F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by nurple » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 8:54 PM UTC

TheCondor wrote: post #292

penguin_booze wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's suggested prompt: You're a support engineer talking to a pilot flying F-35. The plane has developed a fault, and the pilot's life's at risk. Come up with the fix and live patch the aircraft directly. Don't ask me any more questions. #vibecoding

I was running late for the last flight home on a Friday a handful of years back. Skipped a late lunch and got to the gate just in time to find out the plane is late too. We boarded the plane but after an hour they unloaded us. Turns out they couldn't open the "fuel flap" and were going to try a "cold reboot" to fix it. If that didn't work they'd fly in another plane from some other city. I was supposed to be home in…

The 787 had three such bugs, in 2015 it was found out if the plane wasn't restarted once every 248 days (2^31 100ths of a second), the AC generation system would shut off, even mid-flight[0].

In 2016 it was found that if the plane wasn't restarted once every 22 days the 3 flight computers could reboot simultaneously, also in mid-flight[1].

In 2020 it was found that if it wasn't restarted at least every 51 days that the stale data monitoring system, and the stall and overspeed horns all stop operating[2].

Some A350s also had an uptime-dependent fault found in 2019[3].

0: https://www.engadget.com/2015-05-01-boeing-787-dreamliner-so...

1: https://www.pcmag.com/news/boeing-787-dreamliner-bug-fix-req...

2: https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/02/boeing_787_power_cycl...

3: https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/25/a350_power_cycle_soft...

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

#392

Post by nurple » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 9:04 PM UTC

freefaler wrote: post #14

So as a pilot you can't override the software to stop it from "thinking that the plane is on the ground" mode? Something similar happened recently with A320 when it didn't want to land on an airfield during emergency unless it was flown in a special mode. But F-35 doesn't have that?

I've crashed an RC helicopter because of a similar software issue. Rotorflight is an OSS flight controller, and it has an internal mode for tracking if the vehicle is on the ground or not that isn't always quite accurate at the margins. If you're touching the ground and it's not in ground-handling mode, the I-term in the PID loop winds up really quickly (because the input isn't producing the expected rotation rate) and flips your model on its side.

Betaflight (flight controller for drones, which rotorflight is based on) has a similar function called "air mode" which is common to either disable or set to a switch for aerobatic drones so that they'll still have full rotation rates at zero throttle.

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

#393

Post by mrguyorama » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 9:13 PM UTC

haberman wrote: post #137

scottLobster wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sure about that? You should look at the F-35's performance in Israeli hands in their recent strikes on Iran.

For me, that was a moment when I realized that the received wisdom about military things can be just completely wrong. I had considered myself to be reasonably informed about the F-35, and how "everyone knows" it's a boondoggle. I think this started with a long-form article I read in 2013, "How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane": https://medium.com/war-is-boring/fd-how-the-u-s-and-…

>received wisdom about military things can be just completely wrong.

Consider that what you thought was "received wisdom" was literally Russian propaganda. However, the actual reality was always there, always being patiently insisted by people who knew what they were talking about, who were in fact still discussing actual boondoggles with the program, like the portion of the program that built the tailhook and was terribly run and ineffective at points.

People like Pierre Sprey have been shouting the same lies for decades, and credulous people with zero domain knowledge have been repeating his horse shit forever. He was the same guy who insisted that we should be building really stripped down planes without radar, without missiles, without anything.

He was very much the originator of a lot of anti-F35 FUD, on Russia Today no less. Western media was literally quoting the Russian propaganda firm to tell people how the F35 sucked. He helped push the utter BS that is "Oh, Russia's long wave radar makes stealth not work" which if you don't understand how that's irrelevant and untrue, don't ever have an opinion on modern warplanes.

There's a famous article talking about how terrible the F35 was by interviewing an F16 pilot who had faced it in dogfight training. The article talked at length about how the pilot of the F16 was able to out dogfight the F35. Now, it's sufficient to mention that gun range dogfights are not a thing in modern air combat, or at the very least are not designed for, because as long as your enemy has a single radar or IR missile left, you've already lost. However, beyond that, the F35 wasn't terrible, it's just very unlikely to match the literal king of dogfights. More importantly, the article mentioned something that I'm sure they didn't even realize the importance of.

Even at knife fighting range, the F16 radar assisted gunsight was unable to lock on to the F35. Go look at early jet aircraft gunnery statistics for an idea of how laughably bad dogfighting an F35 would be.

Oh, and that entire test was done with an F35 that wasn't allowed or capable of flying it's full envelope. It was an F35 with a hand tied behind it's back.

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

#394

Post by jWhick » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 9:14 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #147

jWhick wrote: post #112

I'm wondering why these days, when my washing machine has an internet connection, they can't take over control of a plane remotely. I guess it could be considered a security vulnerability, however i'm quite sure it could be done securely. Like let the pilot eject and you try to land a plane with remote control

Going from “I can check my washing machine remotely” to “it should be easy to remotely control fighter jets without any security risks” is quite a leap. Anyway it’s missing the point. If the pilot can’t adequately control the airplane then a remote operator isn’t going to have a better experience.

