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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

#681

Post by MarkMarine »

justin66 wrote: post #669
MarkMarine wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Chuck Yeager was a selfish asshole. There are many incidents that prove this wrong. The comment above yours is one example.

Chuck Yeager emphatically was a selfish asshole, but... > There are many incidents that prove this wrong. No, there aren't, and your saying so is just a failure in logic. Literally every instance of a crash would have to play out the way you insist it should, with a pilot taking into account the presence of population centers before ejecting, in order to "prove this wrong." The tag team duo of MiG pilots who crashed…

So you posit that the ejection seat adds some selfishness to the pilots? Because I’m not kidding there are a lot of incidents where we have inflight recordings of pilots without ejection seats steering away from populated areas in their last action, as well as the incident where an Israeli pilot with an ejection seat choose not to eject (and died) moving his plane off line.

Then, I’ll just tell you in my personal experience in the airplane, I’ve seen 2 pilots risk their lives moving away from a town and not die (luckily) but crash and destroy their airframe. The other pilots I flew with, I’d say 95 out of 100 would do the same.

Maybe Chuck was just a selfish asshole.

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

#682

Post by nradov »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #674
nradov wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. Flying from point to point is easy. Following complex ROEs, using combined arms tactics, dealing with system failures, identifying valid targets, and employing weapons are all much harder problems than self-driving cars. It's always hilarious to see the confidently incorrect comments by a bunch of ignorant software developers. The Dunning–Kruger effect is on full display here.

LOL, OK. You've listed a lot of problems that have been largely solved already, and are trying to convince us that they are harder than a problem that has eluded the brightest people in the tech industry, armed with computational tools that the aerospace community never dreamed of and backed by more-or-less infinite capital. Nothing is harder than self-driving cars. Nothing. We'll colonize Mars before we have a solid…

You've been watching too many movies and are just making things up. Those problems haven't been solved in tactical aviation.

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

#683

Post by dragontamer »

hajile wrote: post #679
dragontamer wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Next gen weapons are going to make F-35 stealth irrelevant in a handful of years. The Ukrainian war is being fought with T-55 tanks, originally produced in 1948. I think you're overestimating the speed of progress in practice. New weapons take time to mass, decades to gain relevance. F35 making earlier weapons obsolete is a big enough deal on its own. All weapons discussed in this thread so far are basically irrele…

Tanks simply peaked in the couple decades after WW2. We increased armor and cannon size a bit, but there's just not much to improve on an armored box. Even the most advanced tanks can be disabled by a mine (not much changed since WW2) then taken out by artillery (as seen with the Challenger 2 recently destroyed). WW2 saw the creation of HEAT and the 1970s saw the perfection of HEAT with stuff like the TOW ensuring th…

T55 can't even shoot while moving my man.

The fact remains: the big war you're talking about is being fought with incredibly obsolete weapons.

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

#684

Post by salawat »

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…

> highly doubt the military allows their pilots to eject without absolute certainty that the multimillion/billion dollar aircraft is totally lost.

The amount of time it takes to train up a replacement pilot vastly outweighs a new airframe acquisition. Furthermore, ejection is still an incredibly dangerous activity with plenty of chances for things to fail or go sideways, and a near 100% chance of injury. Like, canopy seperation failing, but seat rockets fire due to safety failure...

Suffice it to say, no, there is absolutely no pressure on pilots to not avail themselves of ejecting over and above the fact that controlled demolition of people tank at appreciable fractions of Mach, under fire, or in any of a myriad of inconvenient orientations relative to airstream and/or lithosphete and/or material formerly contributing to the ongoing flight of a perfectly good airplane is exactly nobody's definition of a good day except measured relative to the alternative of being the first to the site of the crash.

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

#685

Post by salawat »

vGPU wrote: post #480
brobdingnagians wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do drones get around the issue of communications jamming? I suppose they have some way (autonomous would be one way), but it seems to me that if communications are cut off, having a pilot with human judgement to respond to changing conditions will almost always have some advantage. Although, you could get a pretty advanced autonomous system that responded to changes from a pre-programmed attack plan.

Can’t jam every frequency.

Hold my beer, and volunteer to pay the power bill.

You say that as if it isn't incredibly easy to do to the point we have entire enforcement orgs built around trying to keep people from unintentiinally doing just that.

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

#686

Post by foxyv »

mortureb wrote: post #535
foxyv wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AI just isn't there yet if we would even want it to reach that point. You have to have someone in communications range to make kill decisions, confirm target designations, and keep the expensive parts of your swarm intact. Drones are pretty awesome as front line aircraft, but they haven't replaced humanity yet.

Then tens of thousands of people directly controlling those drones. We have the manpower and the ability to build these drones. Azerbaijan and Ukraine basically kicked ass with essentially DJIs and grenades.

You are correct. However, the people need to be close to such drones. DJIs cannot be controlled from very far away. Similar to non-improvised drone munitions like Switchblades. For supersonic aircraft you need something a bit different.

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

#687

Post by dogman144 »

kilolima wrote: post #307
dogman144 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an… unorthodox take from the ground commander/fires perspective or conversely the orthodox take from the USAF perspective. Hard lessons from the GWOT have firmly put the A10 as the most capable CAS platform, and it’s taught as such in all joint fires classes to forward observers and also via unit history/anecdotes fires units (“A10 saved my butt in ‘12”). A10 pilots and units also have a much better rep for C…

As long as the Air Farce runs CAS, instead of the army, they will continue to attempt to kill any mission that doesn't involve winning wars through the holy doctrine of Air Power (ie incinerating as many civilians as possible).

This is the gist of the issue

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

#688

Post by hajile »

dragontamer wrote: post #683
hajile wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tanks simply peaked in the couple decades after WW2. We increased armor and cannon size a bit, but there's just not much to improve on an armored box. Even the most advanced tanks can be disabled by a mine (not much changed since WW2) then taken out by artillery (as seen with the Challenger 2 recently destroyed). WW2 saw the creation of HEAT and the 1970s saw the perfection of HEAT with stuff like the TOW ensuring th…

T55 can't even shoot while moving my man. The fact remains: the big war you're talking about is being fought with incredibly obsolete weapons.

T-54/55 can shoot while moving, but the accuracy is bad. The real question is whether that matter.

If the T-54/55 is going against tanks, it has already losing because those should have been taken out with ATGMs and HEAT drones. If it's going up against trenches, inaccurate fire while moving doesn't matter because the tank will be getting super-close anyway. If it's firing at APCs, then stopping really doesn't put it in any danger and they're in for a very bad day.

Until we can work out the point defense issue vs drones, cheaper "disposable" tanks aren't a terrible idea. That new tank design could probably outperform the T-54/55, but the tank you already have that is good enough to support infantry assaults is better than having to make another and leave it to rot.

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

#689

Post by vGPU »

salawat wrote: post #685
vGPU wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t jam every frequency.

Hold my beer, and volunteer to pay the power bill. You say that as if it isn't incredibly easy to do to the point we have entire enforcement orgs built around trying to keep people from unintentiinally doing just that.

Ok, let me clarify - can’t jam every potential drone frequency without taking out your own coms and giving the operator cancer.

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

#690

Post by Stevvo »

satiric wrote: post #646
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 accelera…

Awesome and terrifying story, thank you for sharing.
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