> “How in the hell do you lose an F-35?” Mace posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “How is there not a tracking device and we’re asking the public to what, find a jet and turn it in?”
This sounds like a potent critique of 5th generation fighters but it's quite not. The F-35 is meant to be lost - it can't even use standard Link 16 because it reveals too much of it's presence to enemy fighters.
The idea of it lacking an active tracking beacon isn't really that surprising to me. There is no "Find My" for fighter jets, sorry.
Being a stealth jet doesn’t mean you can’t accommodate this problem when training. The F-35 already has radar reflectors which increase radar signature to obscure stealth properties during peace time, having a beacon on top of that isn’t that absurd.
They absolutely do have beacons, called transponders, similar to what civilian aircraft have. Of course they can be turned off in a military jet.
The article says the transponder was not functioning because of the electrical malfunction
I mean, stealth is all very well when nobody's ejected. But shouldn't an ejection trigger some sort of beacon? We probably want to find the pilot, after all.
You'd think the military's budget could stretch to a $300 Garmin InReach.
Yep, and you also don't want your enemy to find the crashed plane before friendly forces have the opportunity to destroy it. If an F-35 crashed over foreign soil, an actively transmitting transponder would be a nightmare scenario for friendly forces that intend to scuttle the remains. Nobody wants another RQ-170 incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_RQ-170_Sentine...
Secure or not, an enemy can still see that there is a constant stream of RF coming from a patch of sky moving at fighter jet speeds, which might warrant some investigation
Several light aircraft can land autonomously at the closest safe airport. Would be useful for fighter jets, where there is a much higher risk of pilot incapacitation.
Not sure you want the stealthy $80 million dollar plane packed full of restricted electronics and bombs to land at an insecure airport full of civilians.
Also: in air refueling and carriers mean the plane may not be anywhere near a safe airport.
Mostly these jets fly above NATO countries where nobody is going to fuck with it. I guess such a system would get turned off when flying somewhere unfriendly.
Generally, yes. Better to destroy dozens of aircraft than let an adversary discover a vulnerability that compromises all of them. Of course the ideal would be to not have a problem in the first place, but by the point you're considering having a pilot eject that's out the window.
Bullshit. If you lose the engine at low altitude on climb out, there is no hope of banking much less returning. At that point, it's all about looking for a straight road or level field without power lines +- 30 to 45 degrees of runway heading. For other light aircraft that get themselves into unrecoverable situations like deep stalls where there is sufficient energy, Cirrus SR series have parachutes (CAPS) that reduce the horizontal vector to almost 0 and the vertical component to about 17 mph / 25 ft/s / 7.6 m/s. CAPS isn't deployable < 500' AGL, so if the terrain is unforgiving on a failure on takeoff, there's no safe recovery option except a rough "landing".
What sucks for the pilot is he followed procedure and at the time had no way of knowing whether the craft would remain stable or totally brick and spiral any second (rendering a procedural ejection even more dangerous).
> VMX-1 is in charge of assessing the Corps’ aircraft and helping develop and refine tactics, techniques and procedures to fly them in combat successfully.
> What sucks for the pilot is he followed procedure
He was the commander. He defines those procedures.
In other words, he was a rather experienced pilot in that airframe and knew it better than most pilots should.
And still decided that the successful outcome of the flight was in doubt based on the condition of the airframe and systems failures, in the middle of the situation. He survived. Working as intended, as far as I'm concerned.
It's far more likely to have been the "equal and opposite" reaction to the ejection seat departing shoving the nose down that solved the spin. Shifting the CG aft won't improve your chances of departing from a flat spin. Various airframe designs have corner cases that they can't escape normally - delta wings are a bit prone to a flat spin, and you can get a T-tailed configuration into a "deep stall" where the disrupted airflow from the wings is blanketing the tail such that you cannot get the nose down with aerodynamic controls. The correct action is to avoid entering such conditions.
A rocket blasting off from the nose, meanwhile, is not subject to the same constraints, and will force the nose down enough that the plane can obviously, in at least a few conditions, recover controlled flight.
The problem here is that when you make the call to get out, you don't know that.
There's no shortage of "planes that can no longer maintain flight" according to all sorts of standards continuing to do so - a few that come to mind were a B-36 that had several engines fail and several others unable to make full rated power, was unable to hold altitude, and so the crew bailed out. The plane somehow managed another 200 miles before crashing.
There was that F-15 that lost a wing from a midair collision, and the pilot landed safely - because neither the pilot nor the instructor could tell exactly what was missing, and the escaping fuel vapor hid the extent of the damage from other planes in the flight. After landing with one wing, even the manufacturer didn't believe that the plane could fly in that condition.
You have to make what is, often, a split second decision based on incomplete information, and after the Air Force lost a wave of pilots trying to save aircraft that could not be saved, the training switched around to "When in doubt, eject."
Anyway, it's pretty easy to quarterback it from after the fact, but a highly trained pilot decided, based on everything he knew, that the plane couldn't be saved, ejected, and survived. Yes, there are consequences to that action, but if he stayed with it and was wrong, there would be far more terminal consequences.
Don't forget the Cornfield Bomber! The pilot ejected from this F-106 (a single-seat, single-engine all-weather interceptor) after passing through 15,000 feet in a flat spin - and the plane promptly exited the flat spin and proceeded to a soft landing in a farmer's field.
And it was truly a soft landing - the plane's engine was still running after coming to a stop, and the aircraft was returned to service!
The report criticizes the pilot for ejecting, but also says he did everything by the book (F35 manual), but the book was wrong. And the pilot should've figured that out? Feels like they just need someone to blame for losing the plane.
as harsh as it sounds, the point is that as the commander: "the buck stops here"
yes, he didn't do anything by the book, but the command still suffered a great deal of embarrassment and loss. there's nothing dishonorable but it's normal to rotate him out of leadership.
Fighter pilots are extremely highly trained individuals. While data is scarce for the exact dollar cost - an F-22 pilot costs roughly 11 Million USD to train, pilots are expected to use judgement and be capable of dealing with high pressure/ambiguous outcomes.
Yes. And pilots are harder to replace than planes. The manual will say "if in doubt, punch out". Being in doubt is the issue: should he have been able to figure out he was safe in the time it took to eject? There is the question, and it is a question of training, not moral character.
That’s why they have reviews of these items. Ultimately, a fighter pilot is piloting a very expensive and very dangerous aircraft, if they can’t use good judgement - then they can’t be trusted to operate the aircraft. As an example, a us navy pilot mistook a training exercise for a live fire mission and shot down a us Air Force jet. Mistakes were made in the mission setup, but critically - the pilot should have used judgement to change the mission parameters rather than execute what he believed to be the order.
The fact that he chickened out of flyable F35 is floating in the air. I don't imagine how he could continue to work with such baggage in the eyes of colleagues. Retiring is sad, but the better option.
He was, and was fired from his role as, commander of Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron 1 (VMX-1), which exists largely to validate and update “the book” for the rest of Corps.
So, if there is any position where simply “following the book” isn’t adequate to keep one’s job, it kind of makes sense that his was that position.
I'm trying to read between the lines one this one. He's a Colonel and in command. How much flying does he do normally? Is he just keeping up flying to get the flight pay? Just up there flying because he can? Or was this a regularly scheduled training mission?
This wouldn't be the first case of someone flying beyond their actual role. They are never found at fault -- their career is just derailed.
I can't imagine any military pilot flying for the pay. They fly because it's their very identity. Being grounded is worse than being fired or even jailed.
In any other squadron, you'd have a point... but it's the VMX-1.
It's staffed by very experienced pilots, often of rank and age past the point where people would normally actually fly planes, whose job is to fly the planes, figure out how they are supposed to be flown, and teach this to everyone else.
I'm not familiar with VMX-1 and will take your word on it. This may be exactly as appears.
On the other hand, there are way too many instances of officer shenanigans only punished by snubbing them on their career path. "he followed procedure" combined with firing gives off these vibes.
Call me cynical, but if there is a lack of trust, it because of a lack of transparency in the past.
Also note that he wasn't fired specifically due to ejecting -- he was fired "for loss of trust and confidence in his ability to execute the responsibilities of his command." And the investigation was completed back in January, so before he assumed command of the squadron.
It wouldn't surprise me if the test pilots serving under him did not respect or trust his judgement, and this is what led to his firing rather than some top-down directive.
that's the same boiler-plate reason they give for every firing due to an embarrassing mishap.
google 'for loss of trust and confidence in his ability military' and look at the news tab, every embarrassment to a military group gets thrown that bone.
Loss of trust and confidence is huge in military (and adjacent) circles. Many of these roles involve ordering others into situations that are likely fatal.
There’s no boilerplate involved. Trust and confidence are immense in command roles, particularly in a role like CO of a trust and evaluation squadron.
It’s also important to note that the Marine Corps itself did not lose trust in Colonel Del Pizzo - as per this article he was offered follow-on orders of his choice.
That plane is significantly more valuable to the American people than his life is. That plane cost the entire federal tax bill of 1000 senior software engineers. If he's not willing to risk his life to keep it in the air, he shouldn't be flying it.
seems reasonable to me. If someone lost a 110 million dollar asset in a questionable way, I wouldn't have trust and confidence in their ability either.
Flying cutting edge military jets isn't exactly a human right.
On the other hand, the USMC has invested considerable time and effort in training this person to operate the F-35. Replacing him with someone else will take time and money. For the organization that invested all that into him to say ‘nope, we don’t want you to fly these things any more’ is itself a massive waste of resources.
Sure, that makes sense as a waste if you are operating under the assumption that they have no questions of ability and are simply being railroaded, and will never fly again.
In this case, the pilot is still flying. They are just not leading as prestigious and high risk command, because there are doubts that they suitable. There is no new cost, they are just rotating the roster. he will fly elsewhere and a different pilot will take that role.
It is only a loss if you double down thinking that he was the best or only fit for that role.
I think that is a fair question. Cheaper would obviously be better, but unless or until they are cheap, they are not disposable.
I think Ukraine is lots of evidence that of how important it is to have air superiority, even at extreme cost. If Russia had gained air superiority as many expected, the war would have been over shortly.
The customer demands the best, because if they do not have it the adversary will have it, and that is unacceptable. Even given that 110 million (assuming current 2024 dollars) is pretty cheap: the Grippen comes in at around that based on Brazilian purchases and is much less capable, being a 1990's design.
