Zombie F-35 Mishap Report Out...

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tobnpr

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tobnpr
I think we all wondered why a pilot would eject from a nine-figure fighter that was quite capable of flying.

www.twz.com

Final Conclusions On Bizarre Crash Of 'Zombie' F-35B That Flew Without A Pilot For 64 Miles Released

The Marines say the pilot was responsible for the mishap that resulted in the total loss of an F-35B in South Carolina.
www.twz.com www.twz.com

Report sez he shouldn't have punched out, pilot error...destroyed a $135,000,000 fighter (I still can't wrap my head around that many zeroes) which fortunately didn't take out an apartment building killing untold numbers of civilians, and no punitive action recommended? Sounds like someone, knows someone...
 
Gering had it out for him. I would guess he was a failed pilot who flew rubber dod doo out of HK.

It appears the pilot followed procedures, hit the outta here handle when things started going sideways.

This is of the few times I don't blame the pilot for any supposed mistakes. So the USMC puts a monetary cost on a human life vs a machine that will be scrapped in a few years?
 
FlightmechH3 said:
So the USMC puts a monetary cost on a human life vs a machine that will be scrapped in a few years?
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Of course they do. We are cheap. My wife gets a measly half a mil if I mort, and my contraption is 60yo, equipped with the latest Auto-nothingTM and more fly2fail parts than you can shake a stick at. Any cheaper and I might as well be flying for the PLAAF.

Altruism_is _for_suckers didn't quite have the same ring to it, so I stuck with hindsight. :biggrin:
 
FlightmechH3 said:
This is of the few times I don't blame the pilot for any supposed mistakes. So the USMC puts a monetary cost on a human life vs a machine that will be scrapped in a few years?
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Reading the linked articles and the mishap report, I didn't think that conclusion was implied. Mishap investigations always detail the monetary costs of the accident, and the linked article makes the briefest commentary on the jet's value.

I do believe the pilot made a decision that should be criticized, one reason being perhaps he abandoned the aircraft without proper consideration of possibility of it crashing in an urban area. Savannah, Columbia, and Myrtle Beach are all within the radius of the distance between the ejection and eventual impact site.

I'm also surprised that a Colonel would provide a written statement to a military news publication about his firing. This seems wholly improper.

I loathe to demean the skills of a military pilot in the most complex aircraft in the inventory, but expecting an F-35B pilot to be proficient in an IFR missed approach, even with some systems failures, doesn't sound unreasonable.

The mishap report states:

"The investigation concluded the pilot’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 aircraft’s backup radio was, at least partially, functional."

It also notes that:

"The investigation concludes the mishap aircraft’s extended unmanned flight was due to stability provided by the F-35’s advanced automatic flight-control systems."

Since that was functional, one might think the pilot should have been able to maintain control of the aircraft. His decision to eject seems to conflict with the statement:

"The pilot was qualified and current to conduct the scheduled flight. The flight was scheduled, planned, briefed, and conducted properly, professionally, and in accordance with applicable orders and
directives."

As always, the comfortable position at my desk as I write renders my opinions essentially worthless and uninformed.
 
The report seems contradictory. The finding of pilot error in a case that was clearly on the margin sets a bad safety benchmark for other USMC pilots. When a completely fly by wire aircraft starts flickering and looses display three times at a low altitude you don’t have a lot of time to fix the problem. I don’t know how controllable an F-35B is during transition but I could understand how this might be considered a UCF event. The report notes that the MP was an experienced AV8R flyer but was relatively green on the F-35B. No doubt that was a factor.

I suspect he was held to a higher standard based on his leadership position. I also suspect his loss of command was political too- A (later to be determined) perfectly good $100 million airplane got turned into a smoking pile of unobtainium. But as a Colonel you know that going in; your job is only safe if nothing goes wrong under your command. Even a hint of error is all it talks to get the hook.especially if you were at the controls. I wonder if it annoys senior leadership to see senior officers flying…jealousy maybe?
 
Most 0-6 and above that I am aware of (USAF and USMC) only fly once or twice a month, and every maintainer and Ops Desk officer is aware that they will probably have to hold his hand to get him off the ground. That just isn't enough flight time to stay familiar with the aircraft. Sim time helps, but they probably don't get much of that either. I'm not knocking it, they are very busy people with full schedules. I just sometimes wonder if maintaining currency is really the best idea for that level of rank. I'm sure there's a policy for that.
 
Nice thread title of the day.

