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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

#401

Post by pookha »

foxyv wrote: post #218
btbuildem wrote: post #70

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.

Fighter jets in general are a constant maintenance marathon. They are pushing the edge of engineering and performance. That means that they are less reliable and more expensive to maintain than a 777 by a wide margin. However, the F-35 is significantly more reliable than it's predecessor the F-16. The F-35 represents the result of a changing model for warfare. Less dogfights and missile duels, more managing a fleet o…

F35 has a lower mission capability rate than the F-16, and it's not even close (< 50% vs 73%). They're complicated (overly) machines...The DOD industry has come a long ways from Edwards Demming.

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

#403

Post by mrb »

grogenaut wrote: post #356
MarkMarine wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

to add 4 - if you had control with some badass AI why not land the plane safely for a recovery... the example in both the OP and the GP are planes lost in the country they are from not in enemy territory. The planes are not cheap... why would you purposefully wreck it in in a safe location.

Actually my example assumed being in enemy territory. Nosedive the airplane for maximum destruction, to prevent the enemy from recovering anything useful from the crash site.

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

#404

Post by jononomo »

What might cause a pilot to need to eject from an airplane that is not in any distress? The pilot apparently had the time to put the airplane into an auto-pilot mode before ejecting. Why not just fly the plane back to base?

I always thought pilots ejected when the plane was about to crash.

Given that the plane costs $150 million, it seems like an extraordinarily expensive decision to make if the plane is not about to crash.

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

#405

Post by ianburrell »

aftbit wrote: post #250
btbuildem wrote: post #70

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.

The real question IMO is whether the 6th generation fighters (Next Generation Air Dominance program in the USA) are making the right design trade offs. They are projected to be bigger, more expensive, and ordered in fewer numbers than even the F-22. Are we better off with fewer but more advanced super weapons, or with many more cheaper weapons? In the era of UA/RU war where few-thousand-dollar drones are spanking mul…

The Air Force and Navy NGAD programs are separate and different. The Air Force is building a fighter larger than the F-22 cause they want the range to fly across the Pacific. They are also working on wingman drones and already gave order.

The Navy NGAD is more of a replacement for the F/A-18E/F. It will probably be the same size because of constraints of carrier. Another difference is that the Air Force is working fast while Navy NGAD won't be ready until 2030.

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

#406

Post by nradov »

dylan604 wrote: post #352
kkielhofner wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really good point - I'm certainly familiar with AWACS in concept but I didn't connect the dots here. Thing is, in these scenarios they're the only armed aircraft around and their targets never have radar or any instrumentation/defense/even detection for it. So they could (and likely do) blast and paint all day and they still can't find bug smashers in dense urban environments like you most often see with TFR…

The fighters can actually receive the radar information from AWACs, so the pilots see the radar image. However, just like not having total CAPs coverage over the US, there's not a lot of AWACs coverage either. I'd be shocked if there's any mechanism for them receiving civilian ATC radar. To that end, how much radar coverage is actually there? Isn't civilian traffic pretty much IDs broadcast from the planes?

Civilian air traffic control relies mainly on secondary surveillance radar including aircraft transponders, plus ADS-B. Primary radar coverage is limited to larger airports plus a few border and military areas. An aircraft can hide pretty effectively in most US airspace by just flying low with transponders switched off.

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

#407

Post by mrb »

MarkMarine wrote: post #348
mrb wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I was not thinking of some highly advanced AI, just something ultra simple like: after ejection, attempt to pitch the plane to nosedive as vertically as possible. The intent being to to crash the airplane as badly as possible to prevent the enemy from recovering anything useful from the crash site.

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

#408

Post by 1234letshaveatw »

kube-system wrote: post #323
1234letshaveatw wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

blanket free lunch is disgustingly wasteful and a terrible solution for needy children. It is like buying a new car whenever you have a flat tire. I can feed my own kids, I don't need them picking up an extra slice of pizza every day for fun and throwing milk and plates and disposable utensils in the garbage. Ask any lunch worker about the additional garbage and waste it generates. The correct solution is to remove t…

There should never be any judgement regarding a child's financial situation during the school day. The place where I grew up handled this in the best possible way: Every kid got a lunch if they went through the lunch line, without exception. The school system simply kept track of which students got a meal, and at the end of the month, they'd either mail a bill or it would be covered through the free lunch program. Un…

the issue here is that how is it determined who is eligible for the free lunch program after the fact? The parents are too negligent to sign up, their account goes into arrears and the kid ends up skipping the line out of fear getting punished for it. Parents have to sign up and too many don't give a crap

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

#409

Post by cameldrv »

MarkMarine wrote: post #384
viscanti wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By the time a pilot ejects they’ve exhausted EVERY other option to control the aircraft, no AI is going to regain control at that point. It seems like they probably bail out when they've exhausted every option of being able to land it and survive. There are likely some scenarios where there's limited controls remaining, that wouldn't provide high enough odds of guaranteeing someone's survival, but that could optimi…

I live in the real world, and there are incident reports that go into great detail about every aircraft loss. I’ve read every one since 1999, and I’ve never seen an incident where the pilot ejected over a populated area in an aircraft that was still controlled. What you all are imagining does not happen, and the odds of it happening are vanishingly small.

Have you looked at the MiG-23 that crashed last month in Michigan?

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

#410

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

bob1029 wrote: post #313
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.

Some Hollywood points in this direction. E.g. the Behind Enemy Lines ejection scene. Seems like a pretty good idea to self-destruct the most sensitive hardware (computers/chips/storage modules/etc) if recovery of the aircraft is no longer feasible.

> self-destruct

Ooh, yeah. Let's add even more failure modes!

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