Woah, I could not believe this post, until I looked it up. Wiki says: <<On 24 October 2014, Brazil and Sweden signed a 39.3 billion SEK (US$5.44 bn, R$13 bn) contract for 28 Gripen E (single-seat version) and eight Gripen F (dual-seat version) fighters for delivery from 2019 to 2024 and maintained until 2050>>
That is 150M USD per plane. However, this might include maintenance costs, which would make it different from most F35 purchases that I have seen. Does anyone know any more specific details?
I'm not really sure what maintenance costs over that period in a contract look like: certainly getting them down to a number introduces a bunch more risks for someone (inflation etc), and not having them has other risks. Getting numbers here is sadly hard, and I agree my comparison might be not apples to apples.
Even if the flyaway cost of a Grippen is $50 million the number of planes to accomplish the same mission is a lot more, and some of that number will be lives lost. I'm pretty confident it's within half an order of magnitude of F-35 price.
The wikipedia page lists 9 digit flyaway costs for other Gripen versions, so even if it includes some support, the bulk of the price is the jet.
Edit: 5th generation jets are just incredibly expensive. I can't imagine how mad Turkey was when the US bilked them for their F35s, keeping both the jets and the billions Turkey paid.
Interesting. My understanding is that the US refused to deliver after Turkey bought S-400 systems from Russia, and will still sell the F-35 to Turkey if they stop. Do the systems share radar returns with mother Russia or what exactly is the concern?
Bingo. These systems are not packaged goods, but come with services that depend on getting a lot of the data to improve the system, and it's hard to control how they share. An air defense system is part of a network.
That's all well and good, except the next pilot facing a potential loss of aircraft will probably hesitate (worrying about getting shafted), and keep trying to recover the craft until it is too late. Then you have a crashed plane, and a dead pilot. People make better decisions when there is precident for a no-fault management style.
No, because he was not fired for ejecting from an unsafe aircraft, which is what you're claiming would be the situation where the pilot would hesitate. He was fired because the General didn't feel he'd shown the judgement and skill commiserate with his station.
The cardinal rule for an in-flight emergency is that if the plane is flying, you're OK in that moment, there's no need to panic.
He was fired because as a test pilot, he panicked after the HUD malfunctioned, and ejected from an aircraft with an hour's worth of fuel that was not losing altitude or experiencing any mechanical failures, and did not make even an attempt to verify his primary instruments against the backup secondaries, or to use a functioning backup radio.
He could have used the backup radio to contact the tower to verify his altitude, speed, heading, rate of climb, etc and then get vectored back to reunite with his wingman ,and followed his wingman in for a landing.
From what I read that seems plausible given the pilot was a seasoned test pilot; so it seems odd he was just being panicky.
Imagine just being struck by lightning, loosing main displays, and being at 1200 feet. All on top of flying in a plane with a reputation for electronic failures.
I'd be concerned too that the plane was about to freak out. 1200 ft isn't far.
2000 hours isn't all that seasoned, and he had less than 50 hours in that type. He was accomplished all right, but not what one would call seasoned.
In fact, the root of the word "seasoned" means "prepared" and he clearly was not prepared for the events leading to this incident. That through no fault of his own, hence he was not formally disciplined.
The Marines expect someone of his position to perform above and beyond their training. He didn't, so he lost that position with no formal discipline.
> No, because he was not fired for ejecting from an unsafe aircraft, which is what you're claiming would be the situation where the pilot would hesitate.
That's not quite right. The pilot doesn't have an outside oracle who tells them the truth if their aircraft is beyond saving. They have to make that decision under stressful circumstances and having only partial information about the world. Making that decision, to declare their own previously safe aircraft no longer salvageable in their own head is where the hesitation might happen.
I'm not saying that this was a bad call. The General has much much more information than I do. It is entirely possible that this was so egregious a case, and the plane was so obviously flyable that firing the pilot was the correct decision. I don't know.
What I'm saying is that you can't just say "oh they won't hesitate, because their plane will be unsafe". Because the hesitation (if it happens) happens before they decide that their aircraft is unsafe. Instead they will spend possibly valuable seconds thinking through if they truly have tried everything. If they are perhaps mistaken. If they maybe will lose their jobs because there was something they haven't seen clearly enough, but in the cold harsh light of an investigation will mean that they made a mistake.
Pilots are already heavily biassed against ejections. It is embarrassing, even if it was justified. It is a deviation from the routine. It is potentially deadly, potentially ruinous to their ability to continue flying on health grounds. This might be one more factor now which will bias them against ejecting. I hope the General made the right call.
That might make sense if you valued the life of a pilot more than an F-35, or even a large number of F-35s, but at the end of the day, that simply isn't true.
Sometimes you will save the jet, sometimes you will lose both. Military policy is not "better safe than sorry". There is some number of jets, perhaps less than 1, where it is better to have a dead pilot than an unnecessarily crashed plane.
Back in the day, a carrier deployment w/o the loss of an aircraft was considered subpar because it was taken as evidence of not pushing the boundaries enough.
Precisely, the next pilot will not bail out so quickly, saving a $100M plane. Encouraging pilots to exhaust all options before they eject is the entire point.
And now you've created yet another layer of FUD for all future pilots.
Shit can and will happen. The only real thing questionable is the damn aircraft.
Do you know how many things have gone wrong with the F-35? [0] It was a shit situation, the book was (unsurprisingly) crap, and you are potentially in a very expensive death trap. The guy choose to live. Honestly, his real mistake may just to have been willing to fly a F-35 in the first place.
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.
The ejection was months before he got the role at VMX-1.
Even if it had been after he got the role I'm not sure it should matter. I'd expect validating and updating "the book" to be a carefully planned and methodical activity, with alternate approaches tested during simulated failure or failures induced under controlled conditions.
Would they really expect a pilot who encounters a failure not under such conditions to decide it is a great opportunity to try out non-book approaches to see how the work?
Plus this idea of "updating the book" makes it sound like this was some sort of experimental aircraft where they still have to finalize the manual. This is a production aircraft, over 1000 were built, it is deployed in 30+ countries.
"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 not try to use his backup radio.
He lost some primary instruments - the HUD - and did not try to use backup instruments.
If he'd contacted his wingman and the tower he could have verified at least some of his instruments, or followed his wingman in for a landing.
The whole thing is absurd. The guy lost his cool, freaked out, and punched out - and is trying to cover his ass by using the cover-their-ass section of the aircraft manual.
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 level climb, he just wasn’t looking at his standby instruments and so he lost situational awareness for a few seconds. Glass cockpit or not, the standby instruments and fly–by–wire system were completely reliable in spite of the lightning.
> He was doing an instrument landing at the time. When the ILS switched off, he automatically aborted the landing as trained.
No, if you read the report, he was on final and, for whatever reason, instead of continuing the landing procedure he decided to change the aircraft mode to vertical landing and this caused the helmet to glitch.
The redacted version of the report does not state that there was any causal link between switching to SVTOL and the failure of the HMD. Only that the HMD happened to fail shortly after he switched modes:
95. Approaching the final approach fix, the MFL made the radio call
to convert the flight to Mode 4 (STOVL) and slow the flight to 150
knots in preparation for the 100-knot slow landing. This was the last
radio call Swede 12 heard from Swede 11. [Encl (17), (19)]
98. MP reported his HMD flickered shortly after converting. Near
simultaneously, a momentary caution displayed in his HMD that he
perceived to be engine-related and then the HMD flickered out. While
MP considered missed approach options, the HMD came back. [Encl (17)]
And from the evaluation:
19. Primary factors contributing to the mishap can be traced back to
event that occurred at 13:32:05. This event induced
failures of both primary radios, the TACAN, and
the ILS. [FF 100, 101, 126-129]
20. Additionally, it is probable that the HMD and PCDs were not
operational for at least three distinct periods. [FF 98, 103, 104,
106, 114, 132-136, 141]
Apparently accessing the backup radio is difficult, and even more difficult without the primary flight displays being operational - which his were not.
He wasn't in visual range of his wingman, who was following him.
So the whole "contact your wingman and follow them in for landing" thing seems like a stretch.
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.
> The ejection was months before he got the role at VMX-1.
But he had already been a qualified test pilot--you have to have had that experience for a number of years before you will even be considered for a post like the CO of VMX-1. So this is not a case of an ordinary line pilot doing things by the book but the book was wrong. This is a case of a test pilot, while he did everything by the book, taking an action that cast some doubt on his judgment as a test pilot. Which seems perfectly reasonable to me. My father was a Navy test pilot, and had plenty of stories to tell that were a lot more hair-raising than what seems to have happened here, and he brought those planes back. The one time he did have to eject from a test aircraft, it was doing uncommanded 360 degree rolls and was not responding to flight controls at all, and he got out just in time before it crashed.
> Del Pizzo’s F-35B malfunctioned and its primary displays and communications cut out as Del Pizzo was attempting to land through rain at Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina. However, the report said its standby flight display and backup communication system “remained basically functional.”
> The report said Del Pizzo followed the F-35B manual’s recommendations for ejecting from an out-of-control jet but also criticized the manual’s definition of out-of-control as too broad.
It sounds like the displays blacked out, but radios and flight controls still worked. This is still definitely an aircraft that can land safely.
I’ve never flown an F35. From what I understand they’re basically rockets that “fly” because of software that makes micro corrections several times per second.
Maybe if the screens are out the pilot couldn’t rely on that?
No, the screens are a separate system from the fly–by–wire computer. You don’t throw your desktop computer out of a window just because one monitor goes out. You use the other monitor to order a replacement from IT or Newegg or whatever. In this case the F–35 has three independent displays that can all redundantly display the same information: the HUD in the pilot’s helmet, the primary display, and the standby display. The standby display is smaller and below the primary display in the cockpit, but it is designed to keep working even when everything else doesn’t. Their whole purpose is to be the backup in case the other displays fail.
> 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 leaves you without a lot of control.
Whether you can limp along with such backup system depends entirely on what is going on at the time the primary flight displays go dark. In a fighter jet, that display may in some cases just tell you what angle and velocity you are going to die at. Furthermore, in challenging conditions you might have to make a decision very quickly and might not have time tuning yourself into the standby display and its degraded information.
This type of degraded backups exist in many aircrafts - you don't want the pilot of an Airbus you're in to be confronted with the plane dropping to mechanical law, or even direct law if taking off or landing, even if these modes are technically flyable and well documented.
The standby display is only “tiny” in comparison to the primary flight display, which is a 25” LCD panel. It’s actually the same size as the artificial horizon in most general aviation planes. The information shown on it was not degraded in any way. The accident investigators concluded that the pilot could have and should have relied on it to fly the plane. He just didn’t.