What about the old “full nose down trim prior to punching out” trick? Do airframe preservation systems preclude that these days?
 
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Ltcol “Bull” Meechum would’ve ridden it out! They don’t make them like they used to.
 
catmandu said:
Nice thread title of the day.

What about the old “full nose down prior to punching out” trick? Do airframe preservation systems preclude that these days?
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He was at low altitude (1900' ?) when he punched out.
 
Try putting yourself in his situation. The flight was absolutely normal until he's close to landing. The ATIS reported 1900 broken and 4 miles vis. He's well below 1900 and still in solid IMC and as he calls his wingman to transition to STOL configuration, he loses his radios and his primary flight display, his helmet visor display, flickers on and off and as it flickers on, displays a master caution and various faults that he doesn't see long enough to process before the display fails entirely. His secondary displays, the big video screens in front of him all are black. The only flight instrument working is an emergency attitude indicator near his right knee. He has no engine instruments and thinks some of the cautions that flickered on were engine faults. His wingman one mile in trail, sees his flight lead begin a missed approach. The wingman continues his approach and lands reporting the weather was well below the ATIS reported weather. The accident pilot is spatially disoriented and doesn't believe the one instrument he has that's working and so he punches out. The airplane was still controllable given the pilot had referenced the working emergency attitude indicator and the plane continued to climb after the pilot ejected.

An F-111E hit a bird in Scotland that shredded the huge fiberglass radar dome and fodded both engines. The Central Air Data Computer that inputs commands to the flight controls is receiving bad data from the pitot tube mounted in the nose of the radar dome. The airplane is responding to the bad commands from the CADC which can be eliminated by turning off the dampers. This accident sequence starts at 500 feet and 500 knots over water on a bombing run at a range in Scotland. The crew elected to eject. The accident board concluded the jet was still flyable if the pilot had immediately turned off the dampers, ignored all airspeed indications from his instruments and used the inertial ground speed for a speed reference, had accomplished the procedures to recover the engine compressor stalls and landed the airplane at the nearest British military base. Our wing commander dissented and said the crew had seconds to make their decision and he agreed with their decision to eject. It's one thing to analyze an accident inside a simulator where you are free from any danger and you have the luxury of knowing what's happening,
 
I am reminded of a USMC AV-8B pilot friend who told me once “There are two types of AV-8 pilots. Those who have ejected and those who will”.

Hopefully this will not carry over to F35-B pilots.
 
aterry1067 said:
Most 0-6 and above that I am aware of (USAF and USMC) only fly once or twice a month, and every maintainer and Ops Desk officer is aware that they will probably have to hold his hand to get him off the ground. That just isn't enough flight time to stay familiar with the aircraft. Sim time helps, but they probably don't get much of that either. I'm not knocking it, they are very busy people with full schedules. I just sometimes wonder if maintaining currency is really the best idea for that level of rank. I'm sure there's a policy for that.
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I had a wing commander O-6 that every WSO prayed would make BG because the rule then required Brigadier Generals and above to only fly with an IP in the other seat. As a counterpoint to the above, I've also flown with several O-6s who were among the best pilots in the Air Force bar none.
 
If the sequence of events is as described in post 11, yeah I wholly concur with the decision to punch. These e-jets, to say nothing of the smoshmortion that are jump jets, were not meant to be controlled with the big infotainment monitors blank. It's a big opportunity cost of having gone down that ergonomics/UI route in 5+ gen jets, but that's also a sunk one at this point (pun not intended). The blanking of their wraparound HMD nugget projector would have also thrown anybody for a loop. Go tilt and roll for an hour with VR goggles and suddenly have it turned off, then flicker on then back off. That HMD visual informational acclimation will atrophy the living snot out of anybody's knuckle dragger "traditional panel" instrument cross check scan, even more so than it already does for regular flavored HUD babies. As of last spring I was transtion training them for the past 6 years as they came back from their fighters; I have tons of 1st hand training data to support my contention.

Spatial-D type II is an outright given here, with what passes for "electrical out/alternate crosscheck" in these e-jets. Now add hesitation and time to decide what's what, while in heavy rain and IMC, wrt the sequencing between rube goldberg hover mode and real airplane mode, and it's not even close.

I remember being a younger .mil pilot, ready to scoff at this guy and uncharitably suggest he could/should have retained control of the airplane with a pencil and a peanut (stby) ADI in IMC. Then I started burying friends, got humbled by my own fallibility, and grew the eff up. 10/10 he did the right thing by punching out of that POS, given the informational/display deficit, reversionary mode cross check atrophy, and proximity to the ground he was faced with.

