101–110 of 508 posts
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seems reasonable to me. If someone lost a 110 million dollar asset in a questionable way, I wouldn't have trust and confidence in their ability either. Flying cutting edge military jets isn't exactly a human right.
Ehh. While I understand your point, I think we should also ask ourselves if it’s reasonable for a fighter to cost $110m a pop.
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that's the same boiler-plate reason they give for every firing due to an embarrassing mishap. google 'for loss of trust and confidence in his ability military' and look at the news tab, every embarrassment to a military group gets thrown that bone.
seems reasonable to me. If someone lost a 110 million dollar asset in a questionable way, I wouldn't have trust and confidence in their ability either. Flying cutting edge military jets isn't exactly a human right.
Shit can and will happen. The only real thing questionable is the damn aircraft.
Do you know how many things have gone wrong with the F-35? [0] It was a shit situation, the book was (unsurprisingly) crap, and you are potentially in a very expensive death trap. The guy choose to live. Honestly, his real mistake may just to have been willing to fly a F-35 in the first place.
[0] https://theweek.com/us-military/1020858/the-f-35-fighter-jet...
The report criticizes the pilot for ejecting, but also says he did everything by the book (F35 manual), but the book was wrong. And the pilot should've figured that out? Feels like they just need someone to blame for losing the plane.
At least one concept of it is that officers (and NCOs and maybe others) are expected to succeed when the 'book' is insufficient. Following the manual is not nearly enough. Warfare is chaos; unexpected things happen; the manual is one input but people are expected to take initiative and overcome problems with or without it. It's not extra credit, it's a baseline expectation for the job. Also, this person is a colonel,…
He had a flyable plane with plenty of fuel, a functioning backup radio and instruments he could have verified primaries against or just switched to, and even failing everything else, he could have verified against what the tower saw on radar for speed, heading, altitude, etc...and then asked the tower to get him to his wingman, and then followed his wingman in.
Instead he decided "HUD freaking out, that means I can't trust my instruments, that means I'm in immediate danger! PUNCH OUT!"
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The ejection was months before he got the role at VMX-1. Even if it had been after he got the role I'm not sure it should matter. I'd expect validating and updating "the book" to be a carefully planned and methodical activity, with alternate approaches tested during simulated failure or failures induced under controlled conditions. Would they really expect a pilot who encounters a failure not under such conditions to…
From the article: "Del Pizzo’s “decision to eject was ultimately inappropriate, because commanded flight inputs were in-progress at the time of ejection, standby flight instrumentation was providing accurate data, and the [jet’s] backup radio was, at least partially, functional. Furthermore, the aircraft continued to fly for an extended period after ejection.”" He lost contact with the tower and his wingman, and did…
Apparently accessing the backup radio is difficult, and even more difficult without the primary flight displays being operational - which his were not.
He wasn't in visual range of his wingman, who was following him.
So the whole "contact your wingman and follow them in for landing" thing seems like a stretch.
Think about it - a single plane costs anywhere from 1/8 to 1/10 of a billion dollars. Anyone flying one should try pretty darned hard to save it.
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From the article: "Del Pizzo’s “decision to eject was ultimately inappropriate, because commanded flight inputs were in-progress at the time of ejection, standby flight instrumentation was providing accurate data, and the [jet’s] backup radio was, at least partially, functional. Furthermore, the aircraft continued to fly for an extended period after ejection.”" He lost contact with the tower and his wingman, and did…
he was at very low altitude, struck by lightning, in a completely glass cockpit plane. You don't "call your wingman" in that situation, you decide and you do. He didn't believe the plane was flyable, and in those conditions I don't think he had enough time or separation from the ground to make sure.
Has this become a politicized, viral, ideology thing? I keep seeing this story pop up in several places, but it doesn't seem like its impact merits the attention. I'm not trolling and please don't bring the politics and ideology here. I am asking factually. (I'm here because I prefer to avoid those things and as a result can be ignorant of them.)
Hating the F-35 in general has been a thing for the Anti-American crowd, mainly driven by western peaceniks who don't see a point in military might (largely depleted now) and the pro-Russia/China/etc crowd who need it to be shit so their fighters can seem competent. As is usual the latter "inform" the former.
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I mean, stealth is all very well when nobody's ejected. But shouldn't an ejection trigger some sort of beacon? We probably want to find the pilot, after all. You'd think the military's budget could stretch to a $300 Garmin InReach.
> We probably want to find the pilot, after all. You don't want the enemy to find the pilot. That's why pilots carry these, which they can use when it's operationally safe for them to do so. https://gdmissionsystems.com/products/communications/radios/...
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seems reasonable to me. If someone lost a 110 million dollar asset in a questionable way, I wouldn't have trust and confidence in their ability either. Flying cutting edge military jets isn't exactly a human right.
That's all well and good, except the next pilot facing a potential loss of aircraft will probably hesitate (worrying about getting shafted), and keep trying to recover the craft until it is too late. Then you have a crashed plane, and a dead pilot. People make better decisions when there is precident for a no-fault management style.
Sometimes you will save the jet, sometimes you will lose both. Military policy is not "better safe than sorry". There is some number of jets, perhaps less than 1, where it is better to have a dead pilot than an unnecessarily crashed plane.
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I mean, stealth is all very well when nobody's ejected. But shouldn't an ejection trigger some sort of beacon? We probably want to find the pilot, after all. You'd think the military's budget could stretch to a $300 Garmin InReach.
> We probably want to find the pilot, after all. You don't want the enemy to find the pilot. That's why pilots carry these, which they can use when it's operationally safe for them to do so. https://gdmissionsystems.com/products/communications/radios/...