Furthermore, it’s not appropriate to compare the standby instruments with the alternate control law of Airbus airliners. I don't know if the F–35 has anything comparable with Airbus’s alternate law or direct law, but if it does it wasn’t activated during this incident. The pilot did not experience any loss of control of the aircraft.
But I agree with you that a lot of incidents involving Airbus aircraft have been related to alternate law. Pilots get caught out by it all the time, apparently.
As said elsewhere, it’s not that a plane can be kept in level flight with an artificial horizon that matters. As with the airbus pilots, it’s the surprise - especially when it happens in already stressful situations.
In this case we’re also dealing with an instrument SVTOL landing in terrible weather which cannot be flown with just an artificial horizon, repeated electrical failures in a short timespan, a disbelief that the aircraft correctly reverted from SVTOL to winged flight mode with all relevant instruments to confirm out - as the site says, “extremely challenging cognitive and flight conditions”. And, a manual that says if the aircraft goes out of control at low altitude, you must eject.
At a high altitude cruise it could have been flown just fine by the horizon while things get diagnosed and possibly diverted to a landing suite suitable for the remaining equipment.
> ... 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 flight you don't feel it.
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.
That really, really depends on what conditions you are flying under. This is not a naturally stable aircraft flown at relatively low speeds far away from any obstacle, and it is not being flown from a couch with a gamepad.
Even if he fucked up severely and needlessly burned an insanely expensive asset at the cost of tax payers, that’s a fuckup from an individual actually qualified for and skilled at flying the thing, unlike everyone at this site.
The whole lot of us would probably have the plane go up in flames before we even got into it.
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.
> This is still definitely an aircraft that can land safely.
This is not a prop plane. It's a heavy jet which should be almost stalling to land safely. Tower guys can roughly guide you on the course and speed but there would be at least 1-2 seconds lag between the reading, reading and acting. I wouldn't say what you can "definitely land safely" in these conditions.
Interesting detail in TFA is that the pilot had converted to the plane's short take off and vertical landing mode, but instead carried out a missed approach procedure when his helmet-mounted display malfunctioned.
What do you mean by "instead"? Would you have expected the pilot to guess where the runway is without his instruments? He was flying in IMC. Meaning he couldn't see where he was going.
The radios did not work. One was out, the other was “basically functional.” At 2000 feet, while in VTOL mode, how long do you have to figure out if your backup radio is “basically functional”? And to evaluate whether the standby flight display was working properly? And to figure out whether the plane is accelerating up and out of VTOL mode like you told it to or heading toward the ground?
The F35 does not have a dedicated radio control panel. It's a menu driven operation through a multi function display. More damningly these electrical overload failures are known on the platform.
That's not what the report is alleged to have said. This news story alleges that he executed proper emergency procedures, but for the WRONG emergency. It alleges he ejected per the procedure for out-of-control flight when what he actually (allegedly) had was partial electrical failure with operable standby instruments. Which is not a situation mandating immediate ejection.
When a modern aircaft like this has an electrical failure I would feel very uncomfortable.
He also lost part of his displays during conditions with little sight.
So imo the question should be if it would have been possible for him to check if the airplane is really out of control, in a way that it wouldn't cost his life if it was.
If his standby instruments were operable, the answer to that question is likely "yes." Having not flown a STOVL aircraft, the only part I can't speak to is whether his thrust vectoring/lift fan was in an unknown configuration, and how that plays into things. But generally out-of-control flight results from a spike in angle of attack at low speeds leading to aerodynamic stall and departure, and modern fly-by-wire aircraft are highly resistant to this.
FTA: VMX-1 is in charge of assessing the Corps’ aircraft and helping develop and refine tactics, techniques and procedures to fly them in combat successfully.
He was the commander of VMX-1. They effectively write the book.
That's not correct. He decided that the aircraft was out of control because his primary displays went out at low altitude - the manual says eject if out of control below 6000 ft. But in fact the plane was still flying and responding to controls just fine.
A big factor in this seems to be his overall lack of experience in the F-35 and not flying enough hours to really stay proficient. Highly recommend this analysis by two former naval aviators: https://www.youtube.com/live/g8PBA7k6vP8?si=o2DDBX1XqmM_x1gR
The pilot should have figured it out especially since all the controls were working. It’s like he ejected from a $100 million aircraft because one of the screens went out.
At least one concept of it is that officers (and NCOs and maybe others) are expected to succeed when the 'book' is insufficient. Following the manual is not nearly enough.
Warfare is chaos; unexpected things happen; the manual is one input but people are expected to take initiative and overcome problems with or without it. It's not extra credit, it's a baseline expectation for the job. Also, this person is a colonel, not a second lieutenant.
This and the fact that he didn't make the slightest attempt to work around it.
He had a flyable plane with plenty of fuel, a functioning backup radio and instruments he could have verified primaries against or just switched to, and even failing everything else, he could have verified against what the tower saw on radar for speed, heading, altitude, etc...and then asked the tower to get him to his wingman, and then followed his wingman in.
Instead he decided "HUD freaking out, that means I can't trust my instruments, that means I'm in immediate danger! PUNCH OUT!"
The article states he was at 1,900 feet in heavy rain with nonfunctional instument panels. He was there, he's got the experience, and he ejected (which is dangerous too).
Maybe the commandant of the Marines would have liked a better headline, but another way of looking at it is the pilot lost his video server and really needed a functioning screen. I just threw away a video card in exactly the same scenario, and I felt I was troubleshooting far too long as it was. Maybe the commandant wanted the pilot to troubleshoot on the ground? But the computer was not any better after it hit the ground.
This is incorrect. He lost his HUD and the primary flight display, but not the standby instruments. Those are intended as a backup in case the other systems fail, and they did their job and kept operating. You can't use them to fire missiles or keep track of enemy anti–air radar systems, but you can use them to fly the plane, avoid terrain, and land safely. And he didn’t even check to see if they were still working before he ejected.
Eh, it was struck by lightning. It lost several non–critical systems as a result. Both the HUD and the primary flight display turned off and came back on a few seconds later. Both showed numerous error messages and warnings when they came back on. Both failed a second time before he could read or understand all of the warnings. It was certainly suboptimal, but not necessarily indicative of a poorly designed or engineered aircraft. The report had several recommendations that were redacted; probably at least one of those was recommending specific fixes to make the display systems more reliable in the event of a lightning strike, or to make them recover more gracefully.
There's a story of a fighter pilot, flying on instruments on a rainy night, who noticed his altimeter was reading level, artificial horizon level, but his speed was climbing even with the throttle steady. He immediately pulled the ejection handle, having correctly deduced that both altimeter and artificial horizon were were broken and he was plummeting towards the Atlantic. The plane impacted a few seconds later.
Different situation, obviously, but at least sometimes immediate ejection is the correct response to "HUD freakout at low altitude in bad weather."
While those cases do certainly exist, this was not the case here, he had time to troubleshoot and determine if his backup instruments were working or not.
I don't think it says exactly that. It says he still had backup instruments and good flight controls and ejected from a flyable plane. If that were strictly true, they'd be well within standards to fire him.
I'm not sure I agree though -- it was a shitty situation all around, missed approach, go around, instrument only conditions, lightning strike that took out the HMD and most of the cockpit displays. That's a real shitshow in a completely fly by wire plane.
Which is why he still has the job as a pilot. He followed an overly broad procedure so wasn't derelict in his duties but ejecting from a flyable plane was considered a mistake. He was a squadron commander so the expectation of assessing a situation even under pressure and with limited information is a lot stronger.
The book said that ejecting is the correct action when the plane is “unresponsive to the pilot’s commands“. This simple, straight forward statement turns out to be more ambiguous than they intended. Do you eject if the radio doesn’t change channel? No, that would be silly, even though the plane didn’t respond to your command to change the channel. The plane is still flyable without the radio! Common sense says that you should just land and get the radio fixed. There’s even a whole procedure that pilots have to memorize about how to land at an airport safely even if you have no radio.
In this case the pilot changed from mode 4 (SVTOL for landing) to mode 1 (normal flight) when the ILS system went offline. But because the HUD blinked on and off several times, he didn’t realize that the plane was actually transitioning back to mode 1. He didn’t wait long enough for it to finish, and without his HUD he thought that the plane was unresponsive, so he ejected. But the plane was still flyable, even if it had actually been stuck in mode 4! You probably can’t dogfight in mode 4, but you can certainly fly to your alternate airport and land.
So instead of penalizing him for following his training to the letter, they changed the manual to state that ejecting is the correct course of action if the plane is unresponsive to the pilot’s “pitch, roll, or yaw commands” specifically.
Fully agree but as usual it was more complicated than this even. Losing controls and instruments in IMC conditions could mean you're straight and level with many minutes to troubleshoot and try things off book, or maybe another attitude like a graveyard spiral towards the deck with seconds to decide. We might not have all the details to armchair fly it.
He didn’t lose the controls _or_ the instruments. He lost his HUD and the primary flight display. But the standby instrument display was still working correctly, and the fly–by–wire system was still accepting input and acting on it correctly. Sure, if those things had failed then ejecting would have been fine. But he didn’t even check them to see if they were still working or not, he just bailed out of a flyable plane.
I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I've seen too many software systems that failed in undetectable ways, and the user was disbelieved. The damn thing is fly-by-wire and if the instruments are failing for unknown reasons, then I could easily believe that the controls started glitching too, and that this isn't reflected anywhere.
You're free to do that, but I'm not sure that this is the best thing in the world. Of the people who I know who were in the US military, generally the more highly placed they were, the less faith they had in the command structure.
He wasn’t disciplined. But he was penalised. Which strikes me as the right balance given the facts.
There are two kinds of jobs: those where the person’s employment is more important than their work, and those where it isn’t. This is the latter. He’s still getting paid. But he should not have this responsibility. It you’re making excuses after losing a plane when you shouldn’t have, because you were following bad instructions, you should not have an operational command.
I think this comment helps to contextualize the decision in a balanced fashion. If you just read the article probably you come to the conclusion that he should not have been relieved. This helps explain why he was relieved
> Also, a pilot blaming procedure for a bad call is ass covering.
Huh, is that a specific thing for military pilots? Just watched the latest MentourPilot's video and there the french equivalent of the FAA found that the pilots were told to improvise too much, and should have followed the procedures better.
Isn't this a catch22 with hindsight based judgement?
Somewhere in the middle. You don't want to turn your brain off and bail out of a perfectly good airplane, but at the same time if the very first step of the checklist says “LAND ASAP” in giant red letters then maybe you should just divert to your alternate and land.
