So, we often hear that flight time is quite restricted in today's military.
It is nowadays, yes. We used to joke about Iran and NK pilots yearly hours. US fighter guys don't make that joke anymore. We've also wasted our capitalization fighting BS engagements overseas with the wrong tools (chasing goat herders with a nuclear strategic bombers, among other equally ludicrous propositions). Now the capitalization bill is due and we can't pay it without further inflating away our currency. Empire in decay, history is littered with case studies, this isn't a hottake.
@35 AoA and any other active military fliers, how much time does one get into an active fighter jet type with these days?
Under 150/200 hours easily across most pointy communities, contingency deployments exempted. Squadrons often bifurcate their training footprint to "green up" the selected few, and starve/shelf the rest (not making RAP program quota, or whatever the US Navy equivalent is called).
This reminds me of the F-16 accident at Shaw in 2020.
You're talking about my late former student (circa 2018). The miltiary industrial complex ultimately killed him. The seat was fraudulently maintained. Counterfit chipboard/parts (see empire in decay, and contractor greed/malfeasance). The widow is suing the govt contractors, as she cannot sue the govt for her husband's death. I hope she's able to claw back some money.
The rest of the failures were supervisory in nature. The hours thing wasn't as much a factor because for all intents and purposes, he was a de facto student even as a member of an operational squadron. Light as it may have been (COVID slowdown was also a factor, this is deep in 2020), his hours were above average believe it or not. Young guys in MQT tend to be given priority over non-IP line flyers. In heavy units (and I include bombers in there, even though they're not considered part of the mobility air force) it's the opposite, they eat their young and dry rot their young copilots. Don't miss that steaming pile of a community one bit.
Long story short, the schoolhouse was on their arse (still are, Viper timelines currently are more than a year behind, it's 2007 all over again). So they kicked the can to the op squadron, and the rest is history. It was a big failure in supervision to pull him up and throw him into a SEAD night profile and tack on first night AR sortie on it.
Post-gear damage, even if they hadn't pushed for the cable arrestment attempt, the seat was never going to auto separate, and nobody knew that of course. Manual seat separation at night is a pipedream below 2k AGL, even if the person has the mental presence to reach for the MOR handle (EMPDH in Viper parlance) while falling in the pitch dark night. And remember, that's assuming you tell yourself "
I know my seat won't separate when I pull today/tonight". Which is a complete betrayal of the social contract when you agree to strap into any aircraft you cannot dead stick reliably (e.g. most ejection seat aircraft, save some of the slower trainers like the T-6).
6ish seconds was his parabolic flight, and post G-shock (2 seconds for 9-12G of initial cat/rocket launch) the board determined he had 3.4 seconds to manual separate actuate in the pitch dark to survive the jump. Can't wait for the weekend warriors on here to tell me how they'd be able to pull it off in their C-150 while spatial D. Digressing.
BL, at 0 AGL, nobody in his position was going to be able to pull that off. The last Viper guy who had that indignity happen to him and lived to tell about it, had more than 10,000ft of freefall to snap out of the daze of ejection, realize he was still falling to his death, and reach for manual sep handle. That was a much higher time guy, IP type. Also during daytime mind you, after colliding with his wingman no less. So there was already plenty to not want to face on the ground in the event he survived.
Point being, it takes a long time to realistically wrap your head around seat separation troubleshooting, and our young Viper pilot was never given that chance by the circumstances of that fateful night. His supervison failed him, but it is the civilian defense contractors who have blood on their hands. To suggest it was a lack of hours that did him in would be a copout. Again, two things can be true at the same time.
, but I suspect in the F-35 it could be an even worse situation.
Yuma sucks anyway. Head west to Miramar and take over one of the F-35 squadrons.
