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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

#291

Post by ExoticPearTree »

db48x wrote: post #124
jki275 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he was at very low altitude, struck by lightning, in a completely glass cockpit plane. You don't "call your wingman" in that situation, you decide and you do. He didn't believe the plane was flyable, and in those conditions I don't think he had enough time or separation from the ground to make sure.

He was doing an instrument landing at the time. When the ILS switched off, he automatically aborted the landing as trained. This is a go–around, so you apply TOGA thrust, point the nose up, level the wings, raise the gear, and climb to 4000’ or whatever is the correct altitude for the TOGA procedure at the airport you are at. He was already 1200’ above the ground and climbing when he ejected. He was in a perfect leve…

> He was doing an instrument landing at the time. When the ILS switched off, he automatically aborted the landing as trained.

No, if you read the report, he was on final and, for whatever reason, instead of continuing the landing procedure he decided to change the aircraft mode to vertical landing and this caused the helmet to glitch.

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

#292

Post by david-gpu »

db48x wrote: post #185
grahamj wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully thrust as well

Thrust is important but actually secondary to steering. You don’t necessarily bail right away if you lose thrust because you could still be able to glide to somewhere you can land. You might also be able to fix the problem. Of course if you’re already at low altitude or you’re in bad weather then you might not have a lot of time to try such things, but the rest of the time you do.

Fighter planes don't really glide, do they?

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

#293

Post by ExoticPearTree »

jtbayly wrote: post #56
dragonwriter wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was, and was fired from his role as, commander of Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron 1 (VMX-1), which exists largely to validate and update “the book” for the rest of Corps. So, if there is any position where simply “following the book” isn’t adequate to keep one’s job, it kind of makes sense that his was that position.

He didn’t have that job until a year later.

Yes, but I guess command decided he wouldn't be a good fit to lead others because of his past experience which as not yet know when he was assigned to be the CO of VMX-1.

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

#294

Post by db48x »

arghwhat wrote: post #272
db48x wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the screens are a separate system from the fly–by–wire computer. You don’t throw your desktop computer out of a window just because one monitor goes out. You use the other monitor to order a replacement from IT or Newegg or whatever. In this case the F–35 has three independent displays that can all redundantly display the same information: the HUD in the pilot’s helmet, the primary display, and the standby displa…

> In this case the F–35 has three independent displays that can all redundantly display the same information This is not true. The standby display is just a tiny artificial horizon by the pilot's right knee, so when HUD and primary display is out, all you're left with is your speed, altitude and attitude. This cannot in any way or form be considered "the same information" as the primary flight display of an F35B, and…

The standby display is only “tiny” in comparison to the primary flight display, which is a 25” LCD panel. It’s actually the same size as the artificial horizon in most general aviation planes. The information shown on it was not degraded in any way. The accident investigators concluded that the pilot could have and should have relied on it to fly the plane. He just didn’t.

Furthermore, it’s not appropriate to compare the standby instruments with the alternate control law of Airbus airliners. I don't know if the F–35 has anything comparable with Airbus’s alternate law or direct law, but if it does it wasn’t activated during this incident. The pilot did not experience any loss of control of the aircraft.

But I agree with you that a lot of incidents involving Airbus aircraft have been related to alternate law. Pilots get caught out by it all the time, apparently.

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

#295

Post by Hilift »

acyou wrote: 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…

That quote was Russian observations on their securing valuable technical information, but lamenting on their inability to overcome their capability gap through spying due to changes in tactics of their "main adversary". In WW2, a major factor for the US Naval success in the Pacific was a change in attack doctrine. Aircraft would attack relentlessly from multiple directions, overwhelming the Japanese defenses. In the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, when Australian and US pilots mauled a Japanese supply convoy with Bristol Beaufighter aircraft. In the battle, aircraft fake a torpedo run, the ships changed course to align with the aircraft and minimize the attack surface, then they were strafed with the four 20 mm cannons. The air campaign in the Pacific was much more vicious and effective than Europe. One of the pilots quoted

"They went in and hit this troop ship. What I saw looked like little sticks, maybe a foot long or something like that, or splinters flying up off the deck of ship; they'd fly all around ... and twist crazily in the air and fall out in the water. Then I realized what I was watching were human beings. I was watching hundreds of those Japanese just blown off the deck by those machine guns. They just splintered around the air like sticks in a whirlwind and they'd fall in the water."

