British F-35B crash possibly caused by 'rain cover' left on during launch

https://theaviationist.com/2021/11/24/f-35b-crash-cover-possible-cause/

by rwmj • 5 years ago

135 268 5 years ago

tartuffe78• 5 years ago

Next time we have a real war I have a feeling there will be some very interesting dumb "hacks" used against all of these smart weapons.

ryanchants• 5 years ago

We already had that in Afghanistan. Our LAVs were being defeated by IEDs, so we spent a lot of money making mine rollers. The mine rollers were then defeated with 10 cents worth of lamp cord to separate the pressure plate from the explosive.

echelon• 5 years ago

In Afghanistan we were spending lots of money to not kill civilians and cause a PR nightmare. If we didn't care, we'd have carpet bombed the place. Or developed and used chemical weapons.

In a real war, we'll be using tactical (not strategic) nukes to take out carriers and bases and supply lines, not toys that avoid collateral damage.

If shit hits the fan, the strategic nukes come out and we all die.

Someone12343• 5 years ago

The military is bored and loves to spend money on shinies.

Everyone works hard to un-learn the most important lesson of war: In war, more of something beats less of something.

And it isn't simply a "morer is betterer" argument, even strategically if you can place assets in multiple concurrent locations even if those assets are "dumber" then you're forcing the enemy to split their force into multiple beachheads.

Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano ($18M~) Vs. F-35A ($79M~). One F-35A obviously beats one Super Tucano but does it even have enough weapons onboard to beat 4.3? What if you split your Super Tucanos between two locations, which one is the F-35A going to defend?

And the Super Tucano is even the endgame here, the endgame is drone swarms. $1M~/ea and you have a 79-1 ratio, and it is indefensible and laughably so.

KennyBlanken2• 5 years ago

The F-35 is useless for long engagements, dead if it gets into a dogfight, and can't fly near thunderstorms or it might explode.

This is assuming it doesn't suffocate its pilot to death, because Lockheed still can't get the oxygen system to work properly.

The finest plane $350M (and climbing) can buy (for the F35-B variant. The A variant is down to "just" $100M or so.)

nradov8• 5 years ago

The primary threat is surface-to-air missiles, not other aircraft. A Super Tucano is simply not survivable against modern SAMs, nor does it have the sensors necessary to attack hardened ground targets. The F-35 at least has a chance.

kcb• 5 years ago

Not this again. You'd have to have an army of suicidal fanatics to get them to take off in Super Tucanos against a squadron of F-35s or any American jet really. The F-35 is just going to BVR lob unavoidable AMRAAMs. Add some F-15/18/22s to the mix as well and it will be a good old turkey shoot.

And the Super Tucano is even the endgame here, the endgame is drone swarms. $1M~/ea and you have a 79-1 ratio, and it is indefensible and laughably so.

"Drone Swarms" You either are just describing guided missiles which already exist or an actual drone aircraft capable of threatening an F-35 which would require similarly capable sensors and engines. It's not going to cost $1M.

Take this as a grain of salt because it's a player in a sim fighting AI. But I love it as an example of what a lone fighter can do against less capable aircraft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5FrxsBG_H8

2OEH8eoCRo02• 5 years ago

One F-35A obviously beats one Super Tucano but does it even have enough weapons onboard to beat 4.3?

https://www.raytheonmissilesanddefense.com/news/feature/armi...

"The F-35 can carry up to two AIM-9X missiles on its wings and four AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles internally."

Also- in the future:

"Lockheed Martin is developing a weapon rack called Sidekick that would enable the internal outboard station to carry two AIM-120s, thus increasing the internal air-to-air payload to six missiles"

So yes.

twic• 5 years ago

Like a cluster bomb which sprays out rain covers. Devious!

Causality16• 5 years ago

The implications, if that is the cause, are shocking. Forget about the deck crew and the pilot being blind morons. It means the flight computer for a plane that took twenty years and a trillion dollars to develop can't detect that there's a fucking cover blocking the engine.