The prime rule, which supersedes all others, is to not have shit go wrong. That's more important than following any of the other rules; if you follow all the other rules, the rules which you think are important because they're written down, but miss on the prime rule, then your ass is in trouble. Even if it doesn't end your career, it will still hurt it.
When things really matter the foremost objective is never "follow the rules so your ass is covered", it's to not have a situation where that ass covering is relevant in the first place. Outcomes matter more than preforming according to the book.
> 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, however this doesn't seem like one of them.
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.
Oh, i think there is tremendous value in that if you can do it. However i don't think humans work that way, and what is really happening is survivorship bias. This reduces combat effectiveness as it sweeps opportunity for organizational improvement under the rug.
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.
A pilot is expected to follow procedure when that's called for but ultimately has full responsibility and can make any call they want. Procedure is never going to cover the range of scenarios you can run against and there's no time to reach out to the chain of command when something goes wrong.
Ejecting could save you but send the plane crashing into a city, and that's just one of many scenarios.
If he was flying with instruments in bad weather and felt that he could not trust those instruments that seems like a good reason to eject since you can easily end up in the ground or a mountain. I don't know if switching modes like he did was standard procedure and if the resulting failure was unusual or not. Maybe he wasn't familiar enough with the airplane's systems. That said, there was a real failure that seems to have happened at the worst possible times.
At the end of the day, the bar is set really high for someone in this position.
A stimulator comfortably positioned at FL000 is much more amenable to troubleshooting multiple electrical failures than a tin can balancing on computer-controlled thrust differentiating, 1900 feet in the air well below stall speed.
You are missing the point. Incidents do happen, but you just don't get to fly a fighter jet until you proved in a simulator that you are capable of flying it and troubleshooting it. What the simulator does is to see if you can be entrusted with the aircraft.
Yes, but decades of experience have shown that pilots are far braver and willing to risk their skin in a simulator than they are in the air. And for good reason.
But I served three years in the Swedish army and wasn’t taught to obediently follow command when it makes no sense. I was taught to disobey illegal orders.
I can’t imagine a fighter pilot has so little authority over their actions like you describe.
That's because you're a civilian and you don't understand how Naval Aviation works. Reading straight from the NATOPS manual for my old aircraft: "It provides the best available operating instructions for most circumstances, but no manual is a substitute for sound judgement. Operational necessity may require modification of the procedures contained herein."
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.
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.
That’s true if it’s the same organization doing both things. In the case of aircraft accidents, we deliberately separate out the investigators from everyone else precisely to avoid that problem. The investigators make recommendations for actions that should be taken to prevent future incidents of the same type. Firing the pilot doesn’t accomplish that, so the investigators didn’t recommend it. That doesn’t mean that firing the pilot is inappropriate though, only that doing that wouldn’t prevent future accidents of this type.
The procedures are never finished. They’ll be updated as needed for as long as anyone flies the airplane. The final revision could be a century or more from now, long after the airplane is out of active service. The updates it receives in that time depend on what accidents happen during that time, as well as how the systems change during that time.
The procedures were not bad, they were ambiguous: I think most pilots understand what “unresponsive to the pilot’s commands“ means (that they should check if the plane responds to basic controls like pitch, roll and yaw before ejecting), but it leaves room to wiggle out of your responsibility by saying that you misunderstood this statement. And if someone is willing to do that, you might conclude that he is not a good fit for a leadership role...
Lots of armchair admirals in here, but as a former naval officer your answer is the correct one. The pilot should have tried the flight controls, if I had abandoned ship because my displays turned off but we could still control the helm, I’d be drummed out too.
You have a good point in that it was supposed to replace all kinds of aircraft. That was kind of its thing.
“ intended to replace a wide range of existing fighter, strike, and ground attack aircraft …”
One aircraft for the navy, marines and air force would save money was the thinking I imagine.
I remember the competition for the design many year ago (there was a Nova tv program) but haven’t been following too closely but it’s had issues filling all the roles.
It's a little too late for that. The JSF program probably should have been cancelled or completely restructured circa 1996. But now there's no remaining alternative. The inventory of legacy AV-8, F-16, and A-10 aircraft are going to be retired no matter what because they're literally falling apart and it's impossible to keep extending their service lives.
Wrong. The current unit cost for an F-35B is about $109M while an F/A-18E/F is about $55M. That's a difference of 2×, not 5×. And more importantly, the F/A-18 can't operate from amphibious ships to support Marine Corps ground forces. If it can't accomplish the required mission then the cost is moot.
It's extremely practical and a good aircraft. Not to mention cheap, now that the development costs are paid for.
There is no aircraft in history that did not have hiccups during procurement. Even "ol reliable" platforms like the Blackhawk or the F-16 had much worse reputations when they were first introduced.
I’d argue that this is exactly who you want testing potentially malfunctioning planes? The alternative leads to jocks crashing into the runway when they desperately try to control a runaway plane.
Not these fighter planes. They literally need both the propulsion and an active flight computer to fly stably. Without the flight computer, they are uncontrollable. Think balancing a pencil on your finger - if your finger is immobilized or loses control, that pencil will fall almost immediately. The plane's controls are much more complex and unforgiving.
And without propulsion, they are just flying rocks. No gliding.
No. As long as it has electrical power and the flight controls are working it can remain stable and glide even with a complete engine failure. Of course the glide ratio is fairly low but it's totally possible for a skilled pilot to make a dead stick landing provided there's a suitable site nearby with acceptable weather conditions.
Every plane has what is called a stall speed, which if you go below it it loses its ability to stay in the air. Above that, even 1kt above, the plane will still fly. Also, to make sure you can fly the longest possible distance to have time to troubleshoot any issues, planes also have what is called best glide speed. If you maintain that, you’re golden.
There are a lot of factors that come into play when you lose the engine, but unless there is a serious issue, you still have control over the flight surfaces.
That depends what you mean by "low". The F-35B (like any fixed-wing aircraft) is perfectly well flyable down to stall speed, and below stall speed it doesn't fly at all. For the conditions described, stall speed would probably be something close to 120kn (exact performance parameters are classified). (Some fighters can use thrust vectoring and other aerodynamic tricks to retain a limited amount of post-stall maneuverability but that doesn't really apply in this case.) In an engine failure situation, pilots are trained to trim the aircraft to the speed that will give the best glide ratio and that's going to be well above stall speed.
Vertical flight mode wouldn't be usable in a situation like this. They only transition to vertical flight at low altitude with the landing site in sight.
He was transitioning the aircraft from mode 4 (STOL) to mode 1 (normal flight) when he made the decision to bail. The wings were not generating lift - without computer control the aircraft could have rolled severely.
Pilots eject when the wings are level. If he was facing the possibility of severe uncontrolled roll (or believed he was) then ejecting now before the roll was a good call. At least so far as his wife and children are concerned.
Going from mode 4 to mode 1 on the F-35B (I don't know about the AV-8 family) has a significant portion of the flight below stall speed. I don't think that we know at what portion of the flight this happened.
And that's an insignificant detail in the rest of the post anyway, a nuance that does not invalidate the rest of the points made in the post you are replying to.
We do know at what portion of the flight this happened. It's right there in the report. The airplane was in stable forward flight, not stalled. You did not make any valid points.
> No. As long as it has electrical power and the flight controls are working it can remain stable and glide even with a complete engine failure.
I'm not so sure about that. I'm pretty sure that flight controls are directly tied to thrust, because it would be the engine that also drives the hydraulic system.
It's like that even on passenger jets. If you lose both engines, you also lose hydraulics (aside from whatever little hydraulic pressure the ram air turbine provides). I would not expect there to be a ram air turbine on a fighter jet, which would mean complete engine failure = complete loss of hydraulics = complete loss of flight controls.
Nope. While it's true that the F-35 lacks a ram air turbine (RAT), it does have an auxiliary power unit (APU) that can power the flight controls, avionics, and electro-hydrostatic actuators as long as fuel remains. It also has a battery that can power critical systems for a few minutes when all else fails.
Thrust is important but actually secondary to steering. You don’t necessarily bail right away if you lose thrust because you could still be able to glide to somewhere you can land. You might also be able to fix the problem. Of course if you’re already at low altitude or you’re in bad weather then you might not have a lot of time to try such things, but the rest of the time you do.
They gilde better than the space shuttle and that got deadsticked every time it got flown (well, almost every time).
The aerodynamic properties make both high speeds possible while retaining maneuverability at low speeds tend to lend themselves well to decent (for a jet) glide performance. What they trade off is stability.
The technical reason was “for loss of trust and confidence in his ability to execute the responsibilities of his command” which is not related to him following the book or if the book is right or wrong.
Which makes sense. It was subjective and that is ok.
“As a commander you serve at the pleasure of the commandant,” Del Pizzo said. “It was an absolute privilege to have the opportunity to lead the Marines, sailors and civilians of VMX-1.”
also
“he made the decision to relieve the commanding officer of [VMX-1], due to the unique mission of VMX-1.”
I read the whole article and from what is described, VMX-1 is where the best pilots of the USMC evaluate aircraft. Which I take it they are test pilots and are expected to perform much better than "standard" pilots are required to.
I guess the USMC expected him to try until the very last moment to recover the aircraft.
Normally such instructions say to eject if you're out of control below some specific altitude that the ejection system is known to be capable of operating within.
I'm sure had the pilot not ejected and the plane crashed, we'd all be calling it pilot error for not ejecting when in this situation, when the book called for ejecting.
The book didn't call for ejecting from a controllable plane. As per the fine article, the commander referred to a chapter that was not relevant for the situation.
For those downvoting you, the "justifiable lack of faith" here, above and beyond what was enumerated in the article, is that at the time this happened there had been two fatal F35 malfunctions/crashes in the preceding six weeks. I don't blame the pilot for not wanting to become another statistic.
Per the article, the other crashes weren't F35s. They were a "F/A-18D Hornet in southern California, which killed its pilot, and an MV-22 Osprey crash in Australia that killed three Marines."
I dont blame someone if they were to get scared and bail, but I also dont blame the marines if they dont want people like that flying their 110 million dollar jets.
There are two interesting additions in this version:
1.) A discussion on spatial disorientation.
2.) Comments by the Colonel’s wife, who discussed how they uprooted their lives in Virginia (almost a year after the crash) after being assured that the crash would not impact his command. Three months after getting to Yuma, there was an “oops sorry” and they removed the Colonel from command. However, they did offer him his choice of a next assignment.
in any situation where you "serve at the pleasure of" another person. you can literally be removed for any or even no reason at all. the person who decides to discontinue your service might themself have to answer to someone else, but you're still out of a job.
it might not be right or fair, but that's not necessarily a disqualified in the military.