Lastly, I'm not surprised by neophytes latching on to the circumstantial and ultimately immaterial happenstance of the airplane staying relatively trimmed on the go to fly for 11 minutes before impacting, as some sort of smoking gun of anything.
 
Interesting that the pilot "perceived" that the aircraft was not transitioning from STOVL to CTOL after missed approach, when analysis by LM confirmed that conversion was taking place and was completed post-ejection. Wonder how this transition affects how the aircraft responds to control inputs?

I did not see anywhere in the report where the pilot specifically stated how the aircraft failed to respond to his flight control inputs, as in "I did this, but the aircraft didn't respond"- which (according to the report) is the requirement for declaring OCF and ejecting below 6,000 feet, may have missed it.

Heavily redacted but interesting read:

 
The .mil guys here will not like this, but the entire backup, fully independent display was working.

That display, mentioned as being near his knee, has far more flight information than an old standard 6 pack.

My instructor took me up one night, under a hood for instrument control practice, with winds coming over the mountains producing violent rolling turbulence. When we started, the hits were 20 to 30 degree banks, but the wind was steadily increasing. I was flying a holding pattern, with large correction angles, and when I had it right, we climbed a thousand feet, and continued.

We called the radar controller that we were returning to base when I had several flips to 60 degrees, my instructor said he was not in the mood for 2 in fast succession putting us inverted, and taking the plane from me to get back right side up.

Cessna 150, standard 6 pack, single nav, single comm. I had less than 40 total hours in my log book. He was not expecting the turbulence to be that bad, but I was dealing with it OK so stayed up..

That flight plus a couple of instrument approaches into Andrew AFB qualified me for one of the first "Blue Seal" PPL's.

That Marine pilot had more valid data in one totally independent device than I had that night, and failed to use it. Clearly, he had not had sufficient training in simulators, or had forgotten it. He should not have been flying that aircraft that day. People used very poor judgement before that mission was scheduled, and the pilot was just one of them.

I once turned down renting a Piper J3 solo, because it had been 2 years since my last flight, and waited until I could go with an instructor. I flew fine, smooth 3 point landing, but wanted to be sure.

Pulling on my old Army steel pot to protect from the bullets and bombs coming.
 
Well, two things can be true at the same time. Nobody's arguing the aircraft can't be attitude oriented in IMC by use of the little backup PFD. The issue at hand here is the spatial Disorientation induced by loss of primary information presentation in a fixed wing aircraft that dabbles in hover modes low to the ground in a critcal phase of flight (missed approach/go around in IMC, a vestibular nightmare of a flight phase). Compounding factor to that SD Type-II is a systemic reliance on visor FOV information-projection endemic to suites like that of Fat Amy, aka HUD-baby on steroids.

Unless we're suggesting inflight suicide should be the appropriate response for the dishonor of allowing oneself to become spatial D while wearing a military uniform, the pilot did the right thing by punching out. I have pilot training classmates and friends no longer on this Earth because they rode type-2 SD after primary flight instrumentation failure, right into the ground. Dead, orphaned little kids behind, with a perfectly functional ejection seat at their disposal. And guess what, the military still blamed them just the same, even after acknowledging the Hornet's INS in question had gone TU.

The only reason I care to comment about this mil accident, is just to push back on the weekend warrior hubris around here regarding IMC. May nobody on this board, or their pilot children btw, ever meet their end in IMC one day over the rank conceit of regarding spatial-D as the purview of technical incompetents and lesser men.
 
geezer said:
The .mil guys here will not like this, but the entire backup, fully independent display was working.

That display, mentioned as being near his knee, has far more flight information than an old standard 6 pack.
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There are reasonable arguments to be made both for punching out and for flying it out of danger. Me? Sounds like punching out was the better answer. Low altitude, slow, spatial disorientation, IFR, and the ship's instrumentation is failing? Lots of things stacked against a successful recovery.
 
He had the equivalent of an enhanced 6 pack, fully functional, and a functioning auto pilot. This is a problem with the fully computerized aircraft, the pilots are short on actually flying the plane with partial failures, With the few hours he had in this sophisticated plane, he had inadequate training to be ready for reverting to the basic , fully isolated, self contained power instruments.

