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A decision to eject from a failing F-35B fighter and the betrayal in its wake

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Re: A decision to eject from a failing F-35B fighter and the betrayal in its wake

#11

Post by Aeolun »

avidiax wrote: post #8
YZF wrote: post #2

I feel like we had a discussion of this crash in the past. Would be nice to find those threads. Feels like we're missing a piece of the puzzle in this story. Maybe something else happened over that year? Politics? The story starts as you'd expect. Accidents happen. Support. Returning to duty. What went wrong?

My feeling is that the F-35 is "too big to fail". They needed to blame the pilot, and certainly didn't need anyone familiar with the defects of the plane in a prominent command or as a general. So they fire the guy, and promote someone else that can be relied on to say that the F-35 has no more defects than any other plane had at this point in the program, and we can trust the US military industrial complex to delive…

It’s bizzare to think that high command in the US is that shortsighted.

Re: A decision to eject from a failing F-35B fighter and the betrayal in its wake

#12

Post by russellbeattie »

Seems like there was already a thread about this. But after reading the article, my one takeaway is this: Pilots can decide in less than a minute to bail out of a fighter jet aimed at who knows what and that's OK??

I don't expect every pilot to go down with their plane, but holy crap. That plane could have taken out half a street of houses. I'm not sure how one pilot's life is worth more than potentially dozens of innocent people who happen to be living under a plane's flight path.

It's a miracle the plane landed in a swamp, of all places. Especially given how long it was in the air flying around on its own. Pretty much anywhere else besides the open ocean and it could have been an epic disaster.

I'm sure this has been expressed in the other thread, but I figured I'd share my shock for the others just reading about this now.

Re: A decision to eject from a failing F-35B fighter and the betrayal in its wake

#14

Post by spoonjim »

It's not a bad practice to automatically dismiss any pilot who ejects from a plane (other than test pilots) except in cases which are wholly obvious equipment failures. It will ensure that for these planes which cost hundreds of millions of dollars, the pilot doesn't eject unless, yes, they really fucking need to eject.

Will this mean you accidentally fire some great pilots? Yes. But given the cost of these airplanes it is better to spend some more money on training a few more pilots.

Re: A decision to eject from a failing F-35B fighter and the betrayal in its wake

#15

Post by pjmlp »

avidiax wrote: post #8
YZF wrote: post #2

I feel like we had a discussion of this crash in the past. Would be nice to find those threads. Feels like we're missing a piece of the puzzle in this story. Maybe something else happened over that year? Politics? The story starts as you'd expect. Accidents happen. Support. Returning to duty. What went wrong?

My feeling is that the F-35 is "too big to fail". They needed to blame the pilot, and certainly didn't need anyone familiar with the defects of the plane in a prominent command or as a general. So they fire the guy, and promote someone else that can be relied on to say that the F-35 has no more defects than any other plane had at this point in the program, and we can trust the US military industrial complex to delive…

Ironically every time someone proudly assert the existence of F-35 C++ coding standard [0], I am not sure if they actually understand the impact.

The software mess from F-35 would it be even worse without the standard, or has the existence of the standard hardly improved the coding practices as usually gets told.

Not that the answer to this philosophical question solves the issues for everyone affected by the F-35 software problems.

[0] - http://www.stroustrup.com/JSF-AV-rules.pdf

Re: A decision to eject from a failing F-35B fighter and the betrayal in its wake

#16

Post by pjmlp »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #9
avidiax wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My feeling is that the F-35 is "too big to fail". They needed to blame the pilot, and certainly didn't need anyone familiar with the defects of the plane in a prominent command or as a general. So they fire the guy, and promote someone else that can be relied on to say that the F-35 has no more defects than any other plane had at this point in the program, and we can trust the US military industrial complex to delive…

> My feeling is that the F-35 is "too big to fail" Allies cancelling orders may force Washington’s hand: the cost of additional jets, parts, et cerera skyrocket if spread over fewer planes.

That is only happening thanks to the way US view on the world has changed, and the remote kill switch used against Ukrainian jets.

US has killed the allies trust.

Had these two events not happened, and most likely sales would not have been cancelled regardless of the F-35 issues.