How does a twenty thousand dollar sedan have a more robust readiness-detection system than a hundred million dollar airplane?

kwertyoowiyop3• 5 years ago

The NEXT version of the software will surely add this check!

ChuckNorris896• 5 years ago

Wait for the subscription-ware version where you need to pay 2 Billion per year to the defense contractor for the feature.

m0zg• 5 years ago

That'll be another hundred billion dollars and five years tho. Maybe by then they'll install some functioning cannons on these.

ChuckNorris896• 5 years ago

Forget about the deck crew and the pilot being blind morons.

I thought aviation is THE industry that runs on procedures and checklists you need to tick before and after each flight to make sure the even if you're a complete klutz, nothing like this can ever happen. Did that go out the window?

It means the flight computer for a plane that took twenty years and a trillion dollars to develop can't detect that there's a fucking cover blocking the engine.

This is pure gold. Even my robovac can detect when something is chocking the suction intake and shut down and send me a notification on my phone. The fact that a trillion dollar weapon missed this feature is hilarious.

Someone12343• 5 years ago

The article says that this was a checklist item for both the ground crew and the pilot, and yet it wasn't spotted/fixed (did they even conduct the checks?). Multiple heads are definitely going to roll on this one.

But two things can be true:

- Procedures/checklists should have stopped this (and should be the primary way).

- The flight computer should know that air flowing into the engine is unusual when a cover is blocking it.

Also keep in mind that if both are fixed, this would be fixes from two different organizations (the British Navy and Lockheed Martin/F-35B's manufacturing chain).

This happened at peace time. I can imagine during a stressful wartime situation human error is more likely to occur, which is even more reason why computer sanity checks can be advantageous.

morcheeba• 5 years ago

Even my robovac can detect when something is chocking the suction intake and shut down

I'm not sure I want my plane to just shut down if it ingests something.

glitchc2• 5 years ago

Carrier runways use a slingshot to launch aircraft, it's not an unaided takeoff, the runway is not long enough to develop sufficient airspeed to take off on engine power alone. By the time the engine reports a lack of airflow in the intake, it might already be too late.

kamaal3• 5 years ago

>I thought aviation is THE industry that runs on procedures and checklists you need to tick before and after each flight to make sure the even if you're a complete klutz, nothing like this can ever happen. Did that go out the window?

Just a day back they dropped a $10 billion(20 years in development) origami transformer-like robot telescope(jwst) on the floor because some one forgot to secure a clamp well enough to hold the piece in place.

So I'm guessing regardless of whatever people say about six sigmas, checklists and procedures, human errors just continue to happen regardless.

colechristensen3• 5 years ago

There is always a nonzero error rate and always an error that never occurred for anybody to check for.

AdrianB13• 5 years ago

Aviation is the industry of procedures and checklists because it is more and more complex, never simpler. The complexity at some point is so big, people just start taking shortcuts, especially when they believe their experience will help them cutting corners.

Also aviation is not special in any way when it comes to human error. I know details never published about aircraft accidents in my country (pilots talk on the airfield, it helps us knowing what happened and what to avoid) and most were incredibly stupid human errors. I know people who crashed more than once with planes and kept doing stupid things, I personally know 4 people that crashed planes, one of them 3 times, and keep doing it. Pilots are not special, not even above average, and they keep doing things that are not expected. Being tired, bored or distracted makes it worse.

_moof2• 5 years ago

I thought aviation is THE industry that runs on procedures and checklists

It is, but people sometimes get complacent and/or cocky and "dog" a checklist (run through each item without actually doing it). Incredibly dangerous, inexcusable behavior. I can think of two recent fatal accidents just off the top of my head that were missed takeoff items. I've personally seen pilots say flaps twenty out loud and then go right to the next item without even looking up. Meanwhile I'm looking right at the flap lever and it's set to zero. Don't get me wrong, I get it - when something goes right 1,000 times in a row, it can be hard to get your brain to really, truly understand that the success of this takeoff has absolutely no connection to any of the previous takeoffs. But overcoming that is part of the job.

mrep• 5 years ago

It didn't cost a trillion dollars to development. The trillion dollar number everyone always loves to throw around is for the total lifetime cost (i.e., to 2070) to $1.5 trillion in then-year dollars which also includes operations and maintenance.

swarnie5• 5 years ago

I personally love that number.