Brief summary and my understanding of why this occurred:
- Pilot ejects, survives while losing very expensive plane
- The crash is Marine's third in several weeks, the other two having fatalities; leads to a safety stand down across the entire corps
- Investigation concludes that ejection was unnecessary and so fault of the crash is on the pilot, however adding that the procedures written were overly broad
- Pilot is offered to lead VMX-1 after all this; key part of the responsibility is improving procedures
Reading between the lines, it appears that somewhere in the leadership was a belief that putting the pilot in charge of VMX-1 was an opportunity for both; let the guy who made a mistake move forward as they'll be least likely to make it twice kind of thing. General Eric disagreed and ordered him out; it's not stated whether that was based on his own judgement only or if others in VMX-1 lost confidence and that factored in. Nobody disagrees that they have the ability to fire him for what happened.
I meant to type Marine Corps' but seem to have clipped it before saving, too late now. One pilot crashing thrice in a week would be quite the feat though!
I think it is grossly unfair what happened to the pilot. He followed orders, followed procedure, followed the damn manual. Wholly inappropriate response by the marine corps. I can only assume that it got political and the brass got embarrassed.
I can understand this reaction normally but VMX-1 appears to be some sort of test division? I imagine it’s fair to say this guy isn’t test pilot stuff if he panics and ejects the second the book says he can.
It’s not like he stopped being a pilot if I understand it right.
Has this become a politicized, viral, ideology thing? I keep seeing this story pop up in several places, but it doesn't seem like its impact merits the attention.
I'm not trolling and please don't bring the politics and ideology here. I am asking factually. (I'm here because I prefer to avoid those things and as a result can be ignorant of them.)
One could imagine an unpiloted F-35 flying 65 miles in a random direction before crashing itself is probably more of a safety issue than an issue of idiology
The plane could have crashed into a populated center, taken out a neighborhood, etc. I imagine the pilot's priority is to stay with the aircraft and not bail at the first sign of trouble or until they can no longer control it and are sure it will crash in an unpopulated area.
Until this thread, I've never heard that and didn't notice it. People criticize government all the time, everywhere (unless censored), if that what you mean.
Hating the F-35 in general has been a thing for the Anti-American crowd, mainly driven by western peaceniks who don't see a point in military might (largely depleted now) and the pro-Russia/China/etc crowd who need it to be shit so their fighters can seem competent. As is usual the latter "inform" the former.
Criticism of the F-35 is not politically polarized -- critics exist on a broad political spectrum. "Western peaceniks" and "pro-Russia/China/etc" are a small subset.
Or that F-35 failed its goals. Double the price. 50% more expensive than estimated operational cost. Its 3x the price to operate than a F16. Planes are obsolete technologies, should have invested in drones/loitering munitions. In 10 years, its all going to be drones.
> Planes are obsolete technologies, should have invested in drones/loitering munitions. In 10 years, its all going to be drones.
This is speculation on what the future will be, not our current reality. In the War in Ukraine, reliance on cheap drones has more to do neither sides ability to achieve air superiority due to AA systems. Introduce stealth and/or effective SEAD tactics (suppression of enemy air defense) into that mix, and the situation changes very quickly. For a recent example, see the Israeli strikes on Iranian air defense systems.
The future is more likely to be hybrid, where drones, and "loyal wingman" data-linked with manned systems are used to get the best of both worlds. The F35's sensor suite and data-link capability are designed for that.
Hey taxpayer! You don't like the estimated $1.5 trillion going to Lockheed Martin for their hunk of junk F35? Then you're just like Forbes, Bloomberg, the Washington Post and the other anti-American ChiComs who are saying all this because "they need it to be shit".
Your rant is almost as inspiring as the Palantir CEO's flag waving speeches where he rants against the anti-America crowd who question why their tax dollars are flowing to his company.
Yeah absolutely, when it's based in actual fact. The F-35 project is a fantastic example of how out of control defense projects can become, it's parts sourcing in partner nations is questionable when those partner nations are liable to go procure S-400, parts commonality between A, B, and C is pretty terrible for three jets that are supposed to be variants, the list goes on.
It being dysfunctional is a convenient stick for this crowd to beat it with, but I wouldn't discount the issues. The U.S.'s allies aren't exactly thrilled with it.
Is it dysfunctional though? There have been issues with it (landing gear and helmets come to mind), but they don't seem to be out of the ordinary for fighter jet development. As for allies, they keep ordering F-35s (or at least trying to) so it seems like they're at least fine with it.
> Hating the F-35 in general has been a thing for the Anti-American crowd mainly driven by western peaceniks
I hadn't noticed that at all. Could you give some examples?
What I've seen is budget hawks on all sides, meme-following mobs, competing defense contractors, and anyone politician looking for an easy target of 'corruption', etc.
There are legitimate criticisms, including of the one-design-for-all concept, which we can see is not being repeated; sustainment issues, including maintenance; readiness; relevance in the era of missiles with longer range than F-35 fuel tanks, pushing bases and carriers out of range.
It has a political component because of the cost. The military must be accountable to the taxpayers when they incur losses. We don't have tolerance for unlimited crashes and the reasons or blame must be assigned.
That's a separate argument on specifically who should be blamed here or whether blame was properly assigned. But we can't just crash our most expensive jet and throw our hands up saying "whelp, that sucks".
It’s possible. But note that there has been a lot of criticism of the F–35 since the inception of the program because it’s a multi–role fighter–bomber jack–of–all–trades that tries to satisfy everybody. Partly this is a political problem. Combat airplanes are expensive to design and need political approval. So you have to get every branch of the military to sign on to the project simultaneously, otherwise you’ll never even start. Therefore the thing has to be a ground–attack bomber for the Army, because they want to replace the Warthog. And it needs to be a VTOL for the Navy, so that they don’t have to build a supercarrier for it. And the Marines need X, the Coast Guard wants Y, the Girl Scouts really rely on Z, and on and on and on. And of course it goes without saying that you had better be able to mount any and every weapon system ever designed to the thing.
The US Navy does not operate the VTOL variant: they don't need to. The US Marines and the British and Japanese navies operate the VTOL variant (because they don't have supercarriers).
A lot of that criticism ended up being quite muted after the plane ended up being wildly successful after being put into service. It also ended up being much cheaper than the competition for many of allies that bought it as well.
Not to say that there weren't many issues with the program, but it seems like a lot of those requirements panned out.
Something I think about in stories is "how strong is the emotional hook."
This one is great! A guy fighting his controls, weighing the risk to his life, a Top Gun-style commander of a squadron, ejecting (well, an hour) before the plane explodes.
It scores low on the "relevance" scorecard, but it's off the charts in terms of human interest, and I think it's climbing due to the latter.
Not to mention that the military lost the location of the jet after he ejected and they asked the public to give tips on its location. It was missing for like a day before they found it.
Lots of tweets to the effect of "how tf do you lose a $100m fighter jet??"
This was a major story that people have been wondering what the explanation was. The most advanced fighter jet going “missing” over America, pilot landing in someone’s backyard, taking hours to find crash site, learning it was flying on autopilot before crashing etc.
Any story with an explanation would draw attention
It’s unfortunate neither the Navy nor the Air Force want anything to do with the close air support role. The Marines are the smallest arm of the US military but they “do it all”, except tanks, they got rid if they’re Abrams some years ago.
They do it because if they don’t the Army will get it, and a fixed wing aircraft budget which will come out of the Air Force purse. AF sees it as a distraction from what they want to be doing; air dominance.
I would hope that there's more to it than money. Loss of a plane can have a wider impact, but surely the gear is the expendable part. This isn't Warhammer 40k.
Nobody is saying that people are expendable. I'm saying that if you're responsible for a machine that costs as much as 250 families' homes, you should know that that machinery and you should try damned hard to make it work. After all, that's what everyone else does in every non-military airplane because you can't eject from non-military airplanes.
I couldn’t imagine being middle-aged regularly zooming and through the sky at speeds I’ve only come close to hearing of in razor commercials for a living.
My dad was reprimanded for not following orders ejecting when the engine on his F-86 failed. He did the calculations and figured he could make the field, which he did.
They said the pilot was far more valuable than the airplane.
Planes were cheaper then. I wonder if the higher costs of today's planes results in any pressure to try to save planes that in your dad's day would have been considered not worth the risk?
An F-86 ranged from $180-$580k in 1950 dollars, depending on the model. That's around $2.4-7.8 million now. That's quite a bit lower than the statistical value of human life that is currently used by the government for regulatory analysis, which is $13.1 million.
An F-35 is something like $80-$110 million. Even if we add the cost of training for the pilot, which Google tells me is $10.1 million for an F-35, to the statistical life value we only get $23.2 million which is only 21-29% of the cost of the plane.
I look at, say, the war in Ukraine, where they have a fresh supply of planes from allies, but their roster of pilots is diminishing. In this situation the pilot is far more valuable than the plane. And probably always the case during war when aircraft production is at a maximum.
An airman I know shared that it cost $10M + to train a pilot by the time they can run missions, which matches the sources Perplexity found on the question. (1)
The number of years the military gets to keep a trained pilot is limited, so that’s also a factor.
The more significant one is that so few people prove to be capable and willing to be fighter pilots. Replacement is not a given.
1. know the optimal glide speed. Since the jet was traveling much faster than that, he pulled up the nose to trade excess speed for altitude.
2. trim the airplane for optimal gliding
3. push the nose down to maintain optimal glide speed
4. work the math on altitude, air pressure and sink rate to get distance traveled
This was long before calculators (1950s) so he had to know the formulae and the figures. I read one of his certification tests for flying jets, and you had to know an awful lot.
When I was at Boeing I was told that one of the engineering marvels on a jet was the mechanical computer that managed the engine, reducing it to a single lever for the pilot.
P.S. ejection seats were new in those days, with bugs that could injure or kill the pilot. He figured it was safer to glide the bird in.
When I did my flight training on a CAPS-enabled airplane, they showed us footage and stats from the military to say that there was a clear bias towards "saving" planes, especially in training, and that it led to more fatalities than if folks stuck by the book. Thought it was super interesting, and definitely helped to cement the attitude of using the resources of the plane by the book, which, (I think sadly), this guy is being punished for.
Even if there was the military has a way of making these sorts of head scratching authority decisions all the time. There’s plenty of appeal to the rulebooks and process but it’s ultimately a human choice, very political, very high levels of (sometimes arbitrary) standards.
