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

marinecorpstimes.com

261–270 of 508 posts

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

#261
post #3

> “How in the hell do you lose an F-35?” Mace posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “How is there not a tracking device and we’re asking the public to what, find a jet and turn it in?” This sounds like a potent critique of 5th generation fighters but it's quite not. The F-35 is meant to be lost - it can't even use standard Link 16 because it reveals too much of it's presence to enemy fighters. The idea of it lackin…

Then it must also not have any secure communications, and is thus a fucking joke.

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

#262
post #225

Sounds like he panicked and didn’t try long enough to exhaust his options before ejecting. The right call for the demotion

He was at 1900 feet and could not be sure in which direction the plane was going.

If the plane would fly towards the ground with mach 1 it would have hit it in 1.5 seconds.

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

#263
post #228

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…

US pilots havent really been engaged in a war against a peer since ww2. It might be true. But we probably shouldnt extrapolate from bombing terrorists in the desert to actually fighting against say China.

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

#264
post #250
post #228

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…

He did the right thing. He's alive and well, fired from his command instead of deceased like the other servicemen in the OV-22 and FA-18D.

The jet was fine, it kept flying for 64 miles. He probably ejected because there had been a recent osprey crash with causalities and he was scared.

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

#265
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The book said that ejecting is the correct action when the plane is “unresponsive to the pilot’s commands“. This simple, straight forward statement turns out to be more ambiguous than they intended. Do you eject if the radio doesn’t change channel? No, that would be silly, even though the plane didn’t respond to your command to change the channel. The plane is still flyable without the radio! Common sense says that y…

> instead of penalizing him He wasn’t disciplined. But he was penalised. Which strikes me as the right balance given the facts. There are two kinds of jobs: those where the person’s employment is more important than their work, and those where it isn’t. This is the latter. He’s still getting paid. But he should not have this responsibility. It you’re making excuses after losing a plane when you shouldn’t have, becaus…

Were the people who wrote the manual penalized? Should they continue to write manuals?

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

#266
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> and it's impossible to keep extending their service lives.

B52 projected to last till 2050

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

#267
post #3

> “How in the hell do you lose an F-35?” Mace posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “How is there not a tracking device and we’re asking the public to what, find a jet and turn it in?” This sounds like a potent critique of 5th generation fighters but it's quite not. The F-35 is meant to be lost - it can't even use standard Link 16 because it reveals too much of it's presence to enemy fighters. The idea of it lackin…

Then it must also not have any secure communications, and is thus a fucking joke.

Secure or not, an enemy can still see that there is a constant stream of RF coming from a patch of sky moving at fighter jet speeds, which might warrant some investigation

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

#268

> The investigation report said the F-35′s transponder failed as a result of the electrical malfunction So there is serious electrical malfunction and the pilot loses communication and also some of his displays multiple times. In hindsight we know it wasn't that serious and the plane could have kept flying. But how can the pilot figure that out, while flying the aircraft? One needs to evaluate decisions based on the…

> But how can the pilot figure that out, while flying the aircraft?

Looking out the window.

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

#269

My dad was reprimanded for not following orders ejecting when the engine on his F-86 failed. He did the calculations and figured he could make the field, which he did. They said the pilot was far more valuable than the airplane.

The procedure was to:

1. know the optimal glide speed. Since the jet was traveling much faster than that, he pulled up the nose to trade excess speed for altitude.

2. trim the airplane for optimal gliding

3. push the nose down to maintain optimal glide speed

4. work the math on altitude, air pressure and sink rate to get distance traveled

This was long before calculators (1950s) so he had to know the formulae and the figures. I read one of his certification tests for flying jets, and you had to know an awful lot.

When I was at Boeing I was told that one of the engineering marvels on a jet was the mechanical computer that managed the engine, reducing it to a single lever for the pilot.

P.S. ejection seats were new in those days, with bugs that could injure or kill the pilot. He figured it was safer to glide the bird in.

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

#270
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't aware we were at war.

US Govt. says we're at war. https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-12-part-i-chapter...

I feel like terrorism is about to give up and come to the negotiating table though.
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