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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

#641

Post by histriosum »

mpreda wrote: post #633
histriosum wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that spin recovery is highly CG (center of gravity) dependent. Ejecting from an aircraft would significantly alter the CG. It's far more likely that the CG change broke the spin than the pilot was doing something unhelpful. Additionally there would be a nose down moment from the seat firing (newtons third law) and that may well have broken the stall.

Visually the cockpit of a fighter plane is located forward, thus very likely ahead of the plane's CG. Ejecting the pilot would thus move the CG towards the back of the plane, which is a less stable configuration making it more difficult to recover from a stall.

A developed spin is an equilibrium of forces. Anything that disrupts that equilibrium has a decent chance of disrupting the spin, and that would include moving the CG aft.

However, see my other note as well, there would be a nose down moment when the seat fires. There would also be a massive drag profile change. Any of these things have good potential to disrupt a stabilized spin.

My main point is that it's almost certainly not the case that the pilot was actively making incorrect inputs before ejecting. The ejection itself is the variable that likely would disrupt a spin in such a situation, not the pilot no longer making inputs.

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

#643

Post by dredmorbius »

giarc wrote: post #632
dredmorbius wrote: post #630

A debris field has been found: The debris field is approximately two hours northeast of Joint Base Charleston. JB Charleston, which led the search, “is transferring incident command to the USMC this evening, as they begin the recovery process,” the Marine Corps said in a news release. Members of the community were cautioned to avoid the area so the recovery team can secure the debris field and begin the recovery proc…

Two hours by car, or two hours by F-35 jet? Quite a big difference.

I demand reasonable units of length: bananas, giraffes, or smoots.

Though I suspect information is being kept deliberately vague Because Reasons.

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

#644

Post by SkeuomorphicBee »

kunwon1 wrote: post #131
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.

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 gather that everyone who actually knows their stuff consider the F35 very capable for its price, but still the number of reports of it crashing seems quite odd to my civilian ear, is this much crashing just normal for military equipment? As a comparison I searched for data on a civilian plane of roughly the same age:

- The F35, with ~965+ units made since 2006, had 12 incidents with 9 or 10 hull-losses

- The Boeing 787, with ~1,077 units made since 2007, had 7 incidents with 0 hull-losses

I know that military does more dangerous stuff that civilians (e.g. one of the F35 crashes was during aerial refueling, other one while landing in a carrier), but still a ~1% hull loss (without enemy fire) is surprising for me.

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

#645

Post by justin66 »

epolanski wrote: post #623
justin66 wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 One of the things I remember from Chuck Yeager's autobiography (his first one - I think he eventually had several) is that he called bull…

I've seen few episodes of aircrash investigation (mayday), and multiple times pilots try to crash or land where they will do less damage on ground.

My problem with the OP's comment is that a couple of different things are stated as universal truths, even though they definitely aren't.

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

#646

Post by satiric »

Stevvo wrote: post #7

A B-17 once landed at an airfield in Belgium without any crew on board. Just by chance it was pointing in the right direction, with the right amount of lift and drag and thrust.

When my grandpa was navigating B24's in WWII, he saw a B24's wing flying by itself. The Japanese had set the plane on fire from nose to tail, and the body separated from the wings. The B24 has the wings on top of the fuselage, so the wings could stay together. The body, of course, fell into the clouds below, but the wings stayed aloft. And naturally, because they didn't have to carry a fuselage around, they accelerated, and lazily curved out of sight of grandpa, who thought he might have been the only person to ever see something like that (and survive to tell the tale...)

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

#647

Post by dragontamer »

saiya-jin wrote: post #611
dragontamer wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a war you don't use a multi-billion toy for it's marketing qualities. Because this is the way lose your multi-billion toy. The most recent batch of F35A unit cost was $110 Million. I think you've got some severe misunderstandings about the nature of the F35 project. Its a multi-billion $$ *research* project, but each airplane is much cheaper than that. > The F-35’s price per unit, including ancillary costs like…

There are some automated AA guns (Oerlikon or Rheinmetall IIRC) who lock with combination of radar and visual, or just one of those. No locking missiles, just good old ammunition and 21st century computing power. Well not precisely, every round is primed to detonate at exact altitude/flight duration. Put a hundred rounds in few seconds (so 5-10k projectiles) on the sky where the plane will be in 3 seconds, they will…

You aren't going to get valid distance from a single platform like that.

If you had a large scale integrated sensor network, then yes you can triangulate an F35 and track it.

Except the F35 would switch to Wild Weasel mode and start shooting down your sensors (aka, SEAD missions) until it was safe to approach closely.

--------

That's the thing, if the F35 is already in your face to take direct gunfire like that,bits because the commanders are already sure that all advanced radar sensors are destroyed by HARM missiles.

That's the power of a stealth CAS fighter. It's got way less ammo and runtime than an A10 but stealth more than makes up for it.

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

#648

Post by wackycat »

The fact they waste taxpayer money on the military only for them to admit that they don't even have the tech to track these 100 million dollar planes is so disheartening. You know that the giant cost of these planes is just lining military contractors' pockets.

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

#649

Post by dghlsakjg »

mschuster91 wrote: post #240
kkielhofner wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these TFR violations are early/inexperienced Cessna 172 pilots (or similar) who aren't up on TFRs, just lost, etc. They often can't even manage the radio and just go completely silent, blissfully unaware anything is happening until an F-16 shows up next to them hailing them saying things like "US military armed fighter aircraft. Acknowledge this by rocking your wings.", etc. Of course assuming the fighter even…

> All of these TFR violations are early/inexperienced Cessna 172 pilots (or similar) who aren't up on TFRs, just lost, etc. I'm (as a German) a drone pilot myself and looking to start ultralight next year, and the topic of TFRs/NOTAMs annoys me to no end even when just flying a drone. Tons of junk, hard to parse and keep track of, and hell I get that the primary glass of aircraft is supposed to be certified, but why…

Check out foreflight. It's an app that does exactly what you are talking about. It will definitely show relevant NOTAMs and TFRs and update in flight. I don't know about europe, but its pretty rare for people to fly GA in North America without some sort of phone app running.

There is also FltPlanGo which is free, but it is less full featured than foreflight.

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