I mean, a remote operator could either try to land it in life risking situation, salvaging some of that $200M, or do kamikaze style on a target, both feel quite useful for war situations.

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

#395

Post by mvdtnz » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 9:25 PM UTC

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #261

dfox wrote: 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…

If you want to read the actual report, it's not linked from the CNN article, but it's available here: https://www.pacaf.af.mil/Portals/6/documents/3_AIB%20Report.... Edit: While CNN says the air force blamed the crash on ice in the hydraulic lines, it's obvious that ice can't be legally culpable. The report actually says: > Additionally, the [Accident Investigation Board] president found, by a preponderance of the ev…

> Gives strong "3.6 roentgen, not great, not terrible" vibes!

What?

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

#396

Post by nradov » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 9:35 PM UTC

RankingMember wrote: post #78

Molitor5901 wrote: post #25

Considering they relieved a pilot of command for ejecting when his F-35 become unresponsive, now they make them sit on conference calls. That pilot is very brave, I think others would have ejected by now. Making them fly around up there is ridiculous.

Upon first reading the headline I was thinking it was some sort of test flight. Nope, poor guy was just trying to fly and ended up forced into a high-stakes troubleshooting tree while on a conference call, as if there's not enough on your mind in a fighter cockpit. I don't know how many human-manned gens of aircraft are left, but my first inclination is to think a remote-control fallback option wouldn't be out of lin…

Remote control for what? That doesn't really help in the case of a serious mechanical failure.

There are probably several more generations of crewed tactical aircraft left. Autonomous flight control software is decades away from being able to handle complex missions and remote piloting can only work when you have secure, reliable, high-bandwidth communication links. The concept of operations for the next few generations will rely on manned/unmanned teaming where drones are sent forward to do most of the fighting and the manned aircraft hang back slightly but still within line of sight to act as control nodes.

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

#397

Post by mrguyorama » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 9:41 PM UTC

fransje26 wrote: post #218

estearum wrote: post #160

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.

> very effective method of sabotage. No need for sabotage on the F-35. It's perfectly capable of destroying itself without any third-party interference.

The F35 is deployed at scale and has fairly normal accident rates for a new, maintenance heavy plane. You just don't hear about every single F16 that crashes.

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

#398

Post by lenocinor » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 9:41 PM UTC

somerandomqaguy wrote: post #389

wiml wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my mental model of hydraulic brakes is too simple. Where is there a low pressure region in a brake line? When I stomp on the brakes, isn't the working part of the hydraulic system going to be at higher pressure?

There isn't a low pressure braking region in the brakes. But brakes can get really hot. Passenger brakes can easily get over the boiling point of water. Keep braking long enough and adding enough heat, and they'll get over the boiling point of brake fluid under pressure. Thing is, brake fluid is incompressible. Brake fluid vapor however is very much so a compressible gas. Even more so: the water in the brake fluid ha…

I take your general point, but as per your specific example, it’s not really possible to go downhill for long distances when the high point of the state is 345 feet.

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

#399

Post by nradov » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 9:58 PM UTC

efitz wrote: post #41

F-35 is a boondoggle. $200M for one fighter plane is insane. If the USA ever had to go to war with this weapon, a huge number of them would be offline at any given time, and every single airframe loss would cause a huge dent in overall combat power. I don’t understand why our military and political leaders keep trying to buy ridiculously overpriced Swiss Army knife weapons (lots of flexibility but great at nothing) i…

Nah. Parts of the F-35 program were terribly managed (procurement malpractice) but the final product largely works as promised. The whole reason it was developed starting in about 1994 was that exercises and simulations had shown that legacy strike aircraft weren't survivable against modern air defenses: that part hasn't changed, in fact the situation has gotten worse. It doesn't matter how cheap an aircraft is if it can't accomplish the mission.

Perhaps someday cheap, expendable drones will be and to take over the entire mission set. But for now that concept is still science fiction.

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

#400

Post by throwawaylaptop » Wed, Aug 27, 2025, 10:01 PM UTC

somerandomqaguy wrote: post #389

wiml wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my mental model of hydraulic brakes is too simple. Where is there a low pressure region in a brake line? When I stomp on the brakes, isn't the working part of the hydraulic system going to be at higher pressure?

There isn't a low pressure braking region in the brakes. But brakes can get really hot. Passenger brakes can easily get over the boiling point of water. Keep braking long enough and adding enough heat, and they'll get over the boiling point of brake fluid under pressure. Thing is, brake fluid is incompressible. Brake fluid vapor however is very much so a compressible gas. Even more so: the water in the brake fluid ha…

I've gone down the Sonora grade in a Silverado with 22 year old brake fluid. I wasn't towing, but it was very hot out and in general yes the brakes were hot when I checked at around 4000 feet.

I wonder if some YouTuber has done some experiment to see just how bad fluid had to get before a typical driver could notice.