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Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying

marinecorpstimes.com

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Re: Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying

#221

Post by Aeolun »

hluska wrote: post #48
serf wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Loss of trust and confidence is huge in military (and adjacent) circles. Many of these roles involve ordering others into situations that are likely fatal. There’s no boilerplate involved. Trust and confidence are immense in command roles, particularly in a role like CO of a trust and evaluation squadron. It’s also important to note that the Marine Corps itself did not lose trust in Colonel Del Pizzo - as per this ar…

I think that’s just to make the shafting a little bit softer. You are still being shafted for valuing your own life over an expensive airplane.

Re: Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying

#222

Post by Aeolun »

fargle wrote: post #10
synapsomorphy wrote: post #7

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.

as harsh as it sounds, the point is that as the commander: "the buck stops here" yes, he didn't do anything by the book, but the command still suffered a great deal of embarrassment and loss. there's nothing dishonorable but it's normal to rotate him out of leadership.

You are trying to say only the one at the top is safe from rotation to cover for blunders?

Re: Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying

#223

Post by PhasmaFelis »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #103
mmooss wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

This and the fact that he didn't make the slightest attempt to work around it. 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 fo…

There's a story of a fighter pilot, flying on instruments on a rainy night, who noticed his altimeter was reading level, artificial horizon level, but his speed was climbing even with the throttle steady. He immediately pulled the ejection handle, having correctly deduced that both altimeter and artificial horizon were were broken and he was plummeting towards the Atlantic. The plane impacted a few seconds later.

Different situation, obviously, but at least sometimes immediate ejection is the correct response to "HUD freakout at low altitude in bad weather."

(It was Brian Udell, the details are a little more complicated than I remembered but still. https://www.ejectionsite.com/insaddle/insaddle.htm)

Re: Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying

#224

Post by db48x »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #220
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> its not like flying planes is a new phenomenom. Why were the procedures still bad after all this time? It’s a new plane! Also, a pilot blaming procedure for a bad call is ass covering. That’s not appropriate for a mission critical role.

> Also, a pilot blaming procedure for a bad call is ass covering. Huh, is that a specific thing for military pilots? Just watched the latest MentourPilot's video and there the french equivalent of the FAA found that the pilots were told to improvise too much, and should have followed the procedures better. Isn't this a catch22 with hindsight based judgement?

Somewhere in the middle. You don't want to turn your brain off and bail out of a perfectly good airplane, but at the same time if the very first step of the checklist says “LAND ASAP” in giant red letters then maybe you should just divert to your alternate and land.

Re: Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying

#226

Post by db48x »

Aeolun wrote: post #219
KennyBlanken wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This and the fact that he didn't make the slightest attempt to work around it. 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 fo…

> HUD freaking out, that means I can't trust my instruments, that means I'm in immediate danger! PUNCH OUT! Isn’t that indicative of what an absolute shitshow of a plane it is?

Eh, it was struck by lightning. It lost several non–critical systems as a result. Both the HUD and the primary flight display turned off and came back on a few seconds later. Both showed numerous error messages and warnings when they came back on. Both failed a second time before he could read or understand all of the warnings. It was certainly suboptimal, but not necessarily indicative of a poorly designed or engineered aircraft. The report had several recommendations that were redacted; probably at least one of those was recommending specific fixes to make the display systems more reliable in the event of a lightning strike, or to make them recover more gracefully.

Re: Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying

#227

Post by GolfPopper »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #192
bawolff wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, penalising people for making mistakes where procedures are bad tends to cover up root causes and causes more problems in the long term. After all, its not like flying planes is a new phenomenom. Why were the procedures still bad after all this time?

> its not like flying planes is a new phenomenom. Why were the procedures still bad after all this time? It’s a new plane! Also, a pilot blaming procedure for a bad call is ass covering. That’s not appropriate for a mission critical role.

>It’s a new plane!

The F-35B has been operational with the US Marie Corps since June 2015.

Re: Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying

#228

Post by acyou »

If you're familiar with USA military history, the Americans are (were) famous for not doing things by the book for the right reasons, and letting common sense prevail, as well as incentivizing good outcomes.

“A serious problem in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine.”

“The reason that the American Navy does so well in wartime is that war is chaos, and the Americans practice chaos on a daily basis.”

So heavily simplifying things and with 20/20 hindsight this pilot essentially didn't do the right thing, even if through no fault of their own, and apparently in the US Navy you don't get rewarded for doing the wrong thing. This is what keeping incentives aligned looks like.

Re: Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying

#229

Post by ExoticPearTree »

Aeolun wrote: post #218
nradov wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. As long as it has electrical power and the flight controls are working it can remain stable and glide even with a complete engine failure. Of course the glide ratio is fairly low but it's totally possible for a skilled pilot to make a dead stick landing provided there's a suitable site nearby with acceptable weather conditions.

Is that true for those fighter planes? From a cursory investigation it seems like they’re not very flyable at low speeds without being in vtol mode.

Every plane has what is called a stall speed, which if you go below it it loses its ability to stay in the air. Above that, even 1kt above, the plane will still fly. Also, to make sure you can fly the longest possible distance to have time to troubleshoot any issues, planes also have what is called best glide speed. If you maintain that, you’re golden.

There are a lot of factors that come into play when you lose the engine, but unless there is a serious issue, you still have control over the flight surfaces.

Re: Marine pilot loses command after ejecting from F-35B that kept flying

#230

Post by nradov »

Aeolun wrote: post #218
nradov wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. As long as it has electrical power and the flight controls are working it can remain stable and glide even with a complete engine failure. Of course the glide ratio is fairly low but it's totally possible for a skilled pilot to make a dead stick landing provided there's a suitable site nearby with acceptable weather conditions.

Is that true for those fighter planes? From a cursory investigation it seems like they’re not very flyable at low speeds without being in vtol mode.

That depends what you mean by "low". The F-35B (like any fixed-wing aircraft) is perfectly well flyable down to stall speed, and below stall speed it doesn't fly at all. For the conditions described, stall speed would probably be something close to 120kn (exact performance parameters are classified). (Some fighters can use thrust vectoring and other aerodynamic tricks to retain a limited amount of post-stall maneuverability but that doesn't really apply in this case.) In an engine failure situation, pilots are trained to trim the aircraft to the speed that will give the best glide ratio and that's going to be well above stall speed.

Vertical flight mode wouldn't be usable in a situation like this. They only transition to vertical flight at low altitude with the landing site in sight.

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