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F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

cnn.com

21–30 of 440 posts

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#21
post #6

Who eats the loss under such circumstances? Government or Lockheed Martin or are these 200 million dollar jets insured ?

The government issues bonds to pay for this and the federal reserve prints money to buy the bonds.

Its FREE money!!!

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#25
Considering they relieved a pilot of command for ejecting when his F-35 become unresponsive, now they make them sit on conference calls. That pilot is very brave, I think others would have ejected by now. Making them fly around up there is ridiculous.

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#26
post #19
post #6

Who eats the loss under such circumstances? Government or Lockheed Martin or are these 200 million dollar jets insured ?

Ultimately the US taxpayers will eat the loss in either case. If the government tried to charge it back to Lockheed Martin they'd just raise the price on subsequent programs to compensate. The government does insure weapons of war. Who would write the policy?

is insurance for military equipment a thing? I had no idea.

If you have very deep pockets like a nation has, why not simply replace the lost hardware and never insure/pay premiums(which would be calculated to net a profit to the insurer)?

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#28

But why was there water in the hydraulic system in the first place?

Likely contamination of ground handling equipment [1]. Unfortunately can happen. I wonder if the hydraulic fluid is hygroscopic or something? 1. https://www.pacaf.af.mil/Portals/6/documents/3_AIB%20Report....

Hydraulic brake fluid is glycol ether based and hygroscopic. Planes usually use mineral based fluids which are not, but heck if I know what the F-35 uses.

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#29

> "they likely would have advised a planned full stop landing or a controlled ejection instead of a second touch-and-go" Is that not what the pilot did anyway? Or is a "controlled ejection" different from what they did?

The article mentioned that the aircraft become uncontrollable once it thought it was on the ground and switched control modes. And then the pilot ejected. I assume a controlled ejection would have been during controlled flight at a time and location specifically chosen. This ejection was necessary because the plane was uncontrollable in the end.

Ah, I see, ejection in a controlled situation instead of "oh no, time to go now"

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#30
post #19
post #6

Who eats the loss under such circumstances? Government or Lockheed Martin or are these 200 million dollar jets insured ?

Ultimately the US taxpayers will eat the loss in either case. If the government tried to charge it back to Lockheed Martin they'd just raise the price on subsequent programs to compensate. The government does insure weapons of war. Who would write the policy?

Usually wars, vis major are exceptions in insurance policies.
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