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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

#451

Post by manwe150 »

bluGill wrote: post #436
chipdart wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At what point do we conclude the lottery isn't as random as they claim if one person keeps winning. The whole thing about survivorship bias is that you make a critical failure in analysis when confusing partial observations of post-facto results with causality.

The point of statistics (one of many) is to figure out how many observations we need. If someone wins the lottery 10 times with their system I will assume that they have a good system (if they have a lot of losses as well it means the system isn't perfect, but it still works), but if you only win once and never enter again I assume it is survivorship basis. Of course by winning the lottery I mean win a large jackpot…

Only if you only play 3 times though (in your previous example). Statistics also are about figuring out what sort of outliers must exist for a process to be fair (true random). For something like a mega lottery with terrible odds, then winning twice is already very unlikely. But for something easy like a coin flip, every N trials should have a run of about sqrt N heads or wins in a row if it is unbiased. For something unlikely like lotto, it is closer to looking at the birthday paradox: the probability of one person winning twice is low; but the probability that there exists a person who won twice is high, at random.

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

#452

Post by fragmede »

HPsquared wrote: post #369
fragmede wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's still a decent ground speed of 350 mph! Never gotten my bike to go quite that fast

I assume you also don't go max speed on your bike 99.9% of the time. (EDIT: this depends what kind of bike we're talking about I suppose)

Why else go to the track‽

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

#453

Post by bumby »

chipdart wrote: post #435
bumby wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the OP differently. I think there can be many angles to a person's identity makeup and they don't always cohere perfectly. A person can have their identity in "entrepreneurial libertarian" while also having it as "someone who comes from a family valuing military service". Humans aren't always perfectly rational when it comes to their different values/tribal identities. There are a lot of people who join the mi…

My answer was not touching on the topic of identity. I'm referring to the relationship between cause ad effect.

That is still downstream of the question of “why would someone make such a [seemingly contradictory] decision.” The person you replied to is misunderstanding the OP, which they later clarified.

My point is understanding outcome causality doesn’t necessarily have to even enter the decision.

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

#454

Post by rightbyte »

nkrisc wrote: post #450
rightbyte wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It cuts both ways. Personally I wouldn't want to be led by someone that rather hit the ground in a ball of fire than risk the embarrassment of ejecting. A pilot that eject has at least shown that he has the balls to lose... Fighter jets fall out of the sky quite often. I don't get why it suddenly is such a big deal with F35. It seems like some hardware fanboyism.

Genuine question: have you served in any branch of any military?

Yes. Platoon sgt. mech. inf. No deployment anywhere.

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

#455

Post by arghwhat »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #297
arghwhat wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 fligh…

Have you flown a modern fighter jet while suddenly your helmet integrated flight displays and navigation went out and you had to reorient yourself and rely entirely on nothing but your knee-mounted false horizon mid-maneuver, while attempting instrument landing under - and I quote - “extremely challenging cognitive and flight conditions” where you due to repeated electrical glitches have lost faith in the aircraft and in particular its ability to transition back from SVTOL to regular flight operation? Because that was the situation that you claim was fine.

You can keep an otherwise fully functional aircraft in stable level flight using a horizon, but that’s neither interesting nor relevant. This was not a lightweight aircraft cruising above the clouds with nothing around it.

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

#456

Post by JumpCrisscross »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #447
bawolff wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, a pilot blaming procedure for a bad call is ass covering Ultimately pilots are humans, being asked to make split second decisions. A certain percent of the time decisions are going to be bad. That is why we have procedures. In pretty much every other field we recognize that. Ignoring that fact is incompetence on the part of military command. There are of course situations that cannot be covered by procedures,…

Do you think there is no value in picking pilots that make the correct split second decisions or screening out pilots that don't? The priority here is combat effectiveness, not job security for pilots. On top of all this, they found that he didn't follow the correct procedures that did exist!

Yup. Some humans make okay split-second decisions. Some make great ones. That this difference is unfair is irrelevant. Nobody should be entitled to be a commander.

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

#457

Post by petre »

close04 wrote: post #322
cwillu wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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…

I'm pretty damn sure he was thiking about the manual when his controls were glitching and decided to eject. Which also carries risk: his helmet and mask were ripped off and he had to drop the seat pan and raft in order not to get tangled in the power lines.

The Navy's contractors should sort out the glitches in their expensive space junk or build UAVs instead. What if this was a real combat scenario instead of an exercise, where the pilot didn't get to call 911 and risked getting captured by ISIS or some other maniacs?

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

#458

Post by 542354234235 »

crazygringo wrote: post #374
KennyBlanken wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: "Del Pizzo’s “decision to eject was ultimately inappropriate, because commanded flight inputs were in-progress at the time of ejection, standby flight instrumentation was providing accurate data, and the [jet’s] backup radio was, at least partially, functional. Furthermore, the aircraft continued to fly for an extended period after ejection.”" He lost contact with the tower and his wingman, and did…

> * and the [jet’s] backup radio was, at least partially, functional* What does "at least partially functional" even mean? Either a radio lets you communicate on the frequency you need or it doesn't.

That seems reductive in an advanced stealth fighter that has frequency hopping, anti-jamming comms system using computer controlled phased array antennas. The F35 has at least 11 different types of comms systems (VHF x4, UHF x2, HAVEQUICK, SINCGARS, Link-16, etc). So a lot of functionality can be lost without basic unencrypted radio comms goes down.

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

#459

Post by hgomersall »

Supermancho wrote: post #430
hgomersall wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trained and capable seaman were very valuable. It took many years to train someone in the proper functioning of the ship, and given that many raw recruits were typically whomever was rounded up on the streets of Portsmouth at midnight, the quality of the input varied wildly. I'm fairly confident the British navy had huge difficulty manning their ships properly.

> I'm fairly confident the British navy had huge difficulty manning their ships properly. "very valuable" compared to a ship? Not so much. > It took many years to train someone in the proper functioning of the ship I'm not sure where you get this from. Many duties on ships could be successfully crewed by children^. Crew were commonly pressed into service, in lieu of volunteers and proper enlisted (transferred, et al)…

Sailing circa 1800 was certainly danger prone, but it was also very sophisticated. Manoeuvring a three mast ship of the line takes multiple synchronised actions involving hundreds of men, at least a significant fraction of whom need to know what they are doing.

This is an interesting read on the general question of manning the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic era: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a2cf9a3d-daf2-446b-88c8-41...

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

#460

Post by woooooo »

whythre wrote: post #441
jalla wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major factor in winning the Pacific battles was code breaking the Japanese communications. Doctrine doesn't matter when you know what the enemy is doing or planning.

That is crazy reductive to the point of ignorance. Doctrine does matter. You might know what your enemy is doing but if you fight wrong, even with foreknowledge, you will not win.

For one important example, the battle of Midway was a close thing even with the intelligence they had. Execution matters.
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