Take a minute, clear your head, and fly the plane. A Marine pilot with his basic experience should not panic.

Some Military pilots on PPRUNE concluded that his exoneration for punching out was on the basis that he COULD have believed the plane was unflyable.

The removal from the Marines was on the panicking under stress, and also flying a plane when he was not fully familiar with the emergency procedures, specifically the square set of isolated basic instruments.
 
I’m surprised this type of failure mode isn’t (repeatedly) practiced in the sim.
 
geezer said:
The .mil guys here will not like this, but the entire backup, fully independent display was working.

That display, mentioned as being near his knee, has far more flight information than an old standard 6 pack.

My instructor took me up one night, under a hood for instrument control practice, with winds coming over the mountains producing violent rolling turbulence. When we started, the hits were 20 to 30 degree banks, but the wind was steadily increasing. I was flying a holding pattern, with large correction angles, and when I had it right, we climbed a thousand feet, and continued.

We called the radar controller that we were returning to base when I had several flips to 60 degrees, my instructor said he was not in the mood for 2 in fast succession putting us inverted, and taking the plane from me to get back right side up.

Cessna 150, standard 6 pack, single nav, single comm. I had less than 40 total hours in my log book. He was not expecting the turbulence to be that bad, but I was dealing with it OK so stayed up..

That flight plus a couple of instrument approaches into Andrew AFB qualified me for one of the first "Blue Seal" PPL's.

That Marine pilot had more valid data in one totally independent device than I had that night, and failed to use it. Clearly, he had not had sufficient training in simulators, or had forgotten it. He should not have been flying that aircraft that day. People used very poor judgement before that mission was scheduled, and the pilot was just one of them.

I once turned down renting a Piper J3 solo, because it had been 2 years since my last flight, and waited until I could go with an instructor. I flew fine, smooth 3 point landing, but wanted to be sure.

Pulling on my old Army steel pot to protect from the bullets and bombs coming.
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You may not have personally seen that same standby digital attitude indicator (yes it has speed and altitude too) flip completely inverted on a night catapult shot for no reason whatsoever, when the manufacturer swore it was impervious to failure, like I have in a Super Hornet. Not saying the previous peanut gyro 3 pack standbys in the F/A-18 below lot 30 or whatever it was, were better. But there isn't a lack of precedent to doubt their accuracy, especially given everything else that was apparently going wrong. I also grew up as a civilian flying nothing glass, other than the glass of a 6 pack. But later on I grew up a second time flying navy jets. Personally, I can't really write this dude and his decisions off out of hand. There was a fatal mishap a number of years ago, involving a Marine hornet, and a very insidious failure of his standby instruments, in conjunction with a full INS failure. That one was a "but by the grace of god, there go I" moment for many of us. Very likely, this Colonel, who would definitely have remembered that mishap.
 
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Hey @geezer, I’ll give you a runaway trim in that 150 in the same situation. Won’t even take away your six pack and will spot you a portable Stratus AHRS…

You ain’t gonna know WHAT to believe, and would punch out if ya could.

How you gonna get that runaway? Even better, I’ll introduce a simple failure that’ll force you to give it to yourself… I’ve had TWO, a Cherokee 140 and a Taylorcraft BC-12D.

This would be a pointless exercise if I didn’t think you were a good pilot, I have no reason to believe you aren’t.

SOMETHING happened to take this guys ability away to an extreme degree. NO ONE punches out because they’re lazy or scared. If you have time to be scared, you have time to troubleshoot… You only punch out because their is NOTHING left. You either never got to scared, or are past that.

If the airplane isn’t responding, you got NO CHOICE. He didn’t think it was responding, THAT is the why.
 
geezer said:
He had the equivalent of an enhanced 6 pack, fully functional, and a functioning auto pilot. This is a problem with the fully computerized aircraft, the pilots are short on actually flying the plane with partial failures, With the few hours he had in this sophisticated plane, he had inadequate training to be ready for reverting to the basic , fully isolated, self contained power instruments.

Take a minute, clear your head, and fly the plane. A Marine pilot with his basic experience should not panic.

Some Military pilots on PPRUNE concluded that his exoneration for punching out was on the basis that he COULD have believed the plane was unflyable.

