hckrnws

So a similar thing happened near some friends' in France. A military jet crashed into the forest near their house, but the air force couldn't figure out where it had gone. Eventually a farmer noticed that a new pond had appeared on his land. The jet made enough of a crater when crashing that drained the nearby swamp and created a new pond deep enough to conceal the full fuselage, thus completely hiding the airplane. Once the farmer alerted the air force, they were able to crane the remains out of the newly formed pond and recover the key parts of hardware onboard. Had the farmer not noticed the change in landscape they might have never found it. https://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2011/03/02/97001-20110302...

I wonder if some of the "autopilot" functionality for military aircraft is to swan-dive into water/forest if everyone has already ejected.

If it's going to crash (and can't autoland, which it probably shouldn't attempt even if it could if something ejection-worthy happened), might as well obliterate the thing in a safe place.

The thing you’re thinking of is the pilot. If the plane is capable of control, the pilot will move it on a trajectory away from populated areas if possible. Protecting innocent people on the ground in the case of an emergency was always top of mind, you can see this in the crash reporting for multiple real world incidents (in airframes with, and without ejection seats, where the last actions of the aircrew were steering away from populated areas)

By the time a pilot ejects they’ve exhausted EVERY other option to control the aircraft, no AI is going to regain control at that point.

> By the time a pilot ejects they’ve exhausted EVERY other option to control the aircraft, no AI is going to regain control at that point.

It seems like they probably bail out when they've exhausted every option of being able to land it and survive. There are likely some scenarios where there's limited controls remaining, that wouldn't provide high enough odds of guaranteeing someone's survival, but that could optimize for something when it eventually makes contact with the land. In fact, it seems like there could be quite a bit of capabilities between where someone would want to bail out and where there are zero remaining controls.

I live in the real world, and there are incident reports that go into great detail about every aircraft loss. I’ve read every one since 1999, and I’ve never seen an incident where the pilot ejected over a populated area in an aircraft that was still controlled.

What you all are imagining does not happen, and the odds of it happening are vanishingly small.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/russian-su-34-fullback...

“The statement went on to add that the crash was caused by an issue with one of the engines during takeoff, but the jet's two crewmembers are said to have ejected safely and survived. The extent of the injuries to the apartment building's tenants as well as civilians in the surrounding area is unknown at present.”

"To the last I struggled to lift the plane, [but] copilot Yuriy Yegorov hit the catapult [triggering ejection] and we two ejected with our seats."

What I love about HN is that you can get from 'a plane went missing' to a thread that cites every plane loss since 1999 followed by a counterargument citing a downed MIG.

Like, how the heck do you all know so much? The demographics of this site are unreal

You've never been in an internet argument yourself? You don't need to know shit, just google stuff to support your views which you had already formed without evidence and post it to prove whatever you need to support your case.

Well, one of those guys was just flexing/lying tbf ...

Nah, I read every incident report for military in the US because it was part of my job. Since we were talking about US military aviation I felt that was the avenue. I have read every incident report for Russia, not that I even could.

*have not

Always the straight man, I asked, what’s your job? It sounds unreasonably interesting to me.

I have a strange feeling that Mark was a Marine.

Once a Marine, always a Marine, I believe.

I always wonder if (ex)Marines can ever relax on a beach holiday.

As long as you remember some ice so the crayons don't melt.

furiously takes notes

It's the long tail of the Internet, but with humans' knowledge.

This encapsulates HN very well :-)

You might also consider there is probably some cross-pollination with r/NonCredibleDefense, which has a lot of military intelligence people and analysts (the Yeysk crash got a lot of memes on there)

Have you looked at the MiG-23 that crashed last month in Michigan?

https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/G...

This one? Which reads as though the back-seater (not the pilot) was the one that ejected and took the pilot with him?

What invalidates none of the gain from the OP's idea.

And in fact, if it's reliable, it can help saving pilots lives.

I think it's worth noting that that the MiG-23 that crashed in Michigan was a privately owned aircraft, flown not by an active service member. I highly doubt the military allows their pilots to eject without absolute certainty that the multimillion/billion dollar aircraft is totally lost.

Additionally, I highly doubt there are many privately owned military jets equipped with ejection seats that are allowed to fly, especially in residential airspace.

Also, as someone who works on FMS's the likelihood that a military program would spend the money required to code an AT/AP to have that capability is just too close to zero.

"I highly doubt the military allows their pilots to eject without absolute certainty that the multimillion/billion dollar aircraft is totally lost."