Re: A decision to eject from a failing F-35B fighter and the betrayal in its wake

#17

Post by ARandomerDude »

Aeolun wrote: post #11
avidiax wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My feeling is that the F-35 is "too big to fail". They needed to blame the pilot, and certainly didn't need anyone familiar with the defects of the plane in a prominent command or as a general. So they fire the guy, and promote someone else that can be relied on to say that the F-35 has no more defects than any other plane had at this point in the program, and we can trust the US military industrial complex to delive…

It’s bizzare to think that high command in the US is that shortsighted.

Defense companies with workers in congressional districts and bribe politicians – I mean, make campaign contributions in exchange for huge contracts. Congress oversees the military. The officers who don't help politicians get what they want don't get promoted. The officers who do, get rank, status, book deals, and lucrative jobs at defense companies after they retire.

It's disgusting but it's not that hard to figure out how it happens.

Re: A decision to eject from a failing F-35B fighter and the betrayal in its wake

#18

Post by renewiltord »

The entire story is pretty interesting, actually.

When the pilot ejected and landed, the 911 dispatcher goes through some sort of flowchart like a call-center guy in Calcutta except at approximately 0.25x the pace https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCk3yk_38Fc (seriously, it's like watching an LLM execute on CPU).

Then there's the plane that no one could find for a while

Then the military said the reason they had to demote him was that while a normal pilot could have done what he did, he was a test pilot and they're supposed to run closer to the redline.

Overall, that combined with the contemporaneous Secret Service gaffes that nearly had the President whacked while they stood around in photo-op poses, really made me think: What if these people are all playing at their roles and they don't actually know what to do? I know it's general Millennial jokes that "nobody knows what they're doing; we're all just making it up as we go along".

But that's not true. I kind of know a lot of what I'm doing. There's a whole bunch of things where I can just execute with low error rate. These guys are doing something more important and their ancestors did it better. Which makes me think that they're not so good at what they do.

Re: A decision to eject from a failing F-35B fighter and the betrayal in its wake

#19

Post by kelnos »

This was discussed four months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42098475

From my memory at the time, I was initially fully on the side of the pilot, but after reading through the discussion, I wasn't really sure anymore.

He didn't try to see if his flight controls (pitch, yaw, roll) were still responding, he didn't make use of the backup instruments, he didn't try the backup radio, and he had enough fuel to land elsewhere. The letter of the procedures may have said that he was in an out-of-control flight condition, but the procedures were too vague, and he should have had the experience to second-guess them and ascertain if his plane was actually out of control.

Sure, maybe all those things wouldn't have worked, and he would have had to eject. Or worse, they wouldn't have worked, and he would have spent enough time trying them that it would have been too late and he would have died.

But for better or worse, the actual outcome does matter: the plane was still flyable, and either a) he would have likely been able to successfully land, possibly at an alternate location with better weather, or b) he would have had the time and flight stability to try a bunch more options before deciding to eject.

I do find the circumstances strange, in how long it took for Marine brass to decide to relieve him of his command and torpedo his career. But I have no frame of reference for or experience around this, so perhaps it's not unusual. If he were just a rank-and-file pilot, he likely would have kept his position and continued on, perhaps with a bit of a bumpy road ahead. But he was given the command of an important group, a group tasked to refine flight procedures around this plane, and that comes with different expectations for his actions in the scenario he was in.

Re: A decision to eject from a failing F-35B fighter and the betrayal in its wake

#20

Post by sneak »

spoonjim wrote: post #14

It's not a bad practice to automatically dismiss any pilot who ejects from a plane (other than test pilots) except in cases which are wholly obvious equipment failures. It will ensure that for these planes which cost hundreds of millions of dollars, the pilot doesn't eject unless, yes, they really fucking need to eject. Will this mean you accidentally fire some great pilots? Yes. But given the cost of these airplanes…

Implicit in this view is that a pilot’s life has a cash value and that value is something less than “hundreds of millions of dollars” or a single digit multiple thereof.

The plane in this incident was valued at $136M USD.

He was in reality about 1900 feet AGL at the time of ejection. Planes fall around 160 feet per second when stalled.

How much money would you accept to not pull an ejection lever for a few more seconds in a zero-visibility setting without instruments in a falling/stalling plane that you personally are sitting inside? How about at 1900 feet AGL? That’s 12 seconds before impact on a good day.

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