Maybe he didn't have the stick-and-rudder skills needed to ace that emergency; he's not like Sullenberger. But he prioritized saving his own life over that plane, and that's the real, unspoken problem.
There are no steam gauge backup instruments in the F-35 and there is no HUD either, everything relies on the HMDS and the MFD. If the MFD happened to not work, that would be fatal because (almost) everything depends on it because it's like a almost like a Tesla console. GFL piloting an F-35 without an MFD in IMC.
This reminds me of how in the 18th century, captains in the Royal Navy wouldn't call to abandon ship because that would have career-ending consequences. So there were cases like HMS Tribune in 1797, where it is claimed that only 12 of the 240 seamen survived because the captain Scory Barker, even having ample time, was effectively prohibited from abandoning the vessel. Four survivors who escaped early were seen as mutineers, whereas the 228 that died and 8 that survived on the ship have been heavily commended in history for their discipline.
Modern practices are different, there is now a lot more emphasis in not needlessly risking lives, especially when abandoning vessels is done by the book. But dying in the line of duty is still weirdly seen as good leadership - call it bravery, honor, commitment to the cause, gumption, etc. We mostly praise those who do, rarely criticize them for maybe sacrificing themselves and others unnecessarily. But I would think we wouldn't threaten people who don't put themselves at unreasonable risk with career consequences anymore. I guess this ejection is an example of modern marines acting with 18th century principles.
P.S. The historical record on Royal Navy's informal code of conduct in the 18th century is a bit limited. I think what I say is not disputed by many historians, but there is some room for debate.
Comparing going down with the ship to dying for a cause seems like a false equivalence. When a ship sinks, the outcome is more or less the same whether people are onboard or not: in either case the ship will sink. The only difference is whether or not the passengers / crew survive.
Fighting for a cause, on the other hand, generally requires that people sacrifice themselves. If no one is willing to die, then the fight is very unlikely to be successful. Being willing to die (and sometimes dying) has the ability meaningful change the outcome.
> seems like a false equivalence. When a ship sinks,
It seems that way, but that's a subjective stance. This is during a time when ships were the armies of the time. It's not complicated to understand that 250 men were worth less than a ship for the purposes of late 1700s warfare. Dying for a sinking ship was a heroic thing, in that it was an attempt to hold on to an immense power for their country. How many untold millions have died to defend a parcel of land? The value of trying to save a ship is contextual, equating to defending your country, even in the face of insurmountable odds.
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). Debtors looking for debt-forgiveness, were a particularly fruitful source. Slaves were sometimes used. Training was on the job. Operational sailing circa 1800, wasn't particularly sophisticated. It was danger-prone.
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.
> 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.
They needed to know how to do relatively straightforward tasks (many of which were unpleasant) when directed. Same as any other structured military force or industrial line. It was not sophisticated for the vast majority of sailors. Skills varied to be sure.
Debating soft terms like skillful, sophistication, and value will not definitively answer the question of a calculation. We look to other signals, like culture. The culture was such that the ships (including weaponry and anything else worth salvage) were more valuable than manpower by virtue of the historical figure sentiments. I have not seen a compelling contradiction.
> When a ship sinks, the outcome is more or less the same whether people are onboard or not: in either case the ship will sink
The more difficult question is when a ship is on the brink of sinking. Then, having people on board can make a difference: the extra weight can make it sink, or actions by those people (pumping, plugging holes, closing doors) can prevent it from sinking.
For the captain, the difficult thing is to figure out whether a ship is destined to sink or not.
dying in the line of duty is still weirdly seen as good leadership
The captain being the last person off a sinking ship is a naval version of "lead from the front". The captain going down with the ship is a probable consequence of following that ideal.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 295 ms ] threadThis sounds like a potent critique of 5th generation fighters but it's quite not. The F-35 is meant to be lost - it can't even use standard Link 16 because it reveals too much of it's presence to enemy fighters.
The idea of it lacking an active tracking beacon isn't really that surprising to me. There is no "Find My" for fighter jets, sorry.
You'd think the military's budget could stretch to a $300 Garmin InReach.
You don't want the enemy to find the pilot.
That's why pilots carry these, which they can use when it's operationally safe for them to do so.
https://gdmissionsystems.com/products/communications/radios/...
Should I be worried?
Reading the article before posting comments could help.
Also: in air refueling and carriers mean the plane may not be anywhere near a safe airport.
What sucks for the pilot is he followed procedure and at the time had no way of knowing whether the craft would remain stable or totally brick and spiral any second (rendering a procedural ejection even more dangerous).
> What sucks for the pilot is he followed procedure
He was the commander. He defines those procedures.
And still decided that the successful outcome of the flight was in doubt based on the condition of the airframe and systems failures, in the middle of the situation. He survived. Working as intended, as far as I'm concerned.
> Over the next 25 years, Del Pizzo became an experienced combat pilot with more than 2,800 hours in the cockpit, 32 hours of which were in the F-35B.
It's the other way around, he has relatively little experience in this particular airframe.
Offered command of VMX-1
Months pass
Crash plane
Months pass
Take command of VMX-1
Months pass
Loses command of VMX-1
A rocket blasting off from the nose, meanwhile, is not subject to the same constraints, and will force the nose down enough that the plane can obviously, in at least a few conditions, recover controlled flight.
There's no shortage of "planes that can no longer maintain flight" according to all sorts of standards continuing to do so - a few that come to mind were a B-36 that had several engines fail and several others unable to make full rated power, was unable to hold altitude, and so the crew bailed out. The plane somehow managed another 200 miles before crashing.
There was that F-15 that lost a wing from a midair collision, and the pilot landed safely - because neither the pilot nor the instructor could tell exactly what was missing, and the escaping fuel vapor hid the extent of the damage from other planes in the flight. After landing with one wing, even the manufacturer didn't believe that the plane could fly in that condition.
You have to make what is, often, a split second decision based on incomplete information, and after the Air Force lost a wave of pilots trying to save aircraft that could not be saved, the training switched around to "When in doubt, eject."
Anyway, it's pretty easy to quarterback it from after the fact, but a highly trained pilot decided, based on everything he knew, that the plane couldn't be saved, ejected, and survived. Yes, there are consequences to that action, but if he stayed with it and was wrong, there would be far more terminal consequences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evJe_j_RQCQ
And it was truly a soft landing - the plane's engine was still running after coming to a stop, and the aircraft was returned to service!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber
Yes, probably. I suspect you're lacking context on the sophistication and comprehensiveness of their training.
yes, he didn't do anything by the book, but the command still suffered a great deal of embarrassment and loss. there's nothing dishonorable but it's normal to rotate him out of leadership.
https://www.twz.com/the-bizarre-story-of-how-a-navy-f-14-sho...
So, if there is any position where simply “following the book” isn’t adequate to keep one’s job, it kind of makes sense that his was that position.
I'm trying to read between the lines one this one. He's a Colonel and in command. How much flying does he do normally? Is he just keeping up flying to get the flight pay? Just up there flying because he can? Or was this a regularly scheduled training mission?
This wouldn't be the first case of someone flying beyond their actual role. They are never found at fault -- their career is just derailed.
It's staffed by very experienced pilots, often of rank and age past the point where people would normally actually fly planes, whose job is to fly the planes, figure out how they are supposed to be flown, and teach this to everyone else.
On the other hand, there are way too many instances of officer shenanigans only punished by snubbing them on their career path. "he followed procedure" combined with firing gives off these vibes.
Call me cynical, but if there is a lack of trust, it because of a lack of transparency in the past.
I would imagine you update the book on the ground, not mid flight during the emergency.
It wouldn't surprise me if the test pilots serving under him did not respect or trust his judgement, and this is what led to his firing rather than some top-down directive.
google 'for loss of trust and confidence in his ability military' and look at the news tab, every embarrassment to a military group gets thrown that bone.
There’s no boilerplate involved. Trust and confidence are immense in command roles, particularly in a role like CO of a trust and evaluation squadron.
It’s also important to note that the Marine Corps itself did not lose trust in Colonel Del Pizzo - as per this article he was offered follow-on orders of his choice.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/10/31/pilot-of-f-35...
Flying cutting edge military jets isn't exactly a human right.
In this case, the pilot is still flying. They are just not leading as prestigious and high risk command, because there are doubts that they suitable. There is no new cost, they are just rotating the roster. he will fly elsewhere and a different pilot will take that role.
It is only a loss if you double down thinking that he was the best or only fit for that role.
I think Ukraine is lots of evidence that of how important it is to have air superiority, even at extreme cost. If Russia had gained air superiority as many expected, the war would have been over shortly.
https://mitchellaerospacepower.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/0...
That is 150M USD per plane. However, this might include maintenance costs, which would make it different from most F35 purchases that I have seen. Does anyone know any more specific details?
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen
Even if the flyaway cost of a Grippen is $50 million the number of planes to accomplish the same mission is a lot more, and some of that number will be lives lost. I'm pretty confident it's within half an order of magnitude of F-35 price.
Edit: 5th generation jets are just incredibly expensive. I can't imagine how mad Turkey was when the US bilked them for their F35s, keeping both the jets and the billions Turkey paid.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240202005500/https://ca.news.y...
The cardinal rule for an in-flight emergency is that if the plane is flying, you're OK in that moment, there's no need to panic.
He was fired because as a test pilot, he panicked after the HUD malfunctioned, and ejected from an aircraft with an hour's worth of fuel that was not losing altitude or experiencing any mechanical failures, and did not make even an attempt to verify his primary instruments against the backup secondaries, or to use a functioning backup radio.
He could have used the backup radio to contact the tower to verify his altitude, speed, heading, rate of climb, etc and then get vectored back to reunite with his wingman ,and followed his wingman in for a landing.
Imagine just being struck by lightning, loosing main displays, and being at 1200 feet. All on top of flying in a plane with a reputation for electronic failures.
I'd be concerned too that the plane was about to freak out. 1200 ft isn't far.
In fact, the root of the word "seasoned" means "prepared" and he clearly was not prepared for the events leading to this incident. That through no fault of his own, hence he was not formally disciplined.
The Marines expect someone of his position to perform above and beyond their training. He didn't, so he lost that position with no formal discipline.
That's not quite right. The pilot doesn't have an outside oracle who tells them the truth if their aircraft is beyond saving. They have to make that decision under stressful circumstances and having only partial information about the world. Making that decision, to declare their own previously safe aircraft no longer salvageable in their own head is where the hesitation might happen.
I'm not saying that this was a bad call. The General has much much more information than I do. It is entirely possible that this was so egregious a case, and the plane was so obviously flyable that firing the pilot was the correct decision. I don't know.