That number has kept me employed for 7 years so far and will continue paying my rent cheques long after its necessarily.

Long live the global murder complex.

KennyBlanken2• 5 years ago

The F-35B costs (currently- it's growing by the day) roughly a third of a billion dollars each in acquisition cost alone.

That's over a quarter billion pounds.

To put that in perspective: the pre-primary and primary education budget for the entire country, in 2016, was 800 million pounds.

Do you think MPs will hand-wring about this plane being flushed down the drain as much as they do about fiscal prudence in early education expenses?

I wonder if UK teachers spend their personal funds on school supplies like teachers in the US do.

ren_engineer• 5 years ago

How does a twenty thousand dollar sedan have a more robust readiness-detection system than a hundred million dollar airplane?

because the car industry is driven by market forces, not government corruption driven monopolies. I'm not sure why anybody thinks the US military is anything more than a paper tiger after the last few decades of failure, highlighted by the failed withdrawal from Afghanistan. I feel bad for the countries that got pressured into buying the F-35

ChuckNorris896• 5 years ago

I'm not sure why anybody thinks the US military is anything more than a paper tiger after the last few decades of failure, highlighted by the failed withdrawal from Afghanistan.

I dunno about that, but the military industrial complex made absolute bank though, for which the taxpayers generously picked up the tab.

Causality16• 5 years ago

I think the absolute incompetence the Navy has exhibited in failures to move their ships around the Pacific without running into things is a better example.

credit_guy• 5 years ago

a plane that took [...] a trillion dollars to develop

It didn't take a trillion dollar to develop. The trillion dollar figure includes acquisition costs (going to 2070) as well as operations and maintenance over the same period.

By the way, the F-35 isn't any more expensive than other aircraft. For example for the latest budget proposal (2022), the DoD plans to acquire 85 F-35s [1] for a total price of $85 BN, or about $150 MM per plane. At the same time, it plans to acquire 14 tanker aircraft KC-46 for a unit price of about $180 MM, and 9 cargo helicopters CH-53K for a unit price of $190 MM. Yes, you read that right, those are helicopters, they are not attack, but cargo helicopters, and cost almost $200 MM apiece.

[1] https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/263871...

djsbs• 5 years ago

Now add the expected maintenance costs over the life of the aircraft.

- How many hours of flight can the F-35 do before it needs to be hangered?

- How long does it take in the hanger?

- Can the F-35 even go supersonic without ripping off its anti-radar coat (thus becoming more visible as soon as it decelerates?)

- given the cramped space, how capable are aircraft carriers at F-35 repair? How many can they do at a time? What is the duty cycle of the F-35 on a carrier?

- Is the plane even finished the design phase?

The US should have bought 500 F-22 and given the Navy its own carte blanc design skipping the F-35 altogether.

jjk1664• 5 years ago

For anyone else confused, it's 85 F-35s for $12B, not $85B

It's also worth noting that these other aircraft are widely criticized as being excessively expensive as well, mostly because of the exact same issues with the acquisition process. For example the CH-53K is supposed to cost half of that, but because only 9 are being purchased this year the fixed costs aren't as amortized as predicted. And that's really the crux of it: the F35 acquisition was always going to be an 11 figure program, but the leading digit could have been a 1 instead of a 4, the price tag is the right order of magnitude, but there were still hundreds of billions of dollars wasted due to mismanagement.

verytrivial• 5 years ago

Imagine if this level of corporate welfare went towards social care, the environment or education. What a racket.

akira2501• 5 years ago

Your comparisons ignore engine count. The KC-46 has two engines and the CH-53K has three engines. The F-35 has one.

