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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

#191

Post by SR2Z »

chopin wrote: post #164
rob74 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's the crux of the issue: apparently the aircraft still did respond properly to pilot inputs. Of course, it's totally understandable to get spooked by all the electronics failing and decide to rather bail out than bet on the plane still being flyable, but if you go by the book, he shouldn't have ejected...

You can't know whether the plane responds correctly to your inputs under instrument conditions when you can't trust the instruments.

The "small screen" the article is talking about that was still functional is likely a backup PFD, or at the VERY LEAST an attitude indicator. Validating that an attitude indicator is working is not particularly hard, especially if the flight controls are still working.

Ejecting over a populated area at a low altitude is a dangerous decision in its own right, and the unfortunate truth here is that if the choice is between "the life of the pilot" and "the lives of people on the ground" then the pilot is obligated to fly the jet until a crash is assured. Obviously I don't have all the details, but the article itself doesn't say that required instruments were unavailable.

Part of the issue here, too, is that pilots and aviation in general is an "old boys club" and this extends to giving long-tenured pilots extraordinary leeway for mistakes they made that newer or less popular people would have been crucified for. I was left wondering if that's what the first two flight reviews did, and the third one didn't.

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

#192

Post by _cs2017_ »

gtsop wrote: post #42
_cs2017_ wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But for better or worse, the actual outcome does matter" -- curious what you mean by that?

He means that he prefers for that poor lad to have died trying to save a piece of metal. Simple stuff, there is no going around it. For some people money is above human life.

Sorry but I'm sure that's not what he meant.

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

#193

Post by layla5alive »

lesuorac wrote: post #171
yaro330 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just please don't take it as a documentary. It's a disservice to the people that actually worked at the plant that day and portrays them as arrogant fools, which none of them actually were. That Chernobyl Guy on YouTube did great breakdowns.

Meh, the only thing you need to know about Chernobyl is * The soviets designed a nuclear reactor and engineering plan/blueprint to making power plants * That engineering plan required certain safety tests to be preformed before actually operating the plant * Chernyobl did not pass those safety tests before plant operation * Chernyobl then tried to run those safety tests after the plant was in operation (for some time…

I disagree, this is true, but the failure was complex and worth understanding some extra nuances:

* The design of the reactors made them unsafe in a scenario where you needed to quickly insert the control rods. Doing so should reduce power output, but due to their graphite tips, it led to a sudden surge of power output.

* Leadership repeatedly didn't listen to or believe what they were hearing from boots on the ground.

* Leadership took a "it can't be that bad, let's wait and see" approach instead of a cautious approach.

* Add to this that boots on the ground were afraid to stand up to leadership.

* This repeatedly led to delayed reactions to the problems, and an increase in the severity of the outcomes.

* All of this combined with cooling failures, led to disaster.

(Heat and pressure accumulated, the reactor didn't have enough water, and then when control rods were finally reinserted, they sped up the reaction instead of slowing it down... boom.)

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

#194

Post by JumpCrisscross »

dfadsadsf wrote: post #185
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States using military force against the home territory of a NATO member basically guarantees Chinese troops and weapons in Canada and Mexico. We would (deservedly) force the world to ally against us as we’d have proven ourselves to be an expansionist menace.

Even serious discussion of Chinese soldiers in Canada or Mexico is clear casus belli and surefire way for those countries to be occupied. Chinese soldiers on the border is existential to US and when dealing with existential risks countries tend to put funny concepts such as UN charter or human rights aside. Canada is absolutely indefensible with no strategic depth or ability to get new supplies. Mexico is harder to o…

> Even serious discussion of Chinese soldiers in Canada or Mexico is clear casus belli and surefire way for those countries to be occupied

Which is why military alliance discussions aren’t conducted in public. The series of announcements would be e.g. Xi visiting Ottawa for trade talks and then announcing that Canada is under its nuclear umbrella.

> Canada is absolutely indefensible with no strategic depth or ability to get new supplies. Mexico is harder to occupy but their military is a joke and again easy to block all external supplies

Which is why they’ve sought external security guarantees. Now that America is threatening invasion, its security guarantees are diluted. So you need someone else; the only option is China (unless the EU beefs up).

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

#196

Post by lesuorac »

layla5alive wrote: post #193
lesuorac wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, the only thing you need to know about Chernobyl is * The soviets designed a nuclear reactor and engineering plan/blueprint to making power plants * That engineering plan required certain safety tests to be preformed before actually operating the plant * Chernyobl did not pass those safety tests before plant operation * Chernyobl then tried to run those safety tests after the plant was in operation (for some time…

I disagree, this is true, but the failure was complex and worth understanding some extra nuances: * The design of the reactors made them unsafe in a scenario where you needed to quickly insert the control rods. Doing so should reduce power output, but due to their graphite tips, it led to a sudden surge of power output. * Leadership repeatedly didn't listen to or believe what they were hearing from boots on the groun…

I mean it's a cool sequence of events and definitely if engineering interests you it's worth studying. Although I ultimately find the question of if the USSR knew about the graphite tip problem beforehand the most interesting part of the story (the HBO series taking the side of they knew). With the scandal not being the explosion but that the state was blind to problems it was causing.

But the common person just really needs to understand "garbage in, garbage out". Operating a nuclear reactor outside of specifications may result in catastrophic failure; which is why the West has so many regulations about them.

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

#197

Post by stevage »

chgs wrote: post #119
stevage wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (seriously, it's like watching an LLM execute on CPU). I dunno, it seems fine to me. The person starts the call by saying they need an ambulance, so she is going through trying to collect information about what the injuries are. The problem is that the pilot wanted to contact 911 to warn them about the plane crash, but somehow that got misinterpreted by the homeowner and got them on this ambulance track, and the pi…

I suspect an average dispatcher is an order magnitude more likely to have someone reporting they crashed a plane than actually did crash a plane.

Ha, interesting example of a sensitivity/specificity test.

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

#199

Post by spoonjim »

sneak wrote: post #20
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 secon…

Of all places, the military is quite explicit about using human lives as expendable resources to achieve objectives.

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

#200

Post by spoonjim »

computerex wrote: post #64
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…

In other words to you human lives are worth less than F-35s.

First of all, the F-35's job is to kill people, let's not get overly moralistic here, but of all places, the military is quite explicit about using human lives as expendable resources to achieve military objectives. If the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is asked to choose between losing 20 enlisted privates in a training accident vs. losing 20 B-2 bombers which one is he going to choose?
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