Marine Corps orders safety stand-down of all aircraft after F-35 disappearance

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/marine-leader-orders-safety-stand-aircraft-f-35-disappearance-rcna105602

by fortran77 • 3 years ago

37 54 3 years ago

nbcnews.com

kyrra• 3 years ago

It should be noted that the debris field was found for the missing fighter jet.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/f-35-fighter-jet-missin...

fortran77• 3 years ago

In fact, TFA notes this:

Officials said Monday evening that a debris field had been located about two and a half hours northeast of the base

sokoloff3• 3 years ago

Ah yes, the SI unit of distance obviously being the hour. (For an aircraft mishap in particular, this is more ambiguous than usual.)

irrational• 3 years ago

two and a half hours walking? riding a bike? driving in a car? flying in a jet? traveling in the ISS?

ftxbro• 3 years ago

if i'm ever in the news i never want the story to be like 'debris field was found'

mvdtnz• 3 years ago

The article mentions this and makes it quite clear it's not the debris of the f35.

Officials said Monday evening that a debris field had been located about two and a half hours northeast of the base.
Two defense officials said Monday that although the jet was on autopilot when the pilot ejected, it does not have the range or ability to fly for such a long period without refueling.

turnsout• 3 years ago

During the stand-down, Marine commanders will distribute a Xeroxed update to the F-35 flight manual making it clear that autopilot should be disengaged prior to ejection. /s

mlinhares• 3 years ago

Is it just me or are other people also getting completely bonkers ads about the F-35 engine from Pratt & Whitney’s?

It definitely feels like the F-35 has been plagued by issues for a really long time.

ramesh312• 3 years ago

Is it just me or are other people also getting completely bonkers ads about the F-35 engine from Pratt & Whitney’s?

Shhh. You're seeing the absurd janky house of cards that the trillion dollar online ad business really is. Their marketing CDP says you're a Pentagon official with purchasing power.

avalys• 3 years ago

It doesn't need to be perfect to be effective. So what if someone sees the wrong ad even half the time?

SonicScrub2• 3 years ago

Not really. Large military procurement programs are always a gold-mine for the media, especially those involving new technologies (compared with design iterations). Issues, bugs, production issues, etc are inevitable, and given the large price tag associated with a program like this, the stories are easy to write. The F-35 had it's fair share of these, but now that the program has matured, the incident rate is less than it's contemporaries. It currently has one of the best safety records of US fighter jets. But F-16s don't generate the safe media buzz when they crash.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aerotime.aero/articles/are-...

anonym29• 3 years ago

You guys are still getting ads?

stephen_g• 3 years ago

I used to get those ads for them on Twitter (which is one place that would get ads as “sponsored tweets” past uBlock origin). Also all sorts of random stuff, it decided that I was a farmer at some point for some reason (I’m actually an electronics engineer) and I’d get ads for tractors and bulk seed…

I’ve never paid to do any advertising myself but that experience of bizarre misstargeting hasn’t been a good advertisement for the advertisement industry!

hindsightbias• 3 years ago

P&W wants to stop Congress from funding a new engine - as GE has their own design. They want to upgrade the current one, and any other choice would be a victory for commies or something.

babyshake• 3 years ago

Isn't it bad opsec for this to be public knowledge?

FireBeyond• 3 years ago

For any threat that considers the flight routines of the military, they assuredly have intel that will make them aware of this. Even down to a source by a base saying "huh, no flights took off today, odd."

mtreis86• 3 years ago

I wonder what the furthest an abandoned aircraft has glided before crashing.

mensetmanusman2• 3 years ago

Politicians need to communicate that an iPhone would be over a billion dollars if we only made 50 of them, and they still have bugs.

It costs money to keep a supply chain going for rare items.

Maybe a smarter approach is to build broadly useful factories that can switch on a dime during times of war, but no one has figured that out.

The thing about expensive tech that gives you an advantage is that random consumers can’t afford it.

bhawks2• 3 years ago

We have been running military operations nonstop for practically 40 years.

Our military budget is the size of the next 12 countries put together.

There is little functional or healthy about the current state of affairs.

Dalewyn• 3 years ago

Our military budget is the size of the next 12 countries put together.

That's because we practically subsidize the majority of our allies' militaries.

adventured• 3 years ago

Most of the US military budget is directly related to labor costs. US labor is extremely expensive in all regards, on par with some of wealthiest nations in Europe.

If you properly adjust for that fact - basically do some manner of reasonable PPP adjustment - China is already spending on par with or more than the US at this point.

The reason the US military budget is seemingly so massive, is because the US economy has such an extreme output per capita, at present ~$80,000 (Britain + Japan combined). Astronomical for a nation so large. ~3% of $27 trillion is not unreasonable for a superpower with global interests. Russia has given us a demonstration, again, that we in fact do need that military capability. China will probably provide another.

jjtheblunt• 3 years ago

"we" == US?

bhawks2• 3 years ago

This affects all air craft not just the F35

“During the safety stand down, aviation commanders will lead discussions with their Marines focusing on the fundamentals of safe flight operations, ground safety, maintenance and flight procedures, and maintaining combat readiness,” the statement said.

