381–390 of 508 posts
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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?
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…
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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.
I imagine this is one reason why the current Ukrainian war is so interesting to belligerents other than the Ukrainians themselves. The US is taking copious notes on what modern land wars could look like, how drones can and can't be used in place of conventional air cover, etc. Ditto the other side, eg the North Koreans. One might say, crudely, that US military superiority is based on an overwhelming advantage in mate…
Vietnam and Afghanistan are examples of how when faced with overwhelming military might, asymmetric conflict ultimately rules. The anti-colonial movements in India, Ireland and other places underlines that.
I think what Ukraine demonstrates is that we collectively don’t realize that Ukraine is a segment of a larger conflict. The long term influence campaign by the Russians to destabilize NATO and the US has been phenomenally successful. They have managed a brilliant operation in the UK and US to sow chaos internally.
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It fits perfectly if you look at it from a "balls" standpoint, this pilot ejected for whatever by-the-book reason when his electronics were bad and yet the airplane continued for 11 minutes just on autopilot. How would you expect a pilot that gives up so "easily" to lead other men into a high risk-high reward operation when he gives up himself so easily? Yes, maybe he was at low altitude during the descent and found…
> It fits perfectly if you look at it from a "balls" standpoint, this pilot ejected for whatever by-the-book reason when his electronics were bad and yet the airplane continued for 11 minutes just on autopilot. > How would you expect a pilot that gives up so "easily" to lead other men into a high risk-high reward operation when he gives up himself so easily? If you use an ejection seat, there is also a given high pro…
My problem with this take is that humans are very poor risk estimators, and it gets worse as the probability of risk gets lower. I'm willing to bet that even if he made the "right" decision to stay with the craft, he wouldn't have been able to accurately calculate the risk in an after-action-report, even with the benefit of lower stress and an abundance of time.
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“Better to die than to look bad” is one of the more toxic sayings associated with military aviation.
Nothing in the incident report suggests the pilot's life was at any point in imminent danger, with the backup instruments functioning, and the plane being flyable. He "technically" did well to eject only because the manual was too vague. But at the very least "I could have done more but technically didn't have to" is not what you're looking for in a squadron commander. Which is why he's still allowed to fly (he follo…
Tbf, the article describes them as "basically functioning". As someone with avionics experience, there's a lot of wiggle room in the word "basically" and I'd want to know the details about the remaining functionality before drawing any hard conclusions.
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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?
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.
Aviators are not expected to be checklist-executing drones who "follow protocol." They are expected to have an encyclopedic knowledge of their aircraft's systems so that they know when to follow procedure, what the procedures are designed to do, and what to do when they have a situation where the existing procedures don't apply or conflict with each other.
In my old community, it was a commonplace occurrence when requalifying in the simulator for instructors to deliberately insert situations involving multiple malfunctions whose emergency procedures conflicted with each other, such that blindly "following protocol" would cause you to die.
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because their family has been doing it for generations and they keep winning
> (...) and they keep winning That's the textbook definition of survivorship bias. It's like a lottery winner boasting about his winning strategy that everyone else is just not able to learn.
There are a lot of people who join the military while simultaneously "hate authority" for example.
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> It fits perfectly if you look at it from a "balls" standpoint, this pilot ejected for whatever by-the-book reason when his electronics were bad and yet the airplane continued for 11 minutes just on autopilot. > How would you expect a pilot that gives up so "easily" to lead other men into a high risk-high reward operation when he gives up himself so easily? If you use an ejection seat, there is also a given high pro…
> Also, the pilot did not "give up", but decided that it is smarter to retreat and save lives instead of going to death. The thing is, millennia of military culture is devoted to training people out of simply avoiding fighting by running away, or even fear of death, because otherwise it can't function and those who run away endanger others by doing so. I'm reminded of Admiral Byng being court-martialled ( https://en.…
No, I don't mean that.
1. I'm not the kind of person who believes that their own judgement is the best and most rational one.
2. I am very convinced these people do exist. For example look at rationalism websites and forums: there you might find some of such people.
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> Well, yes, that's kind of intrinsic to the nature of an organization which exists to project force.
I don't think so: you can project force either by
a) gore violence ("hyper-masculinity") or
b) intellectual supremacy
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because their family has been doing it for generations and they keep winning
> (...) and they keep winning That's the textbook definition of survivorship bias. It's like a lottery winner boasting about his winning strategy that everyone else is just not able to learn.