The Russians have difficulty adapting their tactics on the field. Reviewing the successes of the US battles must be quite different than throwing bodies at a front line.

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

#296

Post by close04 »

rightbyte wrote: post #281
GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When an user reports buggy or glitchy behaviour I usually don't write it off as cowardice. I had the same problem in the auto industry. Some times the test drivers were accused of imagining things or sabotaging when the problem could not be recreated.

When your software crashes in a house it hopefully doesn't kill the whole family. Comparing the expectations from a pilot and squadron commander to a random user of a random software doesn't do any favors to the pilot and suggests you misunderstand the magnitude of the difference.

Even in the follow-up anecdote from the auto industry, a car test driver has vastly different profile than this pilot. They inherently work with untested vehicles and software, where the manual was not yet written. This pilot just followed the broadest interpretation of an existing manual.

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

#297

Post by ExoticPearTree »

arghwhat wrote: post #272
db48x wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the screens are a separate system from the fly–by–wire computer. You don’t throw your desktop computer out of a window just because one monitor goes out. You use the other monitor to order a replacement from IT or Newegg or whatever. In this case the F–35 has three independent displays that can all redundantly display the same information: the HUD in the pilot’s helmet, the primary display, and the standby displa…

> In this case the F–35 has three independent displays that can all redundantly display the same information This is not true. The standby display is just a tiny artificial horizon by the pilot's right knee, so when HUD and primary display is out, all you're left with is your speed, altitude and attitude. This cannot in any way or form be considered "the same information" as the primary flight display of an F35B, and…

> ... all you're left with is your speed, altitude and attitude.

Which is all you need. You have the same information in any other aircraft, most only have airspeed and altimeter info. An attitude indicator is of great help when you're flying through clouds so you can check that you're actually flying in level flight - it is pretty weird to find out you're actually flying banked but because you have coordinated flight you don't feel it.

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

#298

Post by konschubert »

Timshel wrote: post #253
the5avage wrote: post #251

> 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…

And as a bit of context it's mentionned at the end that: >It was the Marines’ third aviation crash in six weeks, following the August crash of an F/A-18D Hornet in southern California, which killed its pilot, and an MV-22 Osprey crash in Australia that killed three Marines.

But I don’t think THIS dude flew all these planes?

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

#299

Post by dotancohen »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #288
dotancohen wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has less than 50 hours in that type.

Until you get to actually fly it for real, you read the manuals a few times over, do countless hours in the simulator and so on. Those 50 hours can be misleading as to his experience with the aircraft.

A stimulator comfortably positioned at FL000 is much more amenable to troubleshooting multiple electrical failures than a tin can balancing on computer-controlled thrust differentiating, 1900 feet in the air well below stall speed.

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

#300

Post by concerned_user »

YZF wrote: post #204
bsimpson wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a civilian, I would have expected that if there's anywhere where you're supposed to follow protocol even if it means expensive mistakes happen, it's the Marines. My mental model of the military, and especially the Marines, is that it's an organization that values discipline and prioritizes following the chain of command. That's even more true if getting it wrong means you could die.

A pilot is expected to follow procedure when that's called for but ultimately has full responsibility and can make any call they want. Procedure is never going to cover the range of scenarios you can run against and there's no time to reach out to the chain of command when something goes wrong. Ejecting could save you but send the plane crashing into a city, and that's just one of many scenarios. If he was flying wit…

> I don't know if switching modes like he did was standard procedure and if the resulting failure was unusual or not.

Pilot switched mode back to normal flight because it was the switch to landing mode is what caused his HUD and PFD to turn off in the first place.

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