What I'm saying is that you can't just say "oh they won't hesitate, because their plane will be unsafe". Because the hesitation (if it happens) happens before they decide that their aircraft is unsafe. Instead they will spend possibly valuable seconds thinking through if they truly have tried everything. If they are perhaps mistaken. If they maybe will lose their jobs because there was something they haven't seen clearly enough, but in the cold harsh light of an investigation will mean that they made a mistake.
Pilots are already heavily biassed against ejections. It is embarrassing, even if it was justified. It is a deviation from the routine. It is potentially deadly, potentially ruinous to their ability to continue flying on health grounds. This might be one more factor now which will bias them against ejecting. I hope the General made the right call.
I do, but perhaps this was meant to be "commensurate".
Sometimes you will save the jet, sometimes you will lose both. Military policy is not "better safe than sorry". There is some number of jets, perhaps less than 1, where it is better to have a dead pilot than an unnecessarily crashed plane.
Or so I was told by a USN pilot.
Shit can and will happen. The only real thing questionable is the damn aircraft.
Do you know how many things have gone wrong with the F-35? [0] It was a shit situation, the book was (unsurprisingly) crap, and you are potentially in a very expensive death trap. The guy choose to live. Honestly, his real mistake may just to have been willing to fly a F-35 in the first place.
[0] https://theweek.com/us-military/1020858/the-f-35-fighter-jet...
We don't know why he was fired, but the logical conclusion is that it was this incident.
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.
Even if it had been after he got the role I'm not sure it should matter. I'd expect validating and updating "the book" to be a carefully planned and methodical activity, with alternate approaches tested during simulated failure or failures induced under controlled conditions.
Would they really expect a pilot who encounters a failure not under such conditions to decide it is a great opportunity to try out non-book approaches to see how the work?
"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 not try to use his backup radio.
He lost some primary instruments - the HUD - and did not try to use backup instruments.
If he'd contacted his wingman and the tower he could have verified at least some of his instruments, or followed his wingman in for a landing.
The whole thing is absurd. The guy lost his cool, freaked out, and punched out - and is trying to cover his ass by using the cover-their-ass section of the aircraft manual.
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.
No, if you read the report, he was on final and, for whatever reason, instead of continuing the landing procedure he decided to change the aircraft mode to vertical landing and this caused the helmet to glitch.
Also, this is a STOVL aircraft, and I suspect the procedures are completely different.
Apparently accessing the backup radio is difficult, and even more difficult without the primary flight displays being operational - which his were not.
He wasn't in visual range of his wingman, who was following him.
So the whole "contact your wingman and follow them in for landing" thing seems like a stretch.
What does "at least partially functional" even mean?
Either a radio lets you communicate on the frequency you need or it doesn't.
But he had already been a qualified test pilot--you have to have had that experience for a number of years before you will even be considered for a post like the CO of VMX-1. So this is not a case of an ordinary line pilot doing things by the book but the book was wrong. This is a case of a test pilot, while he did everything by the book, taking an action that cast some doubt on his judgment as a test pilot. Which seems perfectly reasonable to me. My father was a Navy test pilot, and had plenty of stories to tell that were a lot more hair-raising than what seems to have happened here, and he brought those planes back. The one time he did have to eject from a test aircraft, it was doing uncommanded 360 degree rolls and was not responding to flight controls at all, and he got out just in time before it crashed.
> The report said Del Pizzo followed the F-35B manual’s recommendations for ejecting from an out-of-control jet but also criticized the manual’s definition of out-of-control as too broad.
It sounds like the displays blacked out, but radios and flight controls still worked. This is still definitely an aircraft that can land safely.
Maybe if the screens are out the pilot couldn’t rely on that?
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 leaves you without a lot of control.
Whether you can limp along with such backup system depends entirely on what is going on at the time the primary flight displays go dark. In a fighter jet, that display may in some cases just tell you what angle and velocity you are going to die at. Furthermore, in challenging conditions you might have to make a decision very quickly and might not have time tuning yourself into the standby display and its degraded information.
This type of degraded backups exist in many aircrafts - you don't want the pilot of an Airbus you're in to be confronted with the plane dropping to mechanical law, or even direct law if taking off or landing, even if these modes are technically flyable and well documented.
Furthermore, it’s not appropriate to compare the standby instruments with the alternate control law of Airbus airliners. I don't know if the F–35 has anything comparable with Airbus’s alternate law or direct law, but if it does it wasn’t activated during this incident. The pilot did not experience any loss of control of the aircraft.
But I agree with you that a lot of incidents involving Airbus aircraft have been related to alternate law. Pilots get caught out by it all the time, apparently.
In this case we’re also dealing with an instrument SVTOL landing in terrible weather which cannot be flown with just an artificial horizon, repeated electrical failures in a short timespan, a disbelief that the aircraft correctly reverted from SVTOL to winged flight mode with all relevant instruments to confirm out - as the site says, “extremely challenging cognitive and flight conditions”. And, a manual that says if the aircraft goes out of control at low altitude, you must eject.
At a high altitude cruise it could have been flown just fine by the horizon while things get diagnosed and possibly diverted to a landing suite suitable for the remaining equipment.
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 flight you don't feel it.
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.
Even if he fucked up severely and needlessly burned an insanely expensive asset at the cost of tax payers, that’s a fuckup from an individual actually qualified for and skilled at flying the thing, unlike everyone at this site.
The whole lot of us would probably have the plane go up in flames before we even got into it.
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.
This is not a prop plane. It's a heavy jet which should be almost stalling to land safely. Tower guys can roughly guide you on the course and speed but there would be at least 1-2 seconds lag between the reading, reading and acting. I wouldn't say what you can "definitely land safely" in these conditions.
Seen on the lower right part of the center console: https://img.militaryaerospace.com/files/base/ebm/mae/image/2...
The plane is just a poorly designed death trap.
He also lost part of his displays during conditions with little sight.
So imo the question should be if it would have been possible for him to check if the airplane is really out of control, in a way that it wouldn't cost his life if it was.
He was the commander of VMX-1. They effectively write the book.
"And the pilot should've figured that out?"
Yes. That's the job.
A big factor in this seems to be his overall lack of experience in the F-35 and not flying enough hours to really stay proficient. Highly recommend this analysis by two former naval aviators: https://www.youtube.com/live/g8PBA7k6vP8?si=o2DDBX1XqmM_x1gR
Warfare is chaos; unexpected things happen; the manual is one input but people are expected to take initiative and overcome problems with or without it. It's not extra credit, it's a baseline expectation for the job. Also, this person is a colonel, not a second lieutenant.
He had a flyable plane with plenty of fuel, a functioning backup radio and instruments he could have verified primaries against or just switched to, and even failing everything else, he could have verified against what the tower saw on radar for speed, heading, altitude, etc...and then asked the tower to get him to his wingman, and then followed his wingman in.
Instead he decided "HUD freaking out, that means I can't trust my instruments, that means I'm in immediate danger! PUNCH OUT!"
Maybe the commandant of the Marines would have liked a better headline, but another way of looking at it is the pilot lost his video server and really needed a functioning screen. I just threw away a video card in exactly the same scenario, and I felt I was troubleshooting far too long as it was. Maybe the commandant wanted the pilot to troubleshoot on the ground? But the computer was not any better after it hit the ground.
This is incorrect. He lost his HUD and the primary flight display, but not the standby instruments. Those are intended as a backup in case the other systems fail, and they did their job and kept operating. You can't use them to fire missiles or keep track of enemy anti–air radar systems, but you can use them to fly the plane, avoid terrain, and land safely. And he didn’t even check to see if they were still working before he ejected.
Isn’t that indicative of what an absolute shitshow of a plane it is?
Different situation, obviously, but at least sometimes immediate ejection is the correct response to "HUD freakout at low altitude in bad weather."
(It was Brian Udell, the details are a little more complicated than I remembered but still. https://www.ejectionsite.com/insaddle/insaddle.htm)
You don't need to be at war for a soldier to prepare for it.
https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-12-part-i-chapter...
I'm not sure I agree though -- it was a shitty situation all around, missed approach, go around, instrument only conditions, lightning strike that took out the HMD and most of the cockpit displays. That's a real shitshow in a completely fly by wire plane.
In this case the pilot changed from mode 4 (SVTOL for landing) to mode 1 (normal flight) when the ILS system went offline. But because the HUD blinked on and off several times, he didn’t realize that the plane was actually transitioning back to mode 1. He didn’t wait long enough for it to finish, and without his HUD he thought that the plane was unresponsive, so he ejected. But the plane was still flyable, even if it had actually been stuck in mode 4! You probably can’t dogfight in mode 4, but you can certainly fly to your alternate airport and land.
So instead of penalizing him for following his training to the letter, they changed the manual to state that ejecting is the correct course of action if the plane is unresponsive to the pilot’s “pitch, roll, or yaw commands” specifically.
He wasn’t disciplined. But he was penalised. Which strikes me as the right balance given the facts.
There are two kinds of jobs: those where the person’s employment is more important than their work, and those where it isn’t. This is the latter. He’s still getting paid. But he should not have this responsibility. It you’re making excuses after losing a plane when you shouldn’t have, because you were following bad instructions, you should not have an operational command.
After all, its not like flying planes is a new phenomenom. Why were the procedures still bad after all this time?
It’s a new plane!
Also, a pilot blaming procedure for a bad call is ass covering. That’s not appropriate for a mission critical role.
Huh, is that a specific thing for military pilots? Just watched the latest MentourPilot's video and there the french equivalent of the FAA found that the pilots were told to improvise too much, and should have followed the procedures better.
Isn't this a catch22 with hindsight based judgement?
When things really matter the foremost objective is never "follow the rules so your ass is covered", it's to not have a situation where that ass covering is relevant in the first place. Outcomes matter more than preforming according to the book.
The F-35B has been operational with the US Marie Corps since June 2015.
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, however this doesn't seem like one of them.
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!
That's even more true if getting it wrong means you could die.
Ejecting could save you but send the plane crashing into a city, and that's just one of many scenarios.
If he was flying with instruments in bad weather and felt that he could not trust those instruments that seems like a good reason to eject since you can easily end up in the ground or a mountain. I don't know if switching modes like he did was standard procedure and if the resulting failure was unusual or not. Maybe he wasn't familiar enough with the airplane's systems. That said, there was a real failure that seems to have happened at the worst possible times.
At the end of the day, the bar is set really high for someone in this position.
