones get to take the mass production benefits of the iPhone and Android markets and then *relax* most of the requirements to get cheaper parts. The military tends to *tighten* the requirements when it’s procuring parts, so more things end up as custom development. I have no idea what ratio something like an F-35 is for COTS vs custom hardware, though.

I’m not sure there’s much relaxing in quality control in aerospace. The specs are already pretty tight.

Re: F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

#304
Absolutely inappropriate to post something like this to Twitter before exhausting all other options (civilian airports, drone clubs, Space Force satellites) first. I feel like the Twitter account manager shared this out of desire to go viral, rather than securing the plane.

Re: F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

#305

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.

I think so far the F-35 has had 1 death and maybe half a dozen crashes in hundreds of thousands of hours of operation.

Just from perusing the stats for other military planes that seems pretty good actually.

Re: F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

#306

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.

Something to keep in mind that I do not believe anyone else has mentioned is that the F-35 was built in several variations to serve different branches of the military in roughly similar configurations. The Navy and Air Force can both successfully operate and maintain the aircraft as older planes are decommissioned, and eliminates the need for other aircraft to be developed to serve the specific use cases of the various branches of the U.S. military.

It makes maintenance far easier and over the long run results in significantly reduced costs.

Re: F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

#307
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The F-35 has a much faster response time than the A-10--and, more importantly, survivability. In a contested environment, "suboptimal" CAS from an F-35 dropping precision munitions is much better than non at all (A-10 would get shot out of the sky by any near-peer before it could approach the theater). The A-10 also has high maintenance costs and a relatively low loiter time. For fighting terrorists in flipflops, som…

This is an… unorthodox take from the ground commander/fires perspective or conversely the orthodox take from the USAF perspective. Hard lessons from the GWOT have firmly put the A10 as the most capable CAS platform, and it’s taught as such in all joint fires classes to forward observers and also via unit history/anecdotes fires units (“A10 saved my butt in ‘12”). A10 pilots and units also have a much better rep for C…

As long as the Air Farce runs CAS, instead of the army, they will continue to attempt to kill any mission that doesn't involve winning wars through the holy doctrine of Air Power (ie incinerating as many civilians as possible).

Re: F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

#308

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.

I'd love to have a civilian version of the F-35 for joyride operators, but I guess half of the point of a military aircraft is that your enemies can't buy one.

Re: F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

#309

Absolutely inappropriate to post something like this to Twitter before exhausting all other options (civilian airports, drone clubs, Space Force satellites) first. I feel like the Twitter account manager shared this out of desire to go viral, rather than securing the plane.

" we are focusing our attention north of JB Charleston, around Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion"

Sounds like it's in the water. It won't be easy to fish them out even if you find them. They probably determined security risk is very low.

Re: F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these TFR violations are early/inexperienced Cessna 172 pilots (or similar) who aren't up on TFRs, just lost, etc. They often can't even manage the radio and just go completely silent, blissfully unaware anything is happening until an F-16 shows up next to them hailing them saying things like "US military armed fighter aircraft. Acknowledge this by rocking your wings.", etc. Of course assuming the fighter even…

> All of these TFR violations are early/inexperienced Cessna 172 pilots (or similar) who aren't up on TFRs, just lost, etc. I'm (as a German) a drone pilot myself and looking to start ultralight next year, and the topic of TFRs/NOTAMs annoys me to no end even when just flying a drone. Tons of junk, hard to parse and keep track of, and hell I get that the primary glass of aircraft is supposed to be certified, but why…

> the topic of TFRs/NOTAMs annoys me to no end even when just flying a drone. Tons of junk, hard to parse and keep track of

Like many unusual situations there are usually at least two things that need to happen to cause the scenario I described:

1) Ignorance to TFRs/NOTAMS (Notice to Airman for those unfamiliar).

2) Loss of communication with the correct air traffic control.

When air traffic control notices these people violate airspace they always try to reach them via radio. In the event they're reachable it's "we have a phone number for you". When they go silent it's send up some fighters AND "here's a phone number for you".

> Most of GA is low altitude anyway so in reach of cellphone towers.

This is frowned upon. When airlines ask you to turn off your cell phones it is for two real reasons:

1) Pay attention to the safety briefing (no one does anyway, and no one turns their cell phones off).

2) The request of cell carriers. From what I understand cellular devices at altitude with significantly better line of sight are somewhat problematic to the towers as devices are able to attempt connection/association to many more than they usually would. Apparently combined with the faster speed the carriers don't appreciate this. Of course they deal with it with all kinds of means in terms of directional antennas, etc but like I said I've heard it's an issue.

I point out #2 because there's likely little industry support for the approach you describe. Additionally, you add an additional safety issue because users (pilots) will learn to depend on them and the variability of cell connectivity at altitude, weather, speed, geography, etc is uncertain. Aviation doesn't like that.

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