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Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely

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Re: Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely

#101

Post by mlyle »

kube-system wrote: post #67
jterrys wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This actually begs the question...why the fuck would they use THESE for an airshow? They're aesthetically identical to F18 from a ground silhouette perspective. They blew through some really expensive planes from a much smaller fleet for a pony show that any regular F18 could've been part of.

These were locally stationed, just over the border in Washington. The Blue Angels are in Florida today.

Yah.. but between the Iran war and this, we've taken some EW losses. And it's not like this is one of the capabilities that we have massively overprovisioned.

Re: Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely

#102

Post by cameronh90 »

barbazoo wrote: post #12
avalys wrote: post #3

These are pretty expensive and specialized electronic warfare planes that are identical to a regular F18 in aerodynamic performance. Sucks to lose two of them for an airshow display. Isn’t that what the Blue Angels are for?

What is the real purpose of airshows anyway? It always seems like very elevated risk for very little reward but I might just be missing what the reward is.

Probably just because it's cool.

I'm sure there's some bean-counter calculus involving recruitment, PR, demonstration of capabilities, they were going to be doing training flights anyway so why not do a few in public, etc. but they're more rationalisations rather than reasons.

I hope it stays that way too. A world where we take everything away unless it fits into the 5 year ROI spreadsheet sounds dreadful. In any case there'll a long tail of nth-order outcomes that we can't simply reduce down to a risk-reward calculation.

There's probably some deep reason why humans just have a drive to show off their awesome stuff.

Re: Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely

#103

Post by mlyle »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #83
operatingthetan wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. They are for recruitment and showing other nations what is on hand in case they want to mess with them. >insightful cynicism. So in response you select the most naive take?

There are a LOT of air shows where military airplanes are a small or zero component. I'm totally in agreement that armed forces are there for reasons you described. But an "air show" is a massive and sometimes separate Venn diagram. There are air shows where main thing is thousands of private airplanes coming from across the country to be together and meet up and have fun. Put it other way, if armed forces decided it…

Yah.. the roaring sound and precision of military aerial display teams can't be denied, and are an awesome experience. But it's something you see someone doing in a Pitts or Extra or maybe even a Citabria or 150 that makes you question your understanding of the laws of physics :D

Re: Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely

#104

Post by angled »

bigyabai wrote: post #21
arwhatever wrote: post #8

That maneuver they were attempting looks WILD. Would have been amazing to have pulled of. Or, perhaps to have regularly pulled off until today. I'm guessing that must be some sort of vectored thrust trickery.

I don't think anything after the second jet's merge was deliberate. NASA's HARV is the only F/A-18 with a thrust vectoring exhaust designed for it, and it's doubtful that similar kit would go on an EW jet. What's shown in the video appears to be some form of slipstreaming by the chase craft that causes them both to lose pitch authority, pulling up into a stall state and then a yaw tailslide.

Cue the development of a limpet drone that would be enough to take down one of these birds in a non-destructive way… although perhaps these ones in particular would be uniquely positioned to deal with such adversaries.

Re: Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely

#105

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

dboreham wrote: post #86
jcgrillo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arms and legs can take a serious beating too. Airplane cockpits are pretty tight spaces, and to be explosively shot out of one with little notice is.. yikes.

Ejection is often a career-ending event, unfortunately. Better than dying though.

You're generally limited to two ejections barring any disqualifying health issues. The military doesn't like to throw away its personnel investments when they've gained some hard won experience.

Re: Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely

#106

Post by s5300 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #78
barbazoo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the real purpose of airshows anyway? It always seems like very elevated risk for very little reward but I might just be missing what the reward is.

It attracts talented people. I remember going to an air show when I was 12 with a good friend. Walking through the C-5 and then seeing a thunderbirds display just captured my friends imagination in a way that’s hard to describe. He ended up becoming a Marine Aviator and basically started planning that path that day.

[dead]

Re: Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely

#107

Post by russdill »

barbazoo wrote: post #12
avalys wrote: post #3

These are pretty expensive and specialized electronic warfare planes that are identical to a regular F18 in aerodynamic performance. Sucks to lose two of them for an airshow display. Isn’t that what the Blue Angels are for?

What is the real purpose of airshows anyway? It always seems like very elevated risk for very little reward but I might just be missing what the reward is.

It's a planned event at a specific time that requires training, planning, and coordination between multiple organizations.

Re: Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely

#108

Post by jcgrillo »

userbinator wrote: post #76
jcgrillo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arms and legs can take a serious beating too. Airplane cockpits are pretty tight spaces, and to be explosively shot out of one with little notice is.. yikes.

The pilots themselves initiated their ejections.

Admittedly I have nowhere near the flight hours, training, or expertise of these pilots, but having flown airplanes myself I can totally imagine in an off-nominal situation (which I have been in before) conscious focus is fully on flying the airplane even if your rote lizard brain is procedurally going through the motions of pulling the ejection handles or otherwise responding to the emergency. My instructor's words--he was a helicopter pilot (Hueys and Chinooks) in the Vietnam war with some 20k hrs logged in complex aircraft, jets, etc. since so I know for certain he knew wtf he was talking about--going through my head "do not ever stop flying the airplane". In this case, my conscious focus would be to stomp one of those rudder pedals as hard as I could to try to recover from the spin, even if I was also simultaneously yelling "eject" or whatever you're told to into the intercom and pulling the handles. But I haven't ever been trained to eject from an aircraft, or maybe my instinctive predilections would select me out of the training regimen these pilots go through.. who knows

Re: Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely

#109

Post by blueone »

barbazoo wrote: post #12
avalys wrote: post #3

These are pretty expensive and specialized electronic warfare planes that are identical to a regular F18 in aerodynamic performance. Sucks to lose two of them for an airshow display. Isn’t that what the Blue Angels are for?

What is the real purpose of airshows anyway? It always seems like very elevated risk for very little reward but I might just be missing what the reward is.

For recruitment, awareness, to boost civilian confidence/engagement/support in the military as a whole. The blue angels and thunderbirds are the best of the best when it comes to air shows because the best pilots are used and they train extensively.

Re: Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely

#110

Post by jandrewrogers »

Riany wrote: post #96

That's good that all pilots ejected safely. But what if it fails? Still, losing two specialized aircraft during an airshow feels like very expensive, I doubt if it's really worth it to risks these pilots life on it

The US has over 10,000 military aircraft in service and thousands of spares sitting in storage. The US is quite arguably the only military that can casually absorb losses like these.

This specific aircraft is being phased out over the next several years. Assuming these still had some miles left on the airframe, they likely would have been put in cold storage a few years from now.

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