571–580 of 693 posts
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Why would an AirTag not work in this scenario? I’m guessing it would be a security risk?
First, yes it would be a security risk. Second, AirTags depend on there being a set number of iOS devices nearby to provide location data and an internet connection. You're not going to get that in a rural area.
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I believe the U-6A Beaver is the oldest design still operated by the US military. Initial design was 1947, still being used as tow planes for gliders in the Navy.
That feels a bit like cheating. B-52 is nearly as old and is legitimately widely used.
Debris found from F-35 jet in South Carolina after US pilot ejected
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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…
> > All that might turn out to be irrelevant as the drones prove detrimental in a warfare. I highly doubt it. At least I hope so. Nobody dreams of becoming a drone pilot. At the end of the day it's a cubicle job.
Maybe they view it a a job with a lot of the upside but none of the safety downsides of rocketing around the earth at 1000 miles an hour half a world away from home...
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.…
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'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…
I've read several articles today that called it the 'most expensive weapon', that the program is '10 years behind', that each costs $80M, and '$9M/year to maintain', that over 1000 have been built etc. For decades it has been a troubled project, many experienced insiders have called it a failure, from the day the first one rolled out ... long ago. 'Very successful' in what way?
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I'm more worried about domestic use. It's hard to get soldiers to carpet bomb wrong thinkers.
> It's hard to get soldiers to carpet bomb wrong thinkers. I'm not sure how accurate that is historically.
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.
Not quite the same you are thinking about but something similar is documented behaviour of the Global Hawk. Obviously since that is a remotely piloted aircraft “everyone has ejected safely” is not the trigger for it.
The way it works at the flight planning stage the operators define pre-determined points, and if the system detects certain faults it cannot recover from it tries to fly to these points and crash land into them. They call these point “termination point” on land and “ditching point” over water.
In this document[1] you can read more about the selection criteria of such points.
This document[2] details for air traffic control under which conditions flight termination points are used. In short (page 22) when the aircraft is uncontrolable for landing or landing at a suitable airfield cannot be achieved safely.
1: https://static.e-publishing.af.mil/production/1/af_a3/public...
2: https://www.eurocontrol.int/sites/default/files/2019-05/atm-...
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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.
> "The jet’s transponder, which usually helps locate the aircraft, was not working “for some reason that we haven’t yet determined,” said Jeremy Huggins, a spokesman at Joint Base Charleston. “So that’s why we put out the public request for help.”