If your single engine jet fails on a catapult launch, you've lost that plane, and the pilot has just a few seconds to punch out and save their own lives.

oneplane• 5 years ago

None of that matters if an expensive flying gun can't do what an inexpensive robot vacuum can do.

adev_• 5 years ago

By the way, the F-35 isn't any more expensive than other aircraft.

It is more expensive. And the fact that all "modern" militaro-industriel projects goes over budget is just not an excuse to that.

The F-16 program (which the F-35 is supposed to replace) was around 10x less. Even inflation considered, this does not justify this fiasco.

Same goes for the F/A-18, the Su-35 or the Dassault rafale.

Even the damn entire Apollo program (inflation considered) was currently cheaper with an impact for the society of a complete different scale.

Maybe the question should be: Was the utility of this plane worth the cost ? And I can barely find any positive arguments to that. Specially when considering the conflicts USA has been in the last 20 years.

lmm• 5 years ago

By the way, the F-35 isn't any more expensive than other aircraft.

Only because every time the development costs go up they agree to buy more planes so that they can keep the per-plane costs the same. The development costs are wildly disproportionate to other weapons programmes if you properly separate them.

CRConrad2• 5 years ago

the F-35 isn't any more expensive than other aircraft. For example for the latest budget proposal (2022), the DoD plans to acquire 85 F-35s [1] for a total price of $85 BN, or about $150 MM per plane.

But isn't that in all probability the same kind of thing as large American IT companies do with their international subsidiaries, i.e. moving money around on paper to where it looks the best?

That is, Dell and Facebook and Apple and so on have their European headquarters in Ireland (where corporate taxes are the lowest, and on top of that they negotiate sweet deals to make it even lower), and pay the mother company "royalties" for "use of intellectual property" to siphon profits away to where they're hardly taxed at all. In a similar way, defense contractors make the sale price look like what they think gives the best chance to get the sale (including what the great unwashed public will "buy", so they don't put pressure on their politicians, and those in turn on the military, to reject it) -- but then add that money on to maintenance contracts or future development where it's less visible here and now.

Looking at just the stated "sale price" and thinking that that actually represents the "true cost" of a machine seems rather naïve to me.

elliekelly2• 5 years ago

As someone who knows nothing about aviation or engineering I’m a little surprised that a “rain cover” for a fighter jet engine is even a thing. Does that mean these jets can’t fly in the rain?

yostrovs• 5 years ago

Any openings on planes are usually closed when parked in order to prevent birds and other critters from getting inside and causing random damage.

jjk1664• 5 years ago

Nothing says the plane couldn't detect the lack of airflow, but when you take off from a ship and your engines don't work there's not a lot your flight computer can do for you.

Specifically, according to the press release, the pilot tried to abort takeoff while still on the deck but ran out of runway, meaning the plane was moving for at most a few seconds before the issue was noticed.

gregschlom2• 5 years ago

Well then maybe it's worth investing in a cover detector switch, just like my car can tell me I forgot to close the gas tank cap.

jollybean2• 5 years ago

They are not morons. These things happen all the time.

The issue is the fact that whereas in 1945 fighters cost about as much as a few 'fancy cars', fighters are now 200 homes. Of course, they should be thought of as 'flying weapons platforms' ... but still.

$16M F16 would be one thing, but a $120M piece of kit ... that hurts.

I'm wondering how well the 'downgraded' variations of F18++ or 'some new fighter' will fill the gap or if Boeing can make a 'cheap F35'.

nradov8• 5 years ago

The F-18 is totally incapable of operating from UK Royal Navy carriers. There are no serious plans to build some new manned fixed wing VSTOL fighter. The F-35B will be the only available option for the next 20+ years.

hasdf• 5 years ago

to my understanding the f35 is actually pretty price competitive with other offerings. The price keeps going down as more and more are sold

missedthecue4• 5 years ago

The US did make over 15,000 P-51 mustangs, so there were some economies of scale playing in their favor.

Not that an F-35 could ever cost $600,000 like a P-51 but it is worth noting I think.

mhh__6• 5 years ago

A current gen F-16 actually costs fairly similar to an F-35, if sold to the Israelis at least.

kube-system2• 5 years ago

It means the flight computer for a plane that took twenty years and a trillion dollars to develop can't detect that there's a fucking cover blocking the engine.