It is pretty damning and disappointing that this action is warranted. Too much spending on tools and not enough on soldiers.

berkle4455• 3 years ago

This is mostly just how the Marine Corps fixes fuckups. LCpl Schmuckatelli gets one hooker pregnant and suddenly the entire battalion has their 96 canked, we’re all having 0700 safe-sex safety briefings Saturday morning, and Doc is handing out condoms.

TylerE• 3 years ago

I don't know why the military can't learn from a string of failed systems going back to at least the '80s.

1. Make Tough Requirements

2. Get Prototype

3. Prototype attracts some interest

4. Now the brass additionally wants capabilities X, Y, Z

5. Prototype now costs twice as much and is more failure prone, and actually less mission-capable due to all the bolt-ons

6. Program costs goes up due to all the changes

7. We can't afford this!

8. Cut unit acquisitions by 50%

9. Wait? Our unit cost just nearly doubled because the real costs were all in design/R&D?

10. Now we REALLY can't afford this.

11. Cut orders by another 75%

12. So finally approximately 10% of the original order actually gets built, at a total program cost 2 or 3x what it was supposed to be, and a unit cost that's massively huge.

13. Program fails in the mid-to-long term due to maintenance costs and falling spares inventory.

HBO did a great made-for-TV movie on this called the "Pentagon Wars", which while fictionalized is only about 20% actually made up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir0FAa8P2MU

throw0101b• 3 years ago

HBO did a great made-for-TV movie on this called the "Pentagon Wars", which while fictionalized is only about 20% actually made up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir0FAa8P2MU

Great in that it is entertaining, but I would not take it, or the book it was based on, completely at face value:

The Pentagon Wars was made to be a comedy first and an adaptation of the Pentagon Wars book second. It was never meant to be an accurate portrayal of the Bradley program and it shows. You're getting Hollywood taking an an axe-grinding, half-true memoir as fact and then playing it for laughs.

* https://old.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/erpmjm/having_j...

See also perhaps:

Although the Bradley destroyed many enemy tanks and experienced fairly low rates of casualty in the First Gulf War and the Iraq War, the vehicle’s recent battlefield performance was not acquired through efficient planning and project management. The origins of the modern Bradley span decades of troubled development; the involvement of many stakeholders; inflexible and questionable requirements; a failure of contractors to make design tradeoffs for fear of losing capability; billions of dollars in R&D costs; and numerous Congressional interventions, including House Armed Service Committee hearings investigating Bradley testing protocol.1 The Bradley has been described at different times, by military officers and historians, as a weapon that means “all things to all people,” a “quintessential hybrid,” and “a proverbial camel...that does nothing well”.2

* https://user.eng.umd.edu/~austin/enes489p/lecture-resources/...

lmm• 3 years ago

7. We can't afford this!
8. Cut unit acquisitions by 50%
9. Wait? Our unit cost just nearly doubled because the real costs were all in design/R&D?
10. Now we REALLY can't afford this.
11. Cut orders by another 75%
12. So finally approximately 10% of the original order actually gets built, at a total program cost 2 or 3x what it was supposed to be, and a unit cost that's massively huge.

Oh they've learnt from that well enough. Why do you think we're ordering so many thousands of F-35s? They've kept the unit cost perfectly on-budget! Just don't ask about the total program cost.

SonicScrub2• 3 years ago

As much as I love the entertainment value of The Pentagon Wars, citing that as a source for procurement problems is not great. It's a lot more than just 20% made up, and the parts that are true (i.e. the live fire test shenanigans) are true in that wonderful way that something can be technically correct while also being entire bogus.

The Bradley was designed as an IFV from the ground up, not a bastardized APC. The Bradley came in under budget. Those two facts invalidate essentially the entire film...

ls612• 3 years ago

Is it possible that the ejection mechanism malfunctioned and ejected the pilot from a perfectly working airplane? Has such a thing happened before?

gs17• 3 years ago

Not exactly that, but the Cornfield Bomber [0] is sort of similar to that idea. The pilot ejected (intentionally) in a spin, but the changed center of mass leveled the plane out and it flew until it eventually landed itself in the namesake field. They knew what happened immediately in that case, though.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber

snypher• 3 years ago

This one made it 600 miles!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Belgium_MiG-23_crash

rasz• 3 years ago

Is it possible plane was hijacked? Ejected the pilot, landed somewhere on remote control and was quickly packed into couple of trucks. Now that would be something, mother of all supply attacks!

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/pentagon-...

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2022/09/13...

djohnston2• 3 years ago

Damn sounds like someone is losing their wings.

9659• 3 years ago

Nope. You can eject from 2 aircraft before the military takes away your keys.

djohnston2• 3 years ago

But usually they don’t sit everyone down because of it. Unless it’s maybe something critical they think could be impacting the entire fleet. I’m so curious.

pintxo• 3 years ago

That’s for health reasons, no? As your spine should not be subjected to a third ejection at that point.

They may take yours wings for cross negligence any time.

Marine Corps orders safety stand-down of all aircraft after F-35 disappearance

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