It seems that a highly qualified marine test pilot is unlikely to be unfamiliar with the airplane's systems
Those 50 hours can be misleading as to his experience with the aircraft.
Pilot switched mode back to normal flight because it was the switch to landing mode is what caused his HUD and PFD to turn off in the first place.
But I served three years in the Swedish army and wasn’t taught to obediently follow command when it makes no sense. I was taught to disobey illegal orders.
I can’t imagine a fighter pilot has so little authority over their actions like you describe.
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.
The procedures are never finished. They’ll be updated as needed for as long as anyone flies the airplane. The final revision could be a century or more from now, long after the airplane is out of active service. The updates it receives in that time depend on what accidents happen during that time, as well as how the systems change during that time.
First flown in 2006. Introduced 2016.
“ intended to replace a wide range of existing fighter, strike, and ground attack aircraft …”
One aircraft for the navy, marines and air force would save money was the thinking I imagine.
I remember the competition for the design many year ago (there was a Nova tv program) but haven’t been following too closely but it’s had issues filling all the roles.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Fighter_program
B52 projected to last till 2050
https://breakingdefense.com/2023/10/newest-f-35-f-15ex-contr...
It's disappointing to see people post lazy, low-effort comments like this without bothering to do even basic fact checking.
There is no aircraft in history that did not have hiccups during procurement. Even "ol reliable" platforms like the Blackhawk or the F-16 had much worse reputations when they were first introduced.
And without propulsion, they are just flying rocks. No gliding.
There are a lot of factors that come into play when you lose the engine, but unless there is a serious issue, you still have control over the flight surfaces.
Vertical flight mode wouldn't be usable in a situation like this. They only transition to vertical flight at low altitude with the landing site in sight.
Pilots eject when the wings are level. If he was facing the possibility of severe uncontrolled roll (or believed he was) then ejecting now before the roll was a good call. At least so far as his wife and children are concerned.
And that's an insignificant detail in the rest of the post anyway, a nuance that does not invalidate the rest of the points made in the post you are replying to.
I'm not so sure about that. I'm pretty sure that flight controls are directly tied to thrust, because it would be the engine that also drives the hydraulic system.
It's like that even on passenger jets. If you lose both engines, you also lose hydraulics (aside from whatever little hydraulic pressure the ram air turbine provides). I would not expect there to be a ram air turbine on a fighter jet, which would mean complete engine failure = complete loss of hydraulics = complete loss of flight controls.
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/dam/lockheed-martin/e...
The aerodynamic properties make both high speeds possible while retaining maneuverability at low speeds tend to lend themselves well to decent (for a jet) glide performance. What they trade off is stability.
See "Aviation Disasters" on TV.
Which makes sense. It was subjective and that is ok.
“As a commander you serve at the pleasure of the commandant,” Del Pizzo said. “It was an absolute privilege to have the opportunity to lead the Marines, sailors and civilians of VMX-1.”
also
“he made the decision to relieve the commanding officer of [VMX-1], due to the unique mission of VMX-1.”
Its always hard to be a the last man in the hierarchy of a big budget project run by idiots.
They always need somebody to fire to 'cya'.
I guess the USMC expected him to try until the very last moment to recover the aircraft.
The decision to relieve him was made with the benefit of having much more data and time to make a decision available to them than the pilot had.
Imagine if someone accidentally fired a tomahawk missile in South Carolina for some reason by procedure.
The operator had 10 minutes to cancel but instead acted prematurely.
I dont blame someone if they were to get scared and bail, but I also dont blame the marines if they dont want people like that flying their 110 million dollar jets.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/10/31/pilot-of-f-35...
There are two interesting additions in this version:
1.) A discussion on spatial disorientation.
2.) Comments by the Colonel’s wife, who discussed how they uprooted their lives in Virginia (almost a year after the crash) after being assured that the crash would not impact his command. Three months after getting to Yuma, there was an “oops sorry” and they removed the Colonel from command. However, they did offer him his choice of a next assignment.
it might not be right or fair, but that's not necessarily a disqualified in the military.
Should be “the Marines’ third.” I don’t mean to be a stickler, but for a moment I thought this one pilot was crashing a plane a week!
It’s not like he stopped being a pilot if I understand it right.
I'm not trolling and please don't bring the politics and ideology here. I am asking factually. (I'm here because I prefer to avoid those things and as a result can be ignorant of them.)
This is speculation on what the future will be, not our current reality. In the War in Ukraine, reliance on cheap drones has more to do neither sides ability to achieve air superiority due to AA systems. Introduce stealth and/or effective SEAD tactics (suppression of enemy air defense) into that mix, and the situation changes very quickly. For a recent example, see the Israeli strikes on Iranian air defense systems.
The future is more likely to be hybrid, where drones, and "loyal wingman" data-linked with manned systems are used to get the best of both worlds. The F35's sensor suite and data-link capability are designed for that.
Does it have the agency to fire at will or does it need to confirm all attacks?
Edit: i guess in high EW environments where you need fast delivery
Your rant is almost as inspiring as the Palantir CEO's flag waving speeches where he rants against the anti-America crowd who question why their tax dollars are flowing to his company.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine and the European countries prioritized defense, the F-35 seems to win every competitive bid.
I hadn't noticed that at all. Could you give some examples?
What I've seen is budget hawks on all sides, meme-following mobs, competing defense contractors, and anyone politician looking for an easy target of 'corruption', etc.
There are legitimate criticisms, including of the one-design-for-all concept, which we can see is not being repeated; sustainment issues, including maintenance; readiness; relevance in the era of missiles with longer range than F-35 fuel tanks, pushing bases and carriers out of range.
On the other hand, it they would have made it look as sleek and beautiful as the F22...
That's a separate argument on specifically who should be blamed here or whether blame was properly assigned. But we can't just crash our most expensive jet and throw our hands up saying "whelp, that sucks".
And it has to be Stealth.
The US Navy does not operate the VTOL variant: they don't need to. The US Marines and the British and Japanese navies operate the VTOL variant (because they don't have supercarriers).
Not to say that there weren't many issues with the program, but it seems like a lot of those requirements panned out.
This one is great! A guy fighting his controls, weighing the risk to his life, a Top Gun-style commander of a squadron, ejecting (well, an hour) before the plane explodes.
It scores low on the "relevance" scorecard, but it's off the charts in terms of human interest, and I think it's climbing due to the latter.
Lots of tweets to the effect of "how tf do you lose a $100m fighter jet??"
Any story with an explanation would draw attention
Too many to respond to individually.
Please, especially if one is criticizing someone else's judgment, one should show the good judgment of getting one's facts straight.
Edit: I will clarify. USAF multirole fighters (And the A-10) train to, and execute CAS in combat regularly. Even bombers do from time-to-time.
This was a cry for help.
I think us software engineers should remember the same :P
They said the pilot was far more valuable than the airplane.
An F-86 ranged from $180-$580k in 1950 dollars, depending on the model. That's around $2.4-7.8 million now. That's quite a bit lower than the statistical value of human life that is currently used by the government for regulatory analysis, which is $13.1 million.
An F-35 is something like $80-$110 million. Even if we add the cost of training for the pilot, which Google tells me is $10.1 million for an F-35, to the statistical life value we only get $23.2 million which is only 21-29% of the cost of the plane.
[1] https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/cd2a1348e...
The number of years the military gets to keep a trained pilot is limited, so that’s also a factor.
The more significant one is that so few people prove to be capable and willing to be fighter pilots. Replacement is not a given.
1 https://www.perplexity.ai/search/how-much-does-it-cost-the-a...
1. know the optimal glide speed. Since the jet was traveling much faster than that, he pulled up the nose to trade excess speed for altitude.
2. trim the airplane for optimal gliding
3. push the nose down to maintain optimal glide speed
4. work the math on altitude, air pressure and sink rate to get distance traveled
This was long before calculators (1950s) so he had to know the formulae and the figures. I read one of his certification tests for flying jets, and you had to know an awful lot.
When I was at Boeing I was told that one of the engineering marvels on a jet was the mechanical computer that managed the engine, reducing it to a single lever for the pilot.
P.S. ejection seats were new in those days, with bugs that could injure or kill the pilot. He figured it was safer to glide the bird in.
https://www.codeonemagazine.com/images/media/Front_Office_01...
Modern practices are different, there is now a lot more emphasis in not needlessly risking lives, especially when abandoning vessels is done by the book. But dying in the line of duty is still weirdly seen as good leadership - call it bravery, honor, commitment to the cause, gumption, etc. We mostly praise those who do, rarely criticize them for maybe sacrificing themselves and others unnecessarily. But I would think we wouldn't threaten people who don't put themselves at unreasonable risk with career consequences anymore. I guess this ejection is an example of modern marines acting with 18th century principles.
P.S. The historical record on Royal Navy's informal code of conduct in the 18th century is a bit limited. I think what I say is not disputed by many historians, but there is some room for debate.
Fighting for a cause, on the other hand, generally requires that people sacrifice themselves. If no one is willing to die, then the fight is very unlikely to be successful. Being willing to die (and sometimes dying) has the ability meaningful change the outcome.
It seems that way, but that's a subjective stance. This is during a time when ships were the armies of the time. It's not complicated to understand that 250 men were worth less than a ship for the purposes of late 1700s warfare. Dying for a sinking ship was a heroic thing, in that it was an attempt to hold on to an immense power for their country. How many untold millions have died to defend a parcel of land? The value of trying to save a ship is contextual, equating to defending your country, even in the face of insurmountable odds.
"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). Debtors looking for debt-forgiveness, were a particularly fruitful source. Slaves were sometimes used. Training was on the job. Operational sailing circa 1800, wasn't particularly sophisticated. It was danger-prone.
^https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1044940/Diary-18th-...
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...
They needed to know how to do relatively straightforward tasks (many of which were unpleasant) when directed. Same as any other structured military force or industrial line. It was not sophisticated for the vast majority of sailors. Skills varied to be sure.
Debating soft terms like skillful, sophistication, and value will not definitively answer the question of a calculation. We look to other signals, like culture. The culture was such that the ships (including weaponry and anything else worth salvage) were more valuable than manpower by virtue of the historical figure sentiments. I have not seen a compelling contradiction.
The more difficult question is when a ship is on the brink of sinking. Then, having people on board can make a difference: the extra weight can make it sink, or actions by those people (pumping, plugging holes, closing doors) can prevent it from sinking.
For the captain, the difficult thing is to figure out whether a ship is destined to sink or not.
The captain being the last person off a sinking ship is a naval version of "lead from the front". The captain going down with the ship is a probable consequence of following that ideal.