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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

#461

Post by foxyv »

pookha wrote: post #401
foxyv wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

According to the GAO, the F-35 has a much better MCR than the F-16. However, the UH-1N Huey has a higher mission capability rate than ALL of these aircraft. Be careful which metric you optimize for or you will be attempting to fight artillery with trebuchets.

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-106217

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

#462

Post by justsomehnguy »

dragontamer wrote: post #426
justsomehnguy wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because its large profile and low operating altitudes around 7,000 feet (2,100 m) make it an easy target, its close air support missions are usually flown at night.[7] AC-130 is only effective against a flipflop army... which doesn't have a friend which would supply tons of MANPADs to the gallant people of your country.

And the A10 is even lower-altitude than that. Welcome to the CAS role. You fly low and shoot cheap bullets (lots and lots of cheap bullets), but you're also vulnerable to ground fire. At least the AC-130 has a ton of flares to misdirect enemy missiles automatically. A10 basically has no form of defense. In any case, a CAS aircraft is in a position of higher risk than most other aircraft since it needs to travel low e…

> And the A10 is even lower-altitude than that.

So the window where you are vulnerable to MANPAD operator is less than of that AC-130.

> Welcome to the CAS role. You ....

Ah, yes, sorry, sir, looks like I need to take my Hazelnut Bianco Venti Latte and get out of your lawn, sir?

> AC-130 has a ton of flares to misdirect enemy missiles automatically

There is no ejection seats on AC-130. It would be never be operated where MANPADs are the norm.

> A10 basically has no form of defense

Oh ffs, A-10 is armoured with 15-40mm titanium plates, while AC-130 armoured with hopes and prayers.

> so I'm not even sure if MANPADs can lock onto an F35 reliably

If F-35 is at the MANPAD altitude then somebody (pilot) fucked greatly. F-35 in CAS role would never drop to MANPAD altitude and Shilka doesn't care about the plane stealthiness.

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

#463

Post by lsh123 »

ZeroCooly wrote: post #439
cameldrv wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think it's worth noting that that the MiG-23 that crashed in Michigan was a privately owned aircraft, flown not by an active service member. I highly doubt the military allows their pilots to eject without absolute certainty that the multimillion/billion dollar aircraft is totally lost. Additionally, I highly doubt there are many privately owned military jets equipped with ejection seats that are allowed to fly, es…

Interview with the guy who pulled the ejection cord in the Michigan Mig-23:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftcn3NwAZCI

tldr; they were out of airspeed and out of altitude barely within ejection envelope (i.e. exhausted all the options)

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

#464

Post by lsh123 »

tg16 wrote: post #358
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…

Not really, sometimes a plane will land itself even after the pilot ejects. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Belgium_MiG-23_crash

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

#465

Post by dheera »

tehf0x wrote: 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.…

Why don't these aircraft get 10Hz GPS updates and send them to StarLink as they are going down? It's 2023 already.

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

#466

Post by mortureb »

tehf0x wrote: 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.…

But why? Don’t these billion dollar machines have a GPS tracker on them?

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

#467

Post by Aloha »

mortureb wrote: post #466
tehf0x wrote: 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.…

But why? Don’t these billion dollar machines have a GPS tracker on them?

GPS is not reliable underwater, I'd expect it to have an ELT/EPIRB but those don't work with GPS as far as I know, and the crash could have been hard enough to render it inoperable.

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

#468

Post by jpadkins »

mortureb wrote: post #466
tehf0x wrote: 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.…

But why? Don’t these billion dollar machines have a GPS tracker on them?

I don't think stealth aircrafts normally have trackers or anything broadcasting a signal. Kind of defeats the purpose...

I did read that stealth aircraft have transponders installed when operating in US airspace, so commercial radar can see them better. But it was not installed on this flight.

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

#469

Post by kube-system »

mortureb wrote: post #466
tehf0x wrote: 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.…

But why? Don’t these billion dollar machines have a GPS tracker on them?

They have transponders. But military airplanes can and sometimes do turn them off. When airplanes broadcast signals they can be detected. The military sometimes wishes to avoid this.

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

#470

Post by [deleted] »

nradov wrote: post #76
IAmGraydon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's simply not true. The US military only has primary radar coverage over a small fraction of the country. (Air traffic control primarily relies on secondary surveillance radar.) Only the weather satellites in geostationary orbits provide near real-time imagery, and they lack the resolution to spot something the size of an aircraft. High resolution images come from spy satellites in highly inclined low orbits whic…

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