Zombie F-35 Mishap Report Out...

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.

:yeahthat: , but I suspect in the F-35 it could be an even worse situation.

The F-35's distributed aperture system (DAS; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/AAQ-37_Distributed_Aperture_System ) displays outside imagery on the helmet display from a suite of imaging sensors, essentially giving the pilot a view of the outside world even in dark or IMC conditions. I had a little involvement with that system a few years ago, and one of the most critical parameters was the delay of image updates in response to head movement. Even a tiny delay of the imagery not following the pilot's head was extremely disorienting. If the failure this colonel experienced caused this helmet imagery to be delayed, partially displayed, distorted, frozen, etc., he would have quickly experienced extreme disorientation.

Imagine if you were flying along in VMC, looking through your windshield and side windows, when suddenly the windshield view tilted 45 degrees and froze, and moving your head to look around kept the same frozen view from the windshield even when you were trying to look through a side window.
 
:yeahthat: , but I suspect in the F-35 it could be an even worse situation.

The F-35's distributed aperture system (DAS; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/AAQ-37_Distributed_Aperture_System ) displays outside imagery on the helmet display from a suite of imaging sensors, essentially giving the pilot a view of the outside world even in dark or IMC conditions. I had a little involvement with that system a few years ago, and one of the most critical parameters was the delay of image updates in response to head movement. Even a tiny delay of the imagery not following the pilot's head was extremely disorienting. If the failure this colonel experienced caused this helmet imagery to be delayed, partially displayed, distorted, frozen, etc., he would have quickly experienced extreme disorientation.

Imagine if you were flying along in VMC, looking through your windshield and side windows, when suddenly the windshield view tilted 45 degrees and froze, and moving your head to look around kept the same frozen view from the windshield even when you were trying to look through a side window.
Perfectly plausible and you describe exactly what would happen.
 
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.
 
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?
The F18 and I suspect the F35 at an minimum auto trim when the gear is retracted. Many FBW aircraft like the Airbuses auto trim all the time. I suspect full time auto trim given the complexity of the transition mode in the F35.
 
Mover’s assessment of the pilot’s actions at 21:30. What I don’t get is he’s been relieved but they gave him his choice of assignment? I’d be like, yeah I’ll take CO of VMX-1. :biggrin: Yuma sucks anyway. Head west to Miramar and take over one of the F-35 squadrons.

 
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.

With respect, shouldn't a night ILS landing be a fairly routine operation by the time a military pilot gets to that point in the pipeline?
 
Last edited:
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).
A year? That sucks - My first tour (90-94) you could be pretty sure to get 1000 hours in type minimum even if you only did one deployment in that time which can happen depending on when you joined in the train/deploy cycle.
 
With respect, shouldn't a night ILS landing be a fairly routine operation by the time a military pilot gets to that point in the pipeline?
Yeah, the young man had a bad night. We all have them to varying degrees, most of us don't pay the ultimate price for it though.

The irony is that he probably would have survived the ground loop on the failed cable attempt (second approach), given the hindsight of the seat being broken. The ILS approach he boned up (the first one), he technically survived by going around after impacting short. So my position remains unchanged, the counterfit-maintained seat killed him, not his botched ILS.
 
Empire in decay, history is littered with case studies, this isn't a hottake.
:(
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.
I wasn't really thinking about hours directly being the issue there, more just that we seem to be demanding more per hour.
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.
Yes. That was the big thing, and what started the accident chain. Without that, the seat wouldn't have been an issue.
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.
Yes, they said that best case scenario it would have taken him a minimum of 4 seconds, but he only had 3 and change.
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.
There were quite a few things that went wrong:

1) Scheduling such a demanding flight early enough in his experience in type and at night. Even the non-instructor guy who had previous air to air refueling experience took twice as long as the instructors and still came up 1,000 pounds short.
2) Pressure to complete MQT prior to unit deployment. Combined with 1), this clearly affected the emotional state of the pilot based on what the CVR got and it was obvious enough that the IP said something over the radio prior to the approach.
3) Weather. ILS at night, limited night experience, and emotion combined to cause the initial impact with the localizer antenna, which I'm sure did not help with the pilot's emotional state at all for the parts that came afterwards.
4) SOF's incorrect checklist use despite the pilot not agreeing that it was the correct one
5) SOF not contacting LM
6) 4 and 5 leading to the decision to attempt the arrested landing instead of a controlled ejection at altitude - This is what would have saved him in spite of the seat, as he would have had more time to recognize the situation and pull the manual release.
7) Failure of the seat sequencer.

