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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

#181

Post by XorNot »

gspr wrote: post #175
jandrewrogers wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The optimal loss rate is not zero. Fine, but surely if the achieved loss rate is projected to fall below the optimal one, then the optimal way to compensate is something else than crashing planes at airshows? Like, I don't know, dismantling for spares. Or scrapping. Or even target practice.

Air shows are pilot flight hours training. This could've happened on any random training exercise just the same.

Flight hours are one the key differentiating factors in air force quality and a major US advantage is that their pilots have a lot of them.

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

#182

Post by nacozarina »

peteforde wrote: post #170

It's crazy to me that Americans feel like they can't afford socialized healthcare, but performing tricks in $70M jets is something that must proceed at all costs.

lol Americans did not invent kleptocracy, just having their turn in the barrel.

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

#183

Post by mschuster91 »

peteforde wrote: post #170

It's crazy to me that Americans feel like they can't afford socialized healthcare, but performing tricks in $70M jets is something that must proceed at all costs.

This is one of the pseudo-"arguments" I absolutely hate to read.

The problem with America's healthcare is not the military, foreign aid or wars. It simply is not.

The problem is the insane amount of waste in the US healthcare system. Y'all already spend much, much more per capita on healthcare than everyone else on earth by a wide margin [1], but get markedly lower returns in life expectancy [2].

Y'all need to cut the waste and middlemen out of your healthcare system, take that money and invest it into prevention (especially: fight against obesity - the US has a serious problem there costing a lot of money and causing a lot of suffering [3]), and you would get far better returns.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States

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

#184

Post by hugh-avherald »

lostlogin wrote: post #177
dnautics wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the pilots need to fly hours to keep their pilot rating anyways. So aside from the slightly elevated risk to the civilian observers, and the occasional risk due to maneuvers (I think they doing something particularly showy in this case?), the extra cost to the taxpayer do this is ~nil.

What sort of hours do you log for a crash? Does it end when the ejection starts, or feet-on/the/ground?

When the plane comes to rest on the ground.

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

#185

Post by watchful_moose »

lostlogin wrote: post #177
dnautics wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the pilots need to fly hours to keep their pilot rating anyways. So aside from the slightly elevated risk to the civilian observers, and the occasional risk due to maneuvers (I think they doing something particularly showy in this case?), the extra cost to the taxpayer do this is ~nil.

What sort of hours do you log for a crash? Does it end when the ejection starts, or feet-on/the/ground?

if the pilot doesn't have their hands on the stick flying the plane, i don't think those hours (... less than single digit minutes?) count.

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

#186

Post by mschuster91 »

tintor wrote: post #143

Four people ejected. What is the purpose of the second person in such plane, at the air show?

> What is the purpose of the second person in such plane, at the air show?

Pilot Flying, Pilot Monitoring (and dealing with radio and coordination).

It's hard to see single-pilot operations outside of General Aviation aka people flying for fun or for dusting crops - and enough incidents happen in GA, especially in cropdusting, that it might make sense to mandate two-pilot operations there, but good luck trying to get that passed, people are already complaining as it is that aviation is too expensive and in fact are moving towards getting commercial aviation to single-pilot operations.

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

#187

Post by samiv »

mschuster91 wrote: post #183
peteforde wrote: post #170

It's crazy to me that Americans feel like they can't afford socialized healthcare, but performing tricks in $70M jets is something that must proceed at all costs.

This is one of the pseudo-"arguments" I absolutely hate to read. The problem with America's healthcare is not the military, foreign aid or wars. It simply is not. The problem is the insane amount of waste in the US healthcare system. Y'all already spend much, much more per capita on healthcare than everyone else on earth by a wide margin [1], but get markedly lower returns in life expectancy [2]. Y'all need to cut th…

Americans will never be able to "solve" obesity at a national level in their free liberal "business first" world. After all obesity is a consequence of the biggest industry of all, the fast food industry. And a lot of profits are predicated on sick fat people from fitness to dieting to health care and pharmacy.

There are very little profits to these giants if the population was slim and healthy.

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

#188

Post by defrost »

mschuster91 wrote: post #186
tintor wrote: post #143

Four people ejected. What is the purpose of the second person in such plane, at the air show?

> What is the purpose of the second person in such plane, at the air show? Pilot Flying, Pilot Monitoring (and dealing with radio and coordination). It's hard to see single-pilot operations outside of General Aviation aka people flying for fun or for dusting crops - and enough incidents happen in GA, especially in cropdusting, that it might make sense to mandate two-pilot operations there, but good luck trying to get…

As I understand it "dusting crops" is commercial aerial work and thus outside of

  General aviation (GA) is defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as all civil aviation aircraft operations except for commercial air transport or aerial work, which is defined as specialized aviation services for other purposes
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_aviation

Crop dusting, small frame fire suppression, and small frame geophysical surveying are often single pilot- and geophys surveys can drape entire countries at 80m ground clearance and 200m line spacing (plus transverse lines) so they can really rack up the hours and line kilometres.

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

#189

Post by userbinator »

hugh-avherald wrote: post #184
lostlogin wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sort of hours do you log for a crash? Does it end when the ejection starts, or feet-on/the/ground?

When the plane comes to rest on the ground.

...or perhaps the last piece of it.

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

#190

Post by xattt »

jmward01 wrote: post #93
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.

They do training all day every day in these planes. Air shows are probably less exciting than the stuff they practice to do. Also, while they a generically '18's' they are EA-18g's and possibly have enough differences to require maintaining a separate NATOPs check from the other variants. (never flown one so I don't actually know though :). Either way, other than the blue angles who can't be everywhere and don't repr…

> blue angles

Top-performing trig team with tangent flight that (hopefully) never intersects.

:)

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