This is wild. You can't get away from these zoom calls even as an F-35 pilot.
I think the call was only 10 minutes long. For 40 minutes the pilot was just waiting for the next available representative.
F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash
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Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is a patently absurd take, ask Iran how much of a shitshow it is to be on the receiving end of planes your AA can't see.
The B2 is what did the damage in Iran. F22 and F35 were reportedly sent to protect the bombers. I don't see how that detracts from the point that the F35 has been fraught with problems and operating it is dependent on an unreliably ally.
This is completely wrong. B2 bombers only dropped the MOAB on the nuclear enrichment sites. Israel used F35s to bomb Iran at will. Iran didn't shoot down a single plane.
Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash
#73So 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?
"On the ground" = WoW sensors. WoW sensors have been around a long time (see link). And, humans probably should not have any say about that. If humans could override WoW, then the landing gear could be deployed or retracted when it should not and cause a lot of damage due to human error.
Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash
#74> 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.
For a whim I read this as "us regular boeing engineers" and it was really funny.
Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
... as is farce majeur.
Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash
#76So 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"?
Fly-by-wire aircraft have changeable “flight laws” that correspond to different levels of computer intervention to mitigate situations incompatible with controlled flight.
Think of it as various stability control modes in a modern car. Likely the aircraft needed to be put in the least restrictive flight law mode as a workaround.
Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash
#77> 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 don't think there was ever a risk of the plane crashing with the pilot still in the cockpit, despite the fact that the headline sort of leads people to that conclusion.
The pilot could eject at any time. Still dangerous, but more of a debugging session to avoid other similar costly in the future than a Hollywood-like "if we don't solve this now the pilot dies"
Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash
#78Considering 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.
Upon first reading the headline I was thinking it was some sort of test flight. Nope, poor guy was just trying to fly and ended up forced into a high-stakes troubleshooting tree while on a conference call, as if there's not enough on your mind in a fighter cockpit.
I don't know how many human-manned gens of aircraft are left, but my first inclination is to think a remote-control fallback option wouldn't be out of line here if the security could be done right.
Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash
#79These planes are huge pieces of shit. No country should be spending money buying these from the US / Lockheed Martin.
Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You don't have the leverage you think you have.