Of course the computer "could" do it. And maybe it did. That doesn't mean that precautions were followed, or that some sort of lock out feature for this would even be desirable design feature for a war machine to begin with.

Terry_Roll2• 5 years ago

So why dont they release the flight deck cctv to prove this or is it more likely a crap coverup?

So the engine a joint effort between Lockheed (designer) and Rolls Royce (builder), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning... makes me wonder if Rolls Royce used their turbine blades on this aircrafts engine? https://www.theengineer.co.uk/rolls-royce-single-crystal-tur... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187770581...

You see the US Lockheed C-130 Hercules has a different flight computer compared to the British version namely because of the use of different engines, the US engines are not as powerful and the USAF fly within the parameters of the flight computer, but the British Lockheed C-130 has a cut down flight computer which allows more risky manoeuvres because the Rolls Royce engines are more powerful, so they can land and take off on shorter jungle runways, stepper climbs things like that, ideal for security services operations. The Apache Helicopter is the same, the US engine is not as powerful as the Rolls Royce engine so you can do more in the UK version of the Apache.

So I wonder with this one if it really is a crap coverup or not? There's a lot of technology built into these things and as we become more reliant on technology to help fly these things instead of the more natural mechanical elements of control from years gone by, there's more vulnerability being introduced alongside the de rigueur complexity.

mlindner• 5 years ago

This sounds like British propaganda to me. When you have multiple engine choices for an aircraft from multiple manufacturers they all build the engines to the same specification so the power levels are identical. The UK engines are no more powerful than the US engines in the same vehicles.

elif• 5 years ago

It's possible (I would say likely) that there was a warning light. During normal aviation takeoffs, there are procedures that govern when it is too late to abort, and procedure dictates that it is safer to attempt flight. For a carrier, I imagine that point-of-no-return is about a few feet from stationary.

kitd• 5 years ago

Note that the article only states that the ground crew found the cover floating in the water. It didn't actually say the aircraft took off with it on.

It may be, eg, that it had been taken off properly but got (or was left) loose on the flight deck and blew up into the intake of the jet as it was taking off.

Something for the ground crew to fix, for sure, but not necessarily a catastrophic failure of standard checking procedures.

aerosmile• 5 years ago

Mate Rimac from Rimac Automobili claims [0] that engineering a car is far more complex than engineering an aircraft, because:

1. the expectations the manufacturer places on the operators are wildly different (eg: car drivers won't deal with checklists, type ratings, etc.)

2. the expectations the operators have from the manufacturers are wildly different (eg: car drivers care about their UX and the perceived value, whereas pilots mostly care about their job security)

[0] In German: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PALxDIxRrns

throwawaylinux• 5 years ago

Planes like this are built on the edge of what is possible. They might be over priced and have huge budgets, but that doesn't mean you can just throw more money at it to add more "stuff" and come up with a better plane at the end.

They are an optimization problem. Anything you can get done on the ground is a gold mine if that means you do not have to cart more sensors and wiring and computation and potential information and procedures that the pilot has to deal with in the cockpit.

marcodiego• 5 years ago

How to shoot down a F-35B crash:

"Dealing with what caused the F-35B crash, the British media outlet The Sun reports that it may have been a “cheap plastic cover” that was left on during take-off."

Of course, this may be a simple strategy, red herring, to fool unfriendly nations, but...

Also, makes me think about the MiG-29 which has special opening on the top of the engines so it can tak-off/land on unpaved runways: https://www.quora.com/How-is-the-Mikoyan-MiG-29-able-to-take...

js2• 5 years ago

Anyway, let’s wait for the official investigation to provide more confirmed details about the incident and its root cause(s).

