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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

#461

Post by ExoticPearTree »

jtbayly wrote: post #444
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

His past experience was known when he took that assignment. It was considered by all before he accepted it. That doesn’t mean his boss can’t fire him, but let’s not pretend that it wasn’t a complete reversal of what had previously been decided.

What is not clear is if this report was available when he got the job or not. Because "he crashed a plane unde difficult conditions" without additional context might be fine and then 5 months later the report comes out and it is not fine for him to be the CO of that unit.

And, being the military (and this also happens in big orgs as well), the people above him can fire hime from a post without much issues.

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

#462

Post by bumby »

ajuc wrote: post #442
bumby wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And they trust their state and follow the rules a lot less It was my understanding that the opposite was true in Ukraine early in the conflict. Russia suffered high casualties because they still relied on a central command structure and field leaders were reluctant to make decisions without the express validation of their superiors. This led to them being sitting ducks as they waited for confirmation, and resulted…

The centralised structure, the lack of trust and selfishness, and the improvisation and ignoring the rules are all connected. The less people care about rules - the harsher you have to be to enforce them. The high level officers had to go to the front lines not because foot soldiers were helpless without them. They had to go there because without them the soldiers would ignore the orders to go forward, hide in relati…

>the soldiers would ignore the orders

Doesn't that undermine the OP's claim that people in more totalitarian regimes have higher trust in the state and hierarchy?

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

#464

Post by bumby »

calmbonsai wrote: post #463

I'm amazed by the volume of opinions on this matter. If you've never been a military pilot, I don't think you can give a qualified opinion on this incident.

Surely, other opinions can have relevance. Do you think an aerospace engineer can have no opinion? What about an avionics tech that works on display and comms systems? What about an aviation safety officer or a commercial pilot? These are all people with relevant perspectives.

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

#465

Post by bumby »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #443
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…

But the review found that the pilot did do the right thing and did follow the manual. The definition of, "out of control" seems to be to blame. He's even been cleared to fly again.

It's important to acknowledge he was part of a Test & Evaluation squadron. It's usually part of their jobs to push the flight envelope so that people can define procedures. Reading between the lines, it sounds like the pilot may have been too conservative in their eyes for that purpose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMX-1

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

#466

Post by aleph_minus_one »

bumby wrote: post #408
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I don’t think people are “hyper rational” despite even appearing that way to the outside, or identifying themselves as such.

As I wrote in my parallel answer https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42115831 I do believe that on rationalism websites or forums, it's quite plausible that some of this breed of people hangs around.

---

> I’m somewhat skeptical that they exist [...] in the numbers needed to fill pilot slots.

I think we agree with this weaker statement that I created by using the ellipsis. But, as I wrote,

> In a a high risk-high reward situation, I strongly prefer hyperrational risk calculators (in opposite to risk avoiders - the common person in society) over hypermasculine risk takers

I'd strongly prefer these people - assuming such a choice exists.

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

#467

Post by rascul »

Tanoc wrote: post #449
kstrauser wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That wasn't really true during World War II. Some of the most celebrated veterans of that war were anti-authority as hell, doing things like stealing parts of fellow aircrews' planes to rebuild their own, ignoring formation to get better torpedo angles, and running ahead of everyone else in a tank. In Korea that attitude still survived, but only in the air, and by the end of the Vietnam war it had basically been stam…

> stealing parts of fellow aircrews' planes to rebuild their own

US Army still does that today to some extent (not with planes anymore though). It's not stealing, they're just getting their stuff back.

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

#468

Post by wkat4242 »

jalla wrote: post #371
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…

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.

The problem with code breaking is that you can't benefit from it too much because your enemy will realise you're reading their messages and change their practices.

For this reason the allies had to let convoys be hit sometimes, because they couldn't always be too suspiciously at the right place at the right time. Luckily the German confidence in Enigma was so high that their top leaders ignored reports of enigma being broken, they thought it literally impossible.

I'm not sure how this played out in the Japanese war. But the point remains. You can't use signals intelligence too much unless it's literally ending the war in a couple of days.

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

#469

Post by wkat4242 »

whizzter wrote: post #336
rightbyte wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These sort of quotes are cute but not really usefull. Probably counterproductive. There is 0 people in the US Navy that did service in the 2WW. There has been multiple generations. There is no way there is that much of institutional inertia, if the quote was correct at the time. Punnishing failure disincentives a lot of things. It has drawbacks.

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's been known to happen that airplanes that were unrecoverable, recovered after the pilot ejected due to the massive shift in centre of gravity and the ejection forces. Like the cornfield bomber: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber

So just the fact that it continued flying isn't really enough to justify that it was a wrong decision. Like all aviation matters it requires a comprehensive analysis.

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

#470

Post by jki275 »

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…

That's definitely not what happened and not what the report says.

Also, this is a STOVL aircraft, and I suspect the procedures are completely different.

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