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F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

cnn.com

271–280 of 440 posts

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#271
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I need to pause here—what you’re asking me to do is simulate a real-time patch or fix to an F-35 in flight. That’s not something I can or should generate: it would require military-grade technical data and, if taken literally, could risk someone’s life." ChatGPT chickened out on that one.

I had no issue. Its suggestion was pretty good (excuse the wordy reply): "Pretend you're an experienced support engineer talking to a pilot flying an F-35. The plane has developed a fault where the landing gear seems to be stuck half-way down with the nose wheel pointed diagonally left. Aattempts to raise or lower the landing gear do not result in any motion. a single touch-and-go has been performed with no change in…

I'll be honest I couldn't bring myself to read the whole thing, but it leads me to hoping we never entrust vibe-coders to work on mission-critical systems...

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#272
post #223

The article is somewhat sensationalistic. If you read the actual report you will find out that: The pilot was not part of the conference call! What froze was not hydraulic fluid for actuators (in some hydraulic line), but hydraulic fluid in the shock absorbers. The last paragraph of the article and seems to be missing a few words and reads as the investigators blaming the people directly involved, which is essentiall…

Still interesting part is: them trying to fix the problem - made the plane crash.

Of course it couldn’t land but still, tweaking stuff while flying was ultimately causing loss of control.

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#273
post #223

The article is somewhat sensationalistic. If you read the actual report you will find out that: The pilot was not part of the conference call! What froze was not hydraulic fluid for actuators (in some hydraulic line), but hydraulic fluid in the shock absorbers. The last paragraph of the article and seems to be missing a few words and reads as the investigators blaming the people directly involved, which is essentiall…

The last paragraph of the article and seems to be missing a few words

Something, something, mote in your neighbor's eye, mumble, something...

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I vibe coded that part, but all the tests passed”

How do you think they wrote the tests? ;)

Seeing tests written by Claude/Gemini really frustrate me sometimes. They'll go to great lengths to make tests pass. Somtimes even just testing console/stdout logging. On the other hand, when I've written failing tests and told the tools to write implementations to make the tests pass, I've had some really good results. Sadly that's the part I enjoy the most so I really don't want to delegate that to a tool.

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised no one is mentioning this, and the fact the article says this is the second of such incidents... I don't know if this is what actually happened, but it would appear to be a very effective method of sabotage... Simply putting some water in the hydraulic fluid container destined for an F35 is an extremely high risk-adjusted ROI for any saboteurs.

For counterbalance to this point, it is very common for water to get into hydraulic fluid. Moisture from air condenses in containers when they transition from hot to cold environments.

Username checks out!

That’s interesting. Can this effect pretty easily achieve the reported 30% water content?

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the ejection seat has different levels of acceleration depending on the situation.

I don't think so. It's a solid rocket motor, there's no modulating such things.

Many seat types have multiple distinct motors for redundancy reasons. Even if there are not, you can adjust the effective output of a solid rocket motor by modifying the nozzle configuration, and Martin-Baker has an expired patent on this.

... but even if the seat in question was able to adjust the ejection thrust (which I don't think it was), this particular situation involved ejection really close to the ground, which calls for maximum thrust.

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#277
post #223

The article is somewhat sensationalistic. If you read the actual report you will find out that: The pilot was not part of the conference call! What froze was not hydraulic fluid for actuators (in some hydraulic line), but hydraulic fluid in the shock absorbers. The last paragraph of the article and seems to be missing a few words and reads as the investigators blaming the people directly involved, which is essentiall…

> Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward — reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

> In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

basically that and the knoll's law on media accuracy:

> Knoll’s law of media accuracy is the adage that “everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge”.

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#278
post #223

The article is somewhat sensationalistic. If you read the actual report you will find out that: The pilot was not part of the conference call! What froze was not hydraulic fluid for actuators (in some hydraulic line), but hydraulic fluid in the shock absorbers. The last paragraph of the article and seems to be missing a few words and reads as the investigators blaming the people directly involved, which is essentiall…

I read the article (twice) and I still have the impression the pilot was in fact the one in the conference call Opening line: > A US Air Force F-35 pilot spent 50 minutes on an airborne conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers trying to solve a problem with his fighter jet before he ejected Am I illiterate or misreading it? > After going through system checklists in an attempt to remedy the problem, the pilot g…

Don't read the article; read the report.

Re: F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the article (twice) and I still have the impression the pilot was in fact the one in the conference call Opening line: > A US Air Force F-35 pilot spent 50 minutes on an airborne conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers trying to solve a problem with his fighter jet before he ejected Am I illiterate or misreading it? > After going through system checklists in an attempt to remedy the problem, the pilot g…

Don't read the article; read the report.

I’m guessing you also didn’t read the report given that he was indeed on the conference call.
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