The removal from the Marines was on the panicking under stress, and also flying a plane when he was not fully familiar with the emergency procedures, specifically the square set of isolated basic instruments.
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I believe the accident board identified a problem with how the emergency procedures were worded. The accident pilot actually followed the emergency procedures to the letter by ejecting when there was a perceived loss of control below 6000 feet. Practicing using the emergency "six pack" in the simulator doesn't replicate being spatially disoriented and being confronted with actual electrical failures and possible engine faults bringing into question the reliability of the emergency instrument and the flyability of the aircraft. Combine this with the aerodynamic changes taking place in an F-35B when it is transitioning from STOVL to airplane mode and not being able to tell from the instruments where it is in that process seems to me a recipe for reinforcing a belief that the aircraft is not doing what you think it should be doing all while going through heavy rainshowers and solid IMC with no contact on the radios .
 
The F-35 has 8 million lines of code and probably the world's safest ejection seat. I know which one I would take my chances with when things started to go that wrong with the avionics. Even if the standby instrument was a known-perfect item (and it's hard to blame a pilot for having low confidence in it, given posts here about problems with them and a chance that it was affected by the same fault causing the primary avionics to go nuts), the airframe itself might be dying and could well decide to shut off the flight controls inverted at 50 AGL. They don't give the Medal of Honor for riding a dying airplane into the ground on a training sortie. They do give a decent consolation prize for punching out, at worst a desk job dispatching cargo planes full of rubber dog doo out of Hong Kong until you go civilian or retire. As a taxpayer, I'm okay with those incentives, and just hope that the lessons learned from mishaps like this make for better outcomes for other aviators, not to mention airframes in the event we're involved in a conflict where the loss of one jet might be the nail for want of which the war was lost.
 
From my personal point of view, a glass cockpit is the hardest kind of display to troubleshoot of all. The Colonel had that problem.

second, the only plane that I have flown with electric trim is the Piper Arrow with autopilot. That device was full of potential problems, some manifested themselves on my cross countries.

I have flown a full glass plane, no conventional 'mechanical' displays at all, and I would have been un willing to fly that plane in instrument conditions.

35 AOA, how many times have those displays flipped inverted? That is not what the Colonel claimed he suspected, from my reading, he did not transition to it at all. Yes, his primary and secondary failed, but there is no indication that the emergency display failed. Perhaps the simulator training had not included such a condition? Possibly a search of the record by the higher ranking officer who released him from service found something there, I do not know.

Iamtheheart, for want of a nail, we do not have a plane to analyze to find the glitch in the software that caused this event, so all future pilots may have the same failure over an unfriendly country. Fly out of the storm, and find any airport with a suitable approach.
Ejecting too soon wasted the aircraft, and the 8 million lines of code still has the glitch which will kill someday, because the plane crashed............on autopilot controlled by some of that good code.

Witmo posted that the accident board identified a problem with how the emergency procedures were worded. The pilot was within the procedure. That did not mean the plane was unflyable, just that he did what was allowed.

A large part of my career was analyzing the analog and digital devices which malfunctioned, and proposing changes to prevent recurrence. If the device was severely damaged, that task often became impossible, and a repeat of the same event in the future was likely.


Unfortunately, for my attitude bias, I live in the Washington DC metro area, know many military pilots, have flown with some outstanding examples, from WW 2 combat pilots to much later but am aware of some who fly the minimum to keep flight pay, and try to fly the latest and greatest at their base. They can be barely trained in them, but go any way.
 
geezer said:
…I have flown a full glass plane, no conventional 'mechanical' displays at all, and I would have been un willing to fly that plane in instrument conditions..
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Ever fly a plane where the glass panels are displayed on your helmet visor? Then have that display and the primary displays go dark while maneuvering in IMC?

I appreciate your position, but I think you underestimate the challenge presented to the mishap pilot.

I also know we’re not privileged to the Safety Investigation Board (or whatever the Navy calls it) report that might provide a lot of additional context.
 
geezer said:
The removal from the Marines was on the panicking under stress, and also flying a plane when he was not fully familiar with the emergency procedures, specifically the square set of isolated basic instruments.
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Relieved from command, or involuntarily discharged?

Also, if there is a sharp movement of the head in the pitch axis when viewing the emergency display it might be enough to create a vestibular (disorienting) disturbance. Adds to the already impressive cognitive workload. Everything I've read here and on PPrune tells me the pilot was justified in ejecting. It seems to be the 'optics' (literal or metaphorical) that got him removed or whatever happened to his career.
 
Piperonca said:
Relieved from command, or involuntarily discharged?

