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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

#491

Post by sbierwagen »

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.

You'd hate the F-104, which killed 116 pilots while in German service, which is the kind of casualty rate you'd expect from actual war, not training. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-104_Starfighter#Wes...

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

#492

Post by DanHulton »

mrtksn wrote: post #152
kunwon1 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no expert on aircraft procurement or government contracts (I'm an engineer who used to work on fighter jets) - that being said, it's my understanding that the F-35 is actually a very successful project, and a very affordable one at that. I haven't got any citations or evidence to present, I could be wrong about all of this, it's a topic I've got only casual knowledge about. A broad overview of my understanding of…

All that might turn out to be irrelevant as the drones prove detrimental in a warfare. With the advancements in AI in recent years, it will probably get harder and harder to justify carrying a biological being and all the support systems onboard. At some point, a warplane capabilities might become irrelevant and the only important aspect would the the implications of carrying a solder onboard and making the downing o…

The big "advancements in AI" in recent years have all been around LLMs, and there's really no way I want one of those driving a jet.

And even aside from that, self-driving cars still regularly are observed to make stupid mistakes. When warplanes start making stupid mistakes, the consequences are going to be a lot more dire.

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

#493

Post by oynqr »

mortureb wrote: post #483
_djo_ wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have transponders that transmit their identity and location on the most modern, but those depend on being active (for some reason the one in the F-35 was not) and on there being receivers nearby to pick them up. At lower altitudes in remote locations coverage is spotty. So it's not a guarantee.

Why would an AirTag not work in this scenario? I’m guessing it would be a security risk?

Turn your stealth fighter into a regular one with just $30!

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

#494

Post by dragontamer »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #462
dragontamer wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> 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.

*Multi-role* fighter. F35 has gun-pods and absolutely is expected to play some CAS role.

Its not a dedicated CAS aircraft, no. Its not as good as other aircraft at the job (AC-130 has more loiter time, bigger guns, etc. etc.), but in a war you use what you can get your hands on.

--------

And suddenly talking about different weapons now that MANPADs are (probably) useless vs a Stealth Aircraft is the case-in-point of a multi-role fighter with multiple advanced capabilities.

No weapon is immune to all weapons or defenses. But F35 is immune to most missiles due to the nature of stealth. Stealth is the modern armor: if you can't be seen or can't be tracked, you can't be hit. I wouldn't say that F35 is ideal for gatling-gun strafe runs of enemies, but the fact remains that it _CAN_ do the job if forced (thanks to those configurable gunpods).

IMO, the war on the ground being fought right now? A system that can kill enemy Helicopters, perform SEAD, stealth capabilities and even do CAS (albeit a crappy job at it but "can do the job") is so obviously useful to the Ukrainian war that its hard to take any counter-argument seriously.

> 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.

What's the Shilka's RADAR-guided gun supposed to do against an airplane it can't even see? Are the operators expected to aim and shoot purely on optics?

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

#495

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

GartzenDeHaes wrote: post #217

It's not uncommon for jets to fly for long distances after a pilot ejects. In one incident I responded to, the crew of an F4 ejected due to a fire, but the jet continued to fly over about half of Nevada until it eventually crashed near Tohnapah.

That F4 is shaped in a way that wants to stay in the air.

The F35 is shaped in a way that only flys well with 10-40 thousand pounds of thrust.

I am extremely skeptical a modern fighter jet wpuld coast and set it self down in a field.

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

#496

Post by throwawaymaths »

mannerheim wrote: post #489
pydry wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turkey had a choice between S400s from Russia and F-35s and they chose the S400. Theyve since doubled down on that choice. Realistically it was probably the better choice. The US MIC was probably more cut up about it than Turkey which is probably why this stunt was pulled: https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/06/29/us-could-buy...

Russian air defence has had a rather poor showing lately, so perhaps not.

I think that's a skill issue. Ukrainians are operating similar equipment with better success. Much like how India and China seem to have no problems operating the sister ships of the kuznetsov

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

#497

Post by rootusrootus »

rbanffy wrote: post #308
mensetmanusman wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a private company that has bought F-16s now. They do work with the military, but they're still a private company. If someone were able to get an F-16 and sell rides, I'd be willing to fork over a fairly absurd amount of money.

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

#498

Post by BoorishBears »

DanHulton wrote: post #492
mrtksn wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that might turn out to be irrelevant as the drones prove detrimental in a warfare. With the advancements in AI in recent years, it will probably get harder and harder to justify carrying a biological being and all the support systems onboard. At some point, a warplane capabilities might become irrelevant and the only important aspect would the the implications of carrying a solder onboard and making the downing o…

The big "advancements in AI" in recent years have all been around LLMs, and there's really no way I want one of those driving a jet. And even aside from that, self-driving cars still regularly are observed to make stupid mistakes. When warplanes start making stupid mistakes, the consequences are going to be a lot more dire.

They've been in transformer models... which we've seen bring SOTA image segmentation that would have taken millions of dollars and armies of researchers to match become widely available https://segment-anything.com/

'Advancements in AI' have reached a point where they can affect everything from your smartphone to a box of cereal.

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

#499

Post by Panzer04 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #396
valec wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hard lessons from the GWOT which must be unlearned for an neer-peer engagement. and again, a turboprop light attack aircraft armed with smart bombs can play a similar role as an A10 for CAS but significantly cheaper and with a longer loiter-time to boot.

> a turboprop light attack aircraft armed with smart bombs can play a similar role as an A10 for CAS but significantly cheaper and with a longer loiter-time to boot. Well, if you ignore how much quicker it will be shot down (in any environment where at least one of the two would be usable at all against combat forces), sure. OTOH, the set of environments in which even the A-10 is usable is only going to shrink over t…

The point is if you're in an environment the A10 survives in, so would the prop aircraft. If you aren't, neither works anyway. The A10 exists in a middle ground where it is much more expensive but not really any less vulnerable regardless.

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

#500

Post by ceejayoz »

bpicolo wrote: post #437
ceejayoz wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Remote control of jet" comes with fairly obvious adversarial risks the military likely wishes to avoid.

Drones?

We’ve had this trouble with them, yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–U.S._RQ-170_incident

No one wants to lose a B-2 or F-22 this way.

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