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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

#341

Post by nradov »

larkost wrote: post #299
safety1st wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering how 1 in 8 children could be experiencing food insecurity in a nation with a 40% obesity rate, and what food insecurity was exactly, so I poked around in their methodology a little. https://www.feedingamerica.org/sites/default/files/2022-08/M... Happy to be corrected if I'm misreading this. But if I understand correctly, they go into it on page 8, and there are basically two ways they calculate food i…

My kids go to a school where the majority of the kids are somewhere around poverty level (easy to be under there in Silicon Valley if you are not an engineer in tech). I absolutely believe the administrators when they say that the meals some of the kids get in school might be the only ones they get for the day (by far not the majority: those are hard working parents, dedicated to their kids). And watching how much ha…

I support free school lunch programs; no child should go hungry. But in California at least, many of the families with children who struggle with food insecurity entered the country illegally or with dubious claims of refugee status. That is a broader societal issue that can't be addressed through school funding or wealth redistribution.

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

#343

Post by Invictus0 »

mrguyorama wrote: post #298
yabones wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to say $1.2T is nothing, but that's over the lifespan of the program. It's like if you paid for your car plus all the fuel, oil changes, spare parts, tires, car wash, toll roads, all up front. > $1.2 trillion to operate and maintain the fleet over more than 60 years.

Holy cow, 60 years is the design life of the F35?! We will somehow still be operating these things in 2150!

F16's 50th anniversary is next year. They're still being flown by many countries around the world, including the US, and will soon be fighting in Ukraine.

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

#344

Post by RankingMember »

1234letshaveatw wrote: post #256
RankingMember wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any stats/citations that back up your assertion that kids who bring their own lunches in universal free lunch states are wasting food en masse? > a terrible solution for needy children The kids who previously weren't getting fed are now getting fed, aren't they?

The tire got replaced too. Who cares if we are killing the environment because of lazy policymakers right?

I don't understand what you're saying here.

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

#345

Post by dghlsakjg »

dragontamer wrote: post #209
brobdingnagians wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read some analyses of the F35 vs A10 which don't favour the F35 for CAS operations much. The main thing I saw was that F35 requires more maintenance and longer runways than the A10 and is more fragile. It depends on what kind of a war that is being fought, but in a major great power war, you couldn't always guarantee having nice high quality air bases, runways, and support teams near the front. Sometimes it is p…

The replacement for the A10 is the AC-130. F35 is the multirole fighter. You build it because you don't know if you are doing a stealth mission, a dogfight, CAS or wild weasel. F35 can do it all, but as a jack of all trades master of none. ------- Consider the A10 in the current Ukrainian war: CAS is impossible because both sides have too much antiair. You need wild weasel (aka: anti-air defense) fighters right now.…

I think MANPADs somewhat negate traditional Wild Weasel tactics.

Wild Weasel worked because you could use a jet as bait to find the position of a SAM site. That worked fine when a SAM site was multiple trailers, and took a day to move.

With MANPADs, you don't have a fixed base, and if you discover where one is (because it shot at you), that information isn't useful, because by the time you know where it is, it isn't a SAM site anymore.

I suspect that when fighting wars against people that aren't insurgents, we end up being much better off with remote piloting, and relatively cheap guided munitions for air support. I.E. its a strategic win to get your $3k drones shot down by $50k MANPADs.

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

#346

Post by andromaton »

ozim wrote: post #312
Scoundreller wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well usually it is pilots responsibility to try to aim it in safe direction as much as possible and only then eject. Basically like captain on the ship you don't eject but you are last one to leave the ship after you made what is possible to save others from harm (unless they are of course hostile forces). I think quite some pilots died this way because they were trying to the last second to save other lives. If plan…

Including Gagarin

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

#348

Post by MarkMarine »

mrb wrote: post #326
MarkMarine wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing you’re thinking of is the pilot. If the plane is capable of control, the pilot will move it on a trajectory away from populated areas if possible. Protecting innocent people on the ground in the case of an emergency was always top of mind, you can see this in the crash reporting for multiple real world incidents (in airframes with, and without ejection seats, where the last actions of the aircrew were steer…

What Scoundreller meant is that if most of the controls are lost, then the few controls remaining could still be used to intentionally destroy the plane as much as possible. For example, the elevator (to control the pitch) might be the last working control, and it could be used to intentionally nosedive the plane after ejection.

I got that and I was trying to answer in the least sarcastic way I could. I’ll try again.

Autopilot isn’t an all knowing AI that is better at dealing with emergency than a pilot. In the region of flight that involves a pilot ejection, especially in a plane like the F-35, the “autopilot” that would be created that could successfully scout a target area that was safe to crash in, eject the pilot, then somehow move the plane to that area with the canopy off the plane and the degradation of control that would involve, plus the million issues that could have caused the ejection in the first place… it’s not plausible to create this and still have a pilot. You’re talking about a system that is a better aviator, with more SA and more detail about aircraft systems than the human at the stick.

So, first, I don’t think we’re there with AI that is better than the pilot in this region of flight, second, to make that would be so expensive as to be ridiculous, for the incredibly rare event that a military plane needs to eject over a populated area yet also has a safe area like a body of water to crash into. Third, making that system would negate the need for a pilot in the first place so again, what’s the point?

I get the thought, but it’s silly.

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

#349

Post by dragontamer »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #345
dragontamer wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The replacement for the A10 is the AC-130. F35 is the multirole fighter. You build it because you don't know if you are doing a stealth mission, a dogfight, CAS or wild weasel. F35 can do it all, but as a jack of all trades master of none. ------- Consider the A10 in the current Ukrainian war: CAS is impossible because both sides have too much antiair. You need wild weasel (aka: anti-air defense) fighters right now.…

I think MANPADs somewhat negate traditional Wild Weasel tactics. Wild Weasel worked because you could use a jet as bait to find the position of a SAM site. That worked fine when a SAM site was multiple trailers, and took a day to move. With MANPADs, you don't have a fixed base, and if you discover where one is (because it shot at you), that information isn't useful, because by the time you know where it is, it isn't…

MANPADs can't even shoot at a jet because they're flying too high. There's only so much rocket propellant you can put onto a shoulder-mounted device that humans have to carry around.

If you're only guarded by MANPADs, then a traditional bomber will blast your position repeatedly. The MANPADs are really there to deal with low-flying aircraft (A10 and Helicopters).

EDIT: I guess the AC-130 cruises at high speeds, but since its gun-based it has to drop relatively low... 7000 ft or less, which might open it up to MANPADs.

But the lower your aircraft, the more at risk vs MANPADs. Helicopters and A10 are probably the worst off since they're far lower to the ground than even an AC-130.

Furthermore, the AC-130 has the AN/AAR-44 Missile Approach Warning Systems, and a _TON_ of flares to misdirect missiles like a MANPAD. The A10 doesn't have nearly as many flares and is therefore far more vulnerable.

-------------

Anyway, CAS are vulnerable to MANPADs (be it A10 or AC-130) because of their mission type.

But jet fighters and fighter-bombers, like the F35 or F16 (or at least, fighters that can play the fighter-bomber role) fly too high and too fast to ever be hit by a MANPAD. They're only worried about the bigger missiles who have enough propulsion to actually reach 10,000+ feet.

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

#350

Post by blobbers »

Anytime something like this happens, wouldn't they have seismic sensors that would detect a crash of this size?

I can't see one of these things going down softly once pilot ejects unless it had some kind of drone mode, in which case god help us who knows where it is?

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