Also, if there is a sharp movement of the head in the pitch axis when viewing the emergency display it might be enough to create a vestibular (disorienting) disturbance. Adds to the already impressive cognitive workload. Everything I've read here and on PPrune tells me the pilot was justified in ejecting. It seems to be the 'optics' (literal or metaphorical) that got him removed or whatever happened to his career.
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The accident pilot was placed in command of a prestigious test unit 6 months after the accident board released its findings. The accident pilot was undoubtedly on the fast track for a star and had been assured that the accident would not affect his new assignment. The Commandant of Marines had a different idea. I suspect he'll retire voluntarily as a Colonel some time soon as it is unlikely he will get his star.
 
Piperonca said:
Relieved from command, or involuntarily discharged?

Also, if there is a sharp movement of the head in the pitch axis when viewing the emergency display it might be enough to create a vestibular (disorienting) disturbance. Adds to the already impressive cognitive workload. Everything I've read here and on PPrune tells me the pilot was justified in ejecting. It seems to be the 'optics' (literal or metaphorical) that got him removed or whatever happened to his career.
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Reminds me of the wire chaffing crash that took the life of F-16 pilot Capt Harduvel. They made a movie about it called Afterburn. Anyway, he had conflicting info from instrument wire chaffing and they think he was looking down and aft trying to troubleshoot circuit breakers. Probably got spatial D, went inverted and pulled into the ground.

Gotta be a difficult transition from a primary display going to back up, especially if the primary is on one’s helmet. Guy I went to flight school with crashed and died in an AH-64 on the range. The were cruising NOE and hit trees, took out his PNVS, FOD’d out one of the engines. They had a flyable aircraft but I think the disorientation of pure black night with inop HUD and confusing engine info was overwhelming for him.
 
Same kind of discussions seemed to come up when Cirrus chutes were discussed in the past.

I’ll gladly lose the $1 or $2 of my tax money (not including interest) for the PIC to go home to his family. Better to have lost the plane than the plane and pilot.

Human factors and real delays in figuring out what’s going on. Reminded me that Sully is coming back to Purdue for a lecture series, just got my tix (free) and sitting here waiting for it to start!
 

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geezer said:
35 AOA, how many times have those displays flipped inverted?
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That was me I was talking about. I’ve seen it happen a handful of times over the years in my personal experience. Cant really speak to the fleet as a whole. Not saying this is the exact scenario this guy encountered, but I am saying that there’s some gray in this business. How about the scenario I mentioned (that happened to me), Stan by att tumbles inverted during cat shot. Then I go into low overcast as both my generators fail, rendering all other displays/HUD blank (and oh by the way, also cutting off oxygen mask flow at the same time)? On that deployment, we were having double generator failures every other day or so. So not super far fetched. Am I to believe the standby if I thought I saw it tumble, but can’t remember because it’s down in front of my right knee, and I was focused on other things? I don’t know. I’m just glad that didn’t happen
 
Guy punched out of an F35, I gotta think he honestly believed it was that or die. I can’t even imagine someone making that decision lightly.

Military equipment gets broken during training. Sometimes a helmet gets run over by a track, sometimes a jet augers in. Either way just be glad the occupant wasn’t still in it at the time.
 
TCABM said:
also know we’re not privileged to the Safety Investigation Board (or whatever the Navy calls it) report that might provide a lot of additional context.
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You can, I linked it above in #17. Natch all the classified systems data is redacted.

Me, I'm not focused on "should" he have punched out.
I question whether he "should" have been in the aircraft to begin with in the conditions that day.

32 hours TT in that aircraft- of which 6.4/6.4/9.1 hours 30/60/90 days.

There's often discussion here as regards PPs- particularly low-time in any type, or specific aircraft, to respect the limitations that are inherent with lack of experience in the specific airplane you're flying. In this case, the most "sophisticated" multirole combat aircraft in the US mil arsenal. I admittedly know nothing of this, except that these amazing aircraft self-protect and pretty much fly themselves,- until they don't.

Some reason this pilot HAD to be flying BFM in that plane in IMC, that day? Seems some more time in the sim and in the air may have resulted in a different outcome, and not risked the lives of civilians on the ground. Methinks the discussion just might be a tad different if that plane had crashed into an elementary school full of children.
As Geezer said, flame suit on...
Just sayin...
 
tobnpr, exactly my point.

Multiple people had to make bad judgement calls for this pilot to be flying that aircraft, that day. That pilot was the most important one.

No flame suit, WW 2 style steel helmet.
 