NikolaeVarius• 5 years ago

I highly doubt the initial story since it doesn't really make sense. There are tons of checks before takeoff. Jets also go full throttle during takeoff so this isn't something that would just show up during the roll

fnord772• 5 years ago

Is there a roll on an aircraft carrier?

yborg2• 5 years ago

There is on this one, it's a jump ramp carrier, not a catapult launch.

trackone• 5 years ago

I agree with you, this doesn't make much sense. The source quote is saying that someone saw a red cover in the water. How would the cover survive going through an engine? It should be shredded. Also, if the cover was left on it would have been sucked into the engine as soon as the pilot turned the engines on or when he when to full power before taking off. Makes more sense if a cover was left unsecured on the flight deck and was sucked in during take off. It still would be shredded though I would think.

davewasthere• 5 years ago

Yeah, I can't see it quite happening the way the Sun intimates. Can't rule out FOD ingestion, but highly impropably could it have been an intake covers left on.

kwertyoowiyop3• 5 years ago

Surely there is video?

dotancohen3• 5 years ago

I 𝐚𝐦 serious.

nradov8• 5 years ago

Yes aircraft carriers always have video cameras running during flight operations. However cameras mounted on the islands might not have a clear view of some sort of cover left on an aircraft.

N19PEDL2• 5 years ago

-- Possible stupid question here (apologize, I'm not an expert) --

How can a cheap plastic cover block the engines of a fighter aircraft? Even if they forget to take it off, shouldn't it be destroyed by the jets?

jaywalk• 5 years ago

Not a stupid question. The explanation doesn't make sense, for many reasons. A large one being the sheer number of people who would have to be blind to a red cover over the engine intake that they all know is not supposed to be there.

yborg2• 5 years ago

This article is literally repeating an article from The Sun, a tabloid with a better track record of reporting on royals caught on holiday with their knickers off.

There are a lot of covers on ports and weapons on a combat aircraft sitting on the flight deck, the implication is that it was the inlet covers, which is impossible, the engine wouldn't have operated with those on and they are kind of obvious. It's much more likely this was a cover on something like a pitot tube or AoA sensor.

It's also possible that something just blew off the deck and it had nothing at all to do with crash, The Sun is reporting on some hot tip from the shipboard rumor mill, not the Ministry of Defense.

_moof2• 5 years ago

I thought it might be some other (non-engine) cover too, but the more I thought about it, the less likely that seemed. I seriously doubt a pilot would eject just because of a lack of airspeed indication, for example. The airplane is still flying, and if the pilot knows the airplane well they can still land it.

toss12• 5 years ago

It's probably not too much of a conjecture to assume that these fit in front of the stator vanes and would be effectively supported by them, so would not come in contact with the the rotating turbine blades. Even if the turbine blades could create a vacuum, the maximum pressure it would have to hold is 14 pounds per square inch bridged between the vanes. I'd also guess that "cheap" is relative and they are using something between high-end commerical and engineering-grade plastic (still way cheap compared to the composites on the aircraft), and that this could withstand the pressures for at least the few seconds/minutes it took to fire it up and toss it in the drink.

I'm more surprised that they didn't notice it in firing up the engines - don't they run it briefly to full throttle as part of their checks? Seems it would at least sound badly off-tune, but what do I know...

Major fck-up all around...

ben77993• 5 years ago

None of it makes any sense at all.. there's no way one of those covers can stay on during engine startup without a million warning lights going crazy in the cockpit, there's no way the cover could possibly not get ingested during an engine runup.

And this was a carrier takeoff, so the engines would have been held at maximum thrust prior to launching off a catapult and possibly would have been run at afterburner as well. The inlet flow for that would develop far more than 14psi as the volume of air ingested is enormous. The mass of air ingested is measure in tons per second.

I think this is just incompetent journalists. Not that I've ever done pre-flight on an F-35 but there are probably MANY protective covers that have to be removed during preflight.

