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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

#161

Post by cortesoft »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #66
ericmay wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crashes are rare. Exposure to the civilian for what their tax dollars are paying for, opportunities for pilots to become more skilled and train other pilots for advanced maneuvers. Things like that. Overall there’s not too much meat on the bone as far as criticisms are concerned.

Tell that to the people that died or got horribly burned at Ramstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramstein_air_show_disaster

I am not sure what point you are trying to make... are you saying that if anyone is killed in at accident at something, we should never do that something again?

Even more people died at the Hillsborough disaster than died at the Ramstein air show, so I guess we should never have sports events at stadiums anymore.

More people died at the Station Nightclub fire, so I guess we can never have nightclubs anymore.

I could go on and on. Yes, we should take all precautions and be safe as possible for events, but everything has some risk.

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

#162

Post by ExoticPearTree »

kuerbel wrote: post #139
bulbar wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it's part of the US culture. It's not a thing in Europe (one reason might be practical reasons. We have less space to do it safely).

Of course we have airshows and dedicated teams for that. There are the patrouille Suisse, patrouille de France, Frecce Tricolori... After the Ramstein Air Base disaster security was tightened a lot though.

I’ve seen PdF perform, they are pretty impressive in the maneouvers they execute.

It is worth mentuoning though they do all that in trainer jets, not actual fighter jets. Which is not that cool. I would loved it more of they would fly actual fighters.

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

#163

Post by RubberbandSoul »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #66
ericmay wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crashes are rare. Exposure to the civilian for what their tax dollars are paying for, opportunities for pilots to become more skilled and train other pilots for advanced maneuvers. Things like that. Overall there’s not too much meat on the bone as far as criticisms are concerned.

Tell that to the people that died or got horribly burned at Ramstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramstein_air_show_disaster

That's almost forty years ago. You are basically playing Where's Waldo with military aviation history.

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

#164

Post by jandrewrogers »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #156
dboreham wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the internet price excludes the EW payload? Seems like a plane with a load of electronics gear and transmitters/antennas would cost more than the same plane sans that stuff?

I do not know the specifics, but I think most of the EW gear sits on pods attached to the pilons, not inside the actual plane. The only difference that I know of compared to a regular F18 is that it requires two crew members to operate.

Yes, the EW gear is attached to the hardpoints. You can see in the video that it has not been installed for the airshow.

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

#165

Post by cs02rm0 »

operatingthetan wrote: post #47
rootusrootus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too many comments are trying to overanalyze, or just show off their insightful cynicism. We do airshows because they are cool . Lots of us love airplanes. Humans do all kinds of activities for entertainment that are not strictly justifiable returns on investment. I hope we never get that boring, though every year we do seem to go that direction.

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?

>> We do airshows because they are cool.

> No. They are for recruitment and showing other nations what is on hand in case they want to mess with them.

That's what he said.

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

#166

Post by kleiba2 »

ak217 wrote: post #95

What are Growlers doing performing aerobatic maneuvers at air shows? They have tens of millions in specialized extra equipment on board. Seems like a poor use of taxpayer money. Send regular F-18s, not the rare expensive ones that look the same.

How much do tax payers pay for an F-18?

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

#167

Post by tedggh »

ak217 wrote: post #95

What are Growlers doing performing aerobatic maneuvers at air shows? They have tens of millions in specialized extra equipment on board. Seems like a poor use of taxpayer money. Send regular F-18s, not the rare expensive ones that look the same.

Air shows always carry the risk of killing pilots, like any training or combat mission. So we should not have air shows at all because losing a $30M or a $60M jet is secondary to losing highly trained pilots we need for combat readiness.

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

#168

Post by tedggh »

Gud wrote: post #152
defrost wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if there's a significant difference in risk between training flight and air show flight. Otherwise there's always a near constant ever present risk of uncontrolled unintended landings with expensive repair and replacement costs.

That’s a pretty big “only”. Airplanes normally don’t fly so close.

There are many situations in real combat where pilots need to fly even closer than typical air show formations, like refueling or escorting other aircraft. So close formation flying is a fundamental skill for a pilot. Sure, we can minimize risk by not using certain aircraft and close formations during airshows, but pilots will still need to train and execute missions using high(er) risk maneuvers. Also air shows are probably not the largest portion of flight time for a pilot.

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

#169

Post by vasco »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #160
ak217 wrote: post #95

What are Growlers doing performing aerobatic maneuvers at air shows? They have tens of millions in specialized extra equipment on board. Seems like a poor use of taxpayer money. Send regular F-18s, not the rare expensive ones that look the same.

Much of that specialized equipment is mounted on the hard points where you would otherwise attach ordnance. It is easily removable. In the videos I don’t see much evidence of that equipment being installed. This is consistent with what you would do for an airshow. The US military plans to lose about 25 airframes per year due to various mishaps. They operate well over 10,000 airframes and produce far more new airframe…

Ah so instead of all those quotes being sad about the crash they should be happy they are helping the US military destroy equipment at optimal rates.
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