I’ll buy that he could have not been best suited to be flying it. I don’t know the details of his assignement. In the navy it is very normal to have flying O-6’s though. Like flying every day O-6’s. I’m only a promotion away from being that, and am still pretty tactical I believe. Don’t put that hate on me :)
 
tobnpr said:
32 hours TT in that aircraft- of which 6.4/6.4/9.1 hours 30/60/90 days.
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So, we often hear that flight time is quite restricted in today's military. They also have sophisticated simulators to be able to spend a minimum of time on the aircraft, plus very comprehensive ground training. The hours seen in the military do not in any way match up to what we as civilians would expect.

@35 AoA and any other active military fliers, how much time does one get into an active fighter jet type with these days? I believe they're requiring Private to be completed beforehand now and/or using cheap aircraft and 3rd-party training providers for initial training, but I'm guessing that there's still some rules in place that wash people out during that phase - Is the 10-hour solo still a thing? Do they get more than 50 for initial VFR training or 100 with IFR included? Are they sticking zero-time people into T-6As, or just using those for maneuvers after the primary and instrument training is complete? How much time is spent in a T-38 before one jumps into an F-16, F-22, or F-35?

And, once in one of those front-line fighters, how much time do they normally get in 30/90 days?

Not that it's necessarily analogous, but both with my own HP piston aircraft and when I had a combo desk/flying job, 3 weeks seems to be the dividing line - If I have flown in the last 3 weeks, everything goes smoothly. If it's been more than 3 weeks, I'm OK but I can tell that I'm not completing flows as quickly or smoothly, and things don't seem quite so automatic as they otherwise would.

6.4 hours in the last 30 is presumably more than one sortie, but no hours in the previous 30 might indicate that more flying should be happening.

This reminds me of the F-16 accident at Shaw in 2020. Pilot was a qualified F-16 pilot, but was working through mission qualification training in advance of a deployment. They stuck him on a crazy training sortie with another new pilot and two instructors as their wingmen. Their first task was to do his first ever aerial refueling, followed by his first simulated enemy air defense suppression, all at night. Of course the pilot is going to feel pressure to get everything done in time to deploy... There was some IMC, tanker had to change altitudes, the instructors were able to refuel successfully, the other student had some trouble but finally got it, and the pilot was unable to refuel. So, the remainder of the mission had to be scrubbed for him and his instructor/wingman, they flew back to base, shot an ILS, and upon transitioning to visual the pilot maneuvered down to a lower glidepath which I guess is normal, but instead of aiming at the threshold he misinterpreted the lights (again, very limited night experience) and hit the localizer antennae with his main landing gear, causing damage. He successfully went around, but some other failures occurred with the personnel supporting him at that point that caused them to run an incorrect checklist and decide on a cable-arrested landing even though the pilot questioned that twice (he was correct). The hook skipped over the cable, the wing dropped, the pilot ejected, and then the ejection seat sequencer failed and his parachute failed to open, so he took a ballistic ride on the seat and died upon impact. LOTS of stuff going wrong, and I think they said the pilot had only 8 hours in the last month and under 100 total time in type.

I also had no idea how many military aviators are killed. 59 over the past 10 calendar years, and 10 more so far this year. RIP. :(
 
If he were the XO/CO of 501, those hours would make sense. I know he’s an IP but like the B-1 crash, that doesn’t necessarily translate to high time. The accident report stated he was qualified and current in the aircraft. Obviously that doesn’t mean proficient either.

I flew jump seat once in a Marine H-53 right before I went to Army flight school. Sitting between the pilot we chatted about flight time. The XO (Maj) was in the right seat and was saying I was lucky in that I’ll get to concentrate on flying and not admin BS. Said it was his first flight in a month. For the most part, that’s the reality when you get to higher ranks in the military. There are the outliers that go training command, ANG, or are lucky and avoid non operational assignments but that’s rare. I remember one time taking up RLOs for a 15 minute ride to maintain their 1 flight every 60 days currency. They spend their days doing PPT and not flying.

Aircraft availability is another problem especially when talking about old aircraft when parts are hard to get or new aircraft that break because of complexity. Dispatch rates in the military are nothing compared to the civ world. Old friend who flew Ospreys in the Reserves got 8 hrs in a year. Talked about how they broke on a regular basis. His training took way longer than syllabus because active Marines had priority for aircraft.

Join the military for the mission, if you want to build hours, go to the airlines.
 
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