It most likely was another cover left on which did not impede takeoff but threw the systems for a loop after takeoff and the pilot wasn't well trained enough to figure out an emergency procedure on such short notice.

rootusrootus• 5 years ago

Agreed. In the past, people have been sucked into the intake of jets on a carrier, I don't think a canvas rain cover is going to be able to block the intake. At worst maybe it'll scratch up the blades on the way through. Hell, I half expect the covers are designed exactly so they aren't substantial enough to damage the engine if they get sucked in by accident.

immmmmm4• 5 years ago

I understand now better why my country (Switzerland) wants to purchase 30-ish of those for "National Skies Protection". It is well in line with their past strategies and accomplishments:

1) Provide a sky patrol, but on only on office hours (9 - 17).

2) Buy for 1B CHF worth of radar, that would unfortunately lock on cows pasturing.

3) Buy for 0.5B CHF worth of software, then discard it because it's incompatible.

4) etc, etc, etc ....

swarnie5• 5 years ago

Could you possibly adopt the Irish model and just get someone else to do it?

Germany have a few working planes i think.

dotancohen3• 5 years ago

  > Germany have a few working planes i think.

Oh, yes, history has proven that we want cats guarding the milk, ahem, Germans protecting other European nations from invasion. ))

option_greek• 5 years ago

(1) is hilarious. Do they also expect enemy combatants to make an appointment and provide the location of the meet :D

Sharlin• 5 years ago

They require strict observation of Robert's Rules of Engagement.

immmmmm4• 5 years ago

it was subcontracted to france and italy. i think they now do provide this service 24/7 due to minor backlash. however, the time a jet is in the air, the "enemy " is already in another country.

SllX2• 5 years ago

They’re a neutral nation surrounded by countries which are at the moment friendly. Neutrality incentivizes them to stay armed and to do their patrols but Switzerland has no reason to expect a war from France, Germany or Italy anytime soon.

brutusborn• 5 years ago

Do you have more info on (2)? I couldn't find any info from a quick google search.

immmmmm4• 5 years ago

yes, in french, via ggl translate:

"Apparently it works in the plains but in the mountains, when for example a cow moves on the slopes, the radar identifies the animal as an enemy object", explained the Minister of Defense, Ueli Maurer.

to my knowledge, no cows have been hit by missiles so far.

https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/6619651-un-nouveau-radar-de-l...

pie420002• 5 years ago

I mean as a swiss person, your biggest industry (watches) exists almost entirely out of "it looks cool". Rich Militaries buy the F-35 because it's a cool toy, in the same way a rich businessman buys a Patel Phillipe. Not because he needs to tell time, but because he wants to have something fun to play with and look at when he has free time.

immmmmm4• 5 years ago

i don't think our biggest industry is watch nowadays.. but i agree with your explanation!

the-dude• 5 years ago

No thread is complete without : why don't they train a AI/ML/RNN network to screen jets before take off?

I mean, it could probably be done within a weekend, tops.

glitchc2• 5 years ago

Ultimately it's the pilot's responsibility to do a visual inspection of the entire aircraft. Of particular importance are the propulsion components and the control surfaces. We can blame the ground crew for missing an item on the checklist, but the pilot should have caught it.

Those covers are red for a reason, so that they're easy to spot and remove. Furthermore, the ladder to climb into the cockpit is right next to the intake, and if you see one, you have to check the other side. How was it possibly missed?

sokoloff2• 5 years ago

I think this is not true in military aviation. I’ve heard it’s a sign of trust in the aircraft’s ground crew for a military aviator to walk out, strap in, and blast off, trusting that the ground crew has done their job thoroughly and correctly.

_djo_4• 5 years ago

I don’t know who practices that, but it’s not a very professional approach. The only time I’ve known that to happen has been for quick reaction alerts, when it’s considered an acceptable risk to save time.

For normal operations the pilot doing their own check isn’t a lack of confidence in the ground crew, it’s the prudent, smart, and responsible thing to do when playing with people’s lives and very expensive aircraft. I’ve never known ground crew to get upset over it.

ChuckNorris896• 5 years ago

I’ve heard it’s a sign of trust in the aircraft’s ground crew for a military aviator to walk out, strap in, and blast off, trusting that the ground crew has done their job thoroughly and correctly.

If that's true, that sounds kinda weird. Military aviation should run on procedures and checklists with redundancies.

