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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

#231

Post by Someone »

njtransit wrote: post #173
caseyy wrote: post #167

This reminds me of how in the 18th century, captains in the Royal Navy wouldn't call to abandon ship because that would have career-ending consequences. So there were cases like HMS Tribune in 1797, where it is claimed that only 12 of the 240 seamen survived because the captain Scory Barker, even having ample time, was effectively prohibited from abandoning the vessel. Four survivors who escaped early were seen as mu…

Comparing going down with the ship to dying for a cause seems like a false equivalence. When a ship sinks, the outcome is more or less the same whether people are onboard or not: in either case the ship will sink. The only difference is whether or not the passengers / crew survive. Fighting for a cause, on the other hand, generally requires that people sacrifice themselves. If no one is willing to die, then the fight…

> When a ship sinks, the outcome is more or less the same whether people are onboard or not: in either case the ship will sink

The more difficult question is when a ship is on the brink of sinking. Then, having people on board can make a difference: the extra weight can make it sink, or actions by those people (pumping, plugging holes, closing doors) can prevent it from sinking.

For the captain, the difficult thing is to figure out whether a ship is destined to sink or not.

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

#232

Post by coolspot »

lenkite wrote: post #213
tzs wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Planes were cheaper then. I wonder if the higher costs of today's planes results in any pressure to try to save planes that in your dad's day would have been considered not worth the risk? An F-86 ranged from $180-$580k in 1950 dollars, depending on the model. That's around $2.4-7.8 million now. That's quite a bit lower than the statistical value of human life that is currently used by the government for regulatory a…

Out of curiosity, is there a source for the "statistical value of human life" at $13.1 million ?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life

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

#233

Post by nradov »

datavirtue wrote: post #205
gm3dmo wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s a new plane! First flown in 2006. Introduced 2016.

This project needs scrapped. They tried to make it everything for everyone. Not practical. No danger of retiring the stalwarts anytime soon.

It's a little too late for that. The JSF program probably should have been cancelled or completely restructured circa 1996. But now there's no remaining alternative. The inventory of legacy AV-8, F-16, and A-10 aircraft are going to be retired no matter what because they're literally falling apart and it's impossible to keep extending their service lives.

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

#235

Post by veunes »

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.

This seems to be less about fault and more about perception

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

#237

Post by fastball »

ldargin wrote: post #163

Maybe he didn't have the stick-and-rudder skills needed to ace that emergency; he's not like Sullenberger. But he prioritized saving his own life over that plane, and that's the real, unspoken problem.

You shouldn't be flying an F-35B if you can't fly it without the HUD (assuming functional flight controls).

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

#238

Post by bawolff »

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.

> Also, a pilot blaming procedure for a bad call is ass covering

Ultimately pilots are humans, being asked to make split second decisions. A certain percent of the time decisions are going to be bad. That is why we have procedures. In pretty much every other field we recognize that. Ignoring that fact is incompetence on the part of military command.

There are of course situations that cannot be covered by procedures, however this doesn't seem like one of them.

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

#239

Post by afruitpie »

ics wrote: post #57

Brief summary and my understanding of why this occurred: - Pilot ejects, survives while losing very expensive plane - The crash is Marine's third in several weeks, the other two having fatalities; leads to a safety stand down across the entire corps - Investigation concludes that ejection was unnecessary and so fault of the crash is on the pilot, however adding that the procedures written were overly broad - Pilot is…

> The crash is Marine's third in several weeks

Should be “the Marines’ third.” I don’t mean to be a stickler, but for a moment I thought this one pilot was crashing a plane a week!

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

#240

Post by bergen »

ethagknight wrote: post #190
unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article states he was at 1,900 feet in heavy rain with nonfunctional instument panels. He was there, he's got the experience, and he ejected (which is dangerous too). Maybe the commandant of the Marines would have liked a better headline, but another way of looking at it is the pilot lost his video server and really needed a functioning screen. I just threw away a video card in exactly the same scenario, and I fe…

>> However, the report said its standby flight display and backup communication system “remained basically functional.”

The interesting thing here would be to find out what "basically" means in that context.
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