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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

#401

Post by whatshisface »

ajuc wrote: post #352
InDubioProRubio wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It works the exact opposite way. People from totalitarian shitholes improvise a lot more than people from functioning democracies (because they have to improvise to survive daily life). And they trust their state and follow the rules a lot less (and for a good reason - their state exploits and lies to them to a degree you can't imagine living in a free country). USA wouldn't send its army to Mexico with 12 hours of f…

That is all true, except there's another reason people learn to DIY. That is when they have a basically functional government and economy but live in a rural area. The US libertarian ethos stems from a cultural memory of pioneers and farmers that couldn't be served by a centralized state.

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

#402

Post by flir »

pjc50 wrote: post #367
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

Candide. Fun fact (and nothing to do with the article): The country was pissed at Byng. The road to London was lined with pitchfork-wielding yokels for pretty much the first fifteen miles. I don't think he did anything wrong but I can see why, in that atmosphere, he was the bone thrown to appease the dogs.

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

#403

Post by elashri »

Spooky23 wrote: post #380
elashri wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The closest wars are the Iraqi and Balkans ware. For the first the vast majority of Iraq air force were destroyed on the ground or fled to neighboring countries, there were rarely any meaningful air to air fights. For Balkans, there were minimal air activities for Serbian air force. They were up against NATO (not only US) and all of the little opposition they had were using air defence systems which managed to down a…

Huh? The US was essentially fighting the Soviets in Korea and Vietnam. It was a contentious, significant conflict. Vietnam in particular saw the cost of allowing the SAC/bomber mafia from dominating strategy. The Soviet and Vietnamese pilots were pretty badly mauling the US Air Force and Navy, whose armament and tactics were built around bomber interception.

Regarding these two wars my comment was exactly that.

> One can say that the it was a little bit different in Korea and Vietnam but this was much closer to 1945 than nowadays.

Korean war started almost five years after the end of WWII and Vietnam war is 50 years old now. The two wars in Balkans and Iraq is much relevant in experience compared to the earlier two. And while the soviets provided the Vietnamese with AAA and aircrafts, there were little soviets engagement in the actual fighting (regarding the air).

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

#404

Post by kstrauser »

InDubioProRubio wrote: post #328
Hilift wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

You’ve never been through boot camp, huh. Such a person would have an unbelievably unpleasant time until:

- The military sent them home,

- They cracked and sent themselves home, or

- They got over themselves and learned how to be part of the larger whole.

Making it through with those edge opinions intact is not an option.

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

#405

Post by bluGill »

gambiting wrote: post #344
close04 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but I imagine the most straightforward explanation is the correct one - he ejected because he didn't feel safe flying this aircaft anymore. I cannot possibly imagine that any pilot would eject from an aircraft they felt comfortable flying, given that actually ejection is horrifically dangerous and is very likely to maim or kill you, with most pilots unable to return to active duty…

Ejecting from a plane is dangerous. If you have control of the plane then you should be looking to do an emergency landing - there are typically acceptable landing places all over that can get you safely to the ground. I don't know how much control he really had, but it sounds like he had enough to land.

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

#406

Post by ok_dad »

bsimpson wrote: post #194
bawolff wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually, the US military is successful more because they prioritize on the spot thinking and only deferring to the chain of command in specific circumstances. As much authority is pushed downwards to the lowest level possible. That’s why the military is so effective tactically, though the high level strategy lately has been rough. The war on terror was overall ineffective, for example, but the troops had a ridiculous k/d ratio. Another part of the success is from training. There aren’t many militaries who train as much as the US military.

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

#407

Post by pc86 »

InDubioProRubio wrote: post #328
Hilift wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

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

#408

Post by bumby »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #391
bumby wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I strongly prefer hyperrational risk calculators 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.

> My problem with this take is that humans are very poor risk estimators Indeed few people have this rare capability, that's why I explicitly named them this way ("hyperrational risk calculators").

I’m somewhat skeptical that they exist, at least in the numbers needed to fill pilot slots. Barring certain neurological disease, I don’t think people are “hyper rational” despite even appearing that way to the outside, or identifying themselves as such. We like to sometimes think of our brains as cold computers but they’re not, and even less so in time-critical situations like flying a damaged aircraft. We’re moreso “hypertationalizers” than “hyperrational”

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

#409

Post by thrill »

arghwhat wrote: post #242
thrill wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flight control software was not malfunctioning. He had instruments and communication capability that would have let him land an otherwise flyable aircraft.

Again, a very easy judgement to make when you’re not the one strapped to the rocket in what the documents describe as “challenging conditions” as your displays you were flying after go dark. He only had “ basically working” comms, which seems to suggest that it too was degraded, and the instruments referred to as being available is just the tiny artificial horizon display in front of his right knee.

I've been strapped to such a rocket in such challenging conditions with even worse remaining operable equipment more than once.

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

#410

Post by timcobb »

Hilift wrote: post #295
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…

In my opinion, the Russians are quite tactically adaptive. The current war has seen tit-for-tat adaptation between both sides. The Russians don't/can't invest resources in not losing personnel. It's not a priority for them.
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