When someone hands you an unloaded gun, you don't just trust that it's unloaded even if it's their job, but you check yourself there's no round in the chamber first before handling it.

Same with fighter jets, checks should be made by crew and pilot to ensure nothing escapes.

cbtacy2• 5 years ago

That is simply not true.

metaphor• 5 years ago

I’ve heard it’s a sign of trust in the aircraft’s ground crew for a military aviator to walk out, strap in, and blast off, trusting that the ground crew has done their job thoroughly and correctly.

To be sure, military aviation doesn't give a flying fuck about virtue signaling. The name of the game is checklist and enumerated procedure compliance or GTFO the flightline/deck; it doesn't matter if you're a fighter pilot or maintenance ground crew.

tobyjsullivan• 5 years ago

How was it possibly missed?

Since you asked, here’s one idea:

- Did you notice the rain covers are present in the second photo in the article? I had to do a double-take because they’re very dark. I suspect they’re less obvious compared to other aircraft.

- Was the launch at night? If so, is the deck of this carrier appropriately lit wherever this plane was parked for inspection?

This is pure speculation. My point is you can have all the checklists in the world but bad design could contribute significantly to a process failure.

It sounds like this was a test flight of new equipment on a new carrier. I’d expect some design issues to be uncovered at this stage.

sschueller2• 5 years ago

I thought everything that needs to be removed before takeoff needs to be bright orange/red?

cbtacy2• 5 years ago

The color in the image is misleading. They are very bright red. Honestly, I have no idea how this could have happened without at least two people simply not doing their job, at all.

tragiclos• 5 years ago

The incident occurred around 10:00 GMT in the Mediterranean[1] so I don’t think it was dark out.

[1](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-59323895)

ehnto2• 5 years ago

I think it's unfair to blame a military pilot specifically, as they are part of a much larger machine, where the responsibility for that part of the team effort has been clearly delegated. F1 drivers aren't blamed for a loose wheel nut after a pit stop, Airline pilots aren't blamed for a gear failure etc.

hn_throwaway_99• 5 years ago

The comparison to F1 drivers and airline pilots is a faulty analogy. F1 drivers can't be responsible for a loose wheel nut because there is literally nothing they could do to know about or fix the situation.

In this case, though, it is the pilot's responsibility to do a visual inspection before take off, which he clearly failed to do.

LatteLazy• 5 years ago

If the source here is The Sun then we should really not take it at all seriously. The Sun are about as reliable as Reddit comments for factual accuracy.

bellyfullofbac• 5 years ago

The article links to a Sun tabloid news article as a source, and the BBC article/a defense minister who said:

Mr Wallace added that operational and training flights onboard HMS Queen Elizabeth are continuing despite the incident.

and presumed the root cause was well-known.

Since they used the Sun, maybe take it with a grain silo of salt.

f322323jiojio32• 5 years ago

Russian submarines are probably already swimming around collecting parts of the plane.

thih9• 5 years ago

This is reported by The Sun; I'd apply Betteridge's law [1] generously. The crash may have been caused by the rain cover, but just as well there might have been a different reason.

Sailors saw a red cover floating in the sea after the stealth jet splashed into the Mediterranean.

It could have been anything, from a red herring to a literal red herring.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

tibbydudeza• 5 years ago

Now we need a rain cover detection sensor.

efitz• 5 years ago

We’ve had hardware interlocks forever to prevent this sort of problem.

raldi• 5 years ago

This is only the first of the Five Why’s. I’m much more interested in numbers 3-5.

walrus01• 5 years ago

so I opened this article and did a ctrl-f for "pitot" or similar, didn't find any mention to a pitot tube or pitot-static sensor.

somehow doubt that an entire engine air intake cover was left on... they're huge and the engine wouldn't have spun up correctly, or would have sucked it in.

WalterBright3• 5 years ago

Didn't follow the checklist. Sigh.

dd444fgdfg• 5 years ago

so are they missing a cover from inventory?

British F-35B crash possibly caused by 'rain cover' left on during launch

Related Stories