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

cnn.com

61–70 of 440 posts

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

#61

> Five engineers participated in the call, including a senior software engineer, a flight safety engineer and three specialists in landing gear systems, the report said. I can't imagine the stress of being on this call as an engineer. It's like a production outage but the consequences are life and death. Of course, the pilot probably felt more stressed.

That initial “oh shit” feeling must have been so much worse than for us regular boring engineers. Google’s not gonna save you on that one.

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

#62
post #6

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

Don't worry, the US military will recoup the loss by extorting some more natural resources from Ukraine and building some sea-side condos in Gaza.

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

#63

> Five engineers participated in the call, including a senior software engineer, a flight safety engineer and three specialists in landing gear systems, the report said. I can't imagine the stress of being on this call as an engineer. It's like a production outage but the consequences are life and death. Of course, the pilot probably felt more stressed.

“I vibe coded that part, but all the tests passed”

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

#64

[flagged]

The F35 program had a ton of issues and was expensive, but so was the B2 program. Sometimes something good comes out of a difficult process. They have made a lot of F35s now and exported many of them with many many more on order. At this point I think it is fair to say the F35 is a successful platform.

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

#65

So as a pilot you can't override the software to stop it from "thinking that the plane is on the ground" mode? Something similar happened recently with A320 when it didn't want to land on an airfield during emergency unless it was flown in a special mode. But F-35 doesn't have that?

> unless it was flown in a special mode.

What fresh hell is that... reboot, jam F8 just as the "Airbus" logo shows up, and then select "Boot in safe mode"?

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

#66
post #60

Switzerland, if they want something they can fly for air policing is forced to buy the F35 at what every price the US feels fit (even though the contract with Lockheed states a fixed price, naive politicians and consultants found out the hard way). Of course the CHF to USD conversion is fix at a shit rate from many years ago and from what I understand there is no way around that because the SNB did the conversion bac…

With such a terrain, I would guess that agility and the ability to land on highway of in fields without burning all avionics and electronics would have been rated higher than stealth, but it wasn't. Still, the Swiss were offered a fairly low price, and promised low operating costs, and that's the main reason they didn't choose the Eurofighter (which isn't a multi-purpose jet but an interceptor)

JAS 39 Gripen can land on roads. Might have been a better choice.

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

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A scary proposition considering what the US is rapidly becoming

Purchasing F35s is paying tribute to the empire so it doesn't come down on you harder with tariffs and compliance burdens. It's not meant to actually be useful.

Yeah and the tariffs are still there anyway so I don't understand why we aren't following suite and cancelling those orders.

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

#68

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.

Ejecting from an airplane is no joke: 18g of force leaves 20-30% with spinal fractures, and ejection seats have an 8% mortality rate[1]

It seems to me that continuing flight with inoperative/damaged landing gear while you discuss alternatives with engineers is the safest option. Burn fuel, make a plan, let people on the ground mobilize to help, and eject when you've tried what you can and it truly becomes the safest option.

[1]: https://sites.nd.edu/biomechanics-in-the-wild/2021/04/06/top...

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

#69

Switzerland, if they want something they can fly for air policing is forced to buy the F35 at what every price the US feels fit (even though the contract with Lockheed states a fixed price, naive politicians and consultants found out the hard way). Of course the CHF to USD conversion is fix at a shit rate from many years ago and from what I understand there is no way around that because the SNB did the conversion bac…

Israel's attack on Iran using the F-35 proves it is a very effective, if expensive, weapon.
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