With respect, shouldn't a night ILS landing be a fairly routine operation by the time a military pilot gets to that point in the pipeline?

I think the report said this was only his 12th night flight ever. I also wasn't aware of how they fly an ILS in an F-16, and I still don't know why - When they break out and transition to visual, they dip below the glideslope to a 2.5º glidepath to the threshold. The rest of us are generally going 3º to the glideslope antenna or VASI, further down the runway. Either way, doing all of that after first having the frustration of failing an important mission plus the additional frustration and fear involved in knowing that you've already bent your airplane... I can't imagine. :( But I don't really blame the guy for not executing perfectly when he was put in the position they put him in.
 
I keep meaning to post the accident report (again, this is for the Shaw incident, not for the zombie F-35) because the link that I keep finding to it everywhere is broken. Here it is.
 

Attachments

  • F-16 Mishap AIB 30 June 2020 Shaw AFB (ACC).pdf
    3.8 MB · Views: 0
When flying moves from fun to a job things change.

In the civilian aviation world there is a saying I have heard many times over the years, “there is no mission”

The military does not have the option to say ****it… sometimes they just have to go. I can easily see how decisions are more complicated, even in the training environment.
 
I think the report said this was only his 12th night flight ever. I also wasn't aware of how they fly an ILS in an F-16, and I still don't know why - When they break out and transition to visual, they dip below the glideslope to a 2.5º glidepath to the threshold.
It's not just Vipers and it's not procedural either; it's just general technique for all pointy nosed (navy TACAIR exempted, they don't flare nor shift aimpoints for obvious operational reasons) aircraft in the Usaf to shoot for a 5-10ft threshold crossing height for a visual transition, leading to a touchdown zone in the first 1000 feet. These aircraft aren't airliners, they don't have great means of stopping and are generally runway hogs, so long arsed airline touchdowns are not desired. During low visibility conditions however, basically any scenario where the runway appears late, one is taught to maintain the current aimpoint and accept the airline landing if landing distance-safe to do so, or go around if landing distance is unworkable.

It's not a significant shift. It's a shift of less than 1000 feet, it's a nothingburger. It's also not true that 2.5 is targeted, the 3 degree glide is still targeted, the aircraft likes to settle in 2.5 and most people find the roundout phase smoother and less prone to abrupt flares when approaching at 2.5.

Where people get in trouble is again, making the shift too late, and creating a duck under situation. Which is a training item we hammer on the students in the 38s a lot, and we footstomp the importance of accepting the aimpoint you have if the runway shows too late, or go-around.

The problem with night is just that, lack of depth perception. The trend is for people to have high TCHs and high flares at night, which pose their own hazard. This wasn't the case in this accident, it was a drug-in final due to depth misperception at night.
 
A year? That sucks - My first tour (90-94) you could be pretty sure to get 1000 hours in type minimum even if you only did one deployment in that time which can happen depending on when you joined in the train/deploy cycle.

Hindsight is probably speaking realistic numbers for the usaf, but that isn’t really what I ever experienced in my career (at least the active duty part). 250-300 hrs/ year when not deployed/in workups, maybe 400-500 in a deployment year if you hustle. I flew 75 hrs a month for a while on my last cruise. That being said, I have buddies who lost out on a lot of hours during sequestration, I was just lucky to be in workups at the time. I had close to 1000 hrs when I went to my shore tour. Everyone is on sea duty longer now, and the deployments are longer now and probably more frequent (TO tour deployment, straight into DH tour deployment after moving to new squadron is not uncommon). And we are severely undermanned at the senior O-3 and O-4 levels, so I don’t know that there is any shortage of flight hours. The low hours and lots of desk jobs/can’t fly past X rank, are misconceptions that have had enough of a grain of truth to perpetuate (ie they are true in other communities that have multiple pilots and are inherently overmanned at the entry level). At least in my experience.
 
Looking at their bios, does appear the AF is getting around 150 hrs per year in fighters.

 
Once the skills are obtained/learned/acquired, do we know how much is needed to maintain proficiency?

And all this discussion of hours, is there consideration of sim time? book study time?
 
Back
Top