Military pilots most assuredly do not seek permission to eject. Given time they may indeed seek advice about the likelihood of a good landing.

Every military aviation mishap is investigated, as you'd expect. The mishaps may of course not be the pilot's fault.

This guy is a thoughtful YouTuber, former F-14 RIO (back seat guy), who has covered it a few times.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ward+carroll+ej...

My outside, civilian impression from lots of aviator interviews is that the military values its expensive hardware very highly and does not like it if you make expensive mistakes. But my impression is also that it does value the life of its aviators highly as well. They do not want you to die in general and they do not want you do die in order to save a plane.

The decision to eject is often a very very split-second decision. When things go wrong in the air they go wrong in a hurry, especially during takeoff/landing when there is very very little distance between you and the ground.

Just like any job, a mishap that is your fault might be a negative for your aviation career. But one that is the result of equipment failure or something else outside of your control isn't going to be a black mark. My impression is that the military generally tries to get these things right, because it is generally in the military's best interest to perform at a high level and because big expensive mishaps (particularly aviation-related ones) generate a lot of bad press.

> highly doubt the military allows their pilots to eject without absolute certainty that the multimillion/billion dollar aircraft is totally lost.

The amount of time it takes to train up a replacement pilot vastly outweighs a new airframe acquisition. Furthermore, ejection is still an incredibly dangerous activity with plenty of chances for things to fail or go sideways, and a near 100% chance of injury. Like, canopy seperation failing, but seat rockets fire due to safety failure...

Suffice it to say, no, there is absolutely no pressure on pilots to not avail themselves of ejecting over and above the fact that controlled demolition of people tank at appreciable fractions of Mach, under fire, or in any of a myriad of inconvenient orientations relative to airstream and/or lithosphete and/or material formerly contributing to the ongoing flight of a perfectly good airplane is exactly nobody's definition of a good day except measured relative to the alternative of being the first to the site of the crash.

Interview with the guy who pulled the ejection cord in the Michigan Mig-23:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftcn3NwAZCI

tldr; they were out of airspeed and out of altitude barely within ejection envelope (i.e. exhausted all the options)

In flight school lore, during a training exercise, a plane righted itself from "uncontrollable flat spin" after ejection. Basically, pilot input can fight against the natural stability of the plane's design.

Also:

> During a training mission from Malmstrom Air Force Base, on Feb. 2, 1970, his F-106 entered an uncontrollable flat spin forcing him to eject. Unexpectedly, the aircraft recovered on its own and made a gentle belly landing and skidding for a few hundred yards on a field near Big Sandy, Montana, covered by some inches of snow.

https://theaviationist.com/2013/10/24/cornfield-bomber/

Worth noting that spin recovery is highly CG (center of gravity) dependent. Ejecting from an aircraft would significantly alter the CG. It's far more likely that the CG change broke the spin than the pilot was doing something unhelpful.

Additionally there would be a nose down moment from the seat firing (newtons third law) and that may well have broken the stall.

Visually the cockpit of a fighter plane is located forward, thus very likely ahead of the plane's CG. Ejecting the pilot would thus move the CG towards the back of the plane, which is a less stable configuration making it more difficult to recover from a stall.

A developed spin is an equilibrium of forces. Anything that disrupts that equilibrium has a decent chance of disrupting the spin, and that would include moving the CG aft.

However, see my other note as well, there would be a nose down moment when the seat fires. There would also be a massive drag profile change. Any of these things have good potential to disrupt a stabilized spin.

My main point is that it's almost certainly not the case that the pilot was actively making incorrect inputs before ejecting. The ejection itself is the variable that likely would disrupt a spin in such a situation, not the pilot no longer making inputs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Negev_mid-air_collision

>Notably, the F-15, (with a crew of two), managed to land safely at a nearby airbase, despite having its right wing almost completely sheared off in the collision. The lifting body properties of the F-15, together with its overabundant engine thrust, allowed the pilot to achieve this unique feat.

Just posting here because it is awesome.

At first I thought you were referring to this case where a crew landed an A300 with a large part of a wing missing and no hydraulic controls, using only differential engine thrust to control pitch, roll, yaw and speed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_sho...

Near the Weizmann Institute, there is a monument for a pilot who refused to eject over the populated area, and rather kept control over his plane for long enough to divert it away. He died in the crash, as he no doubt would have anticipated.

https://honorisraelsfallen.com/fallen/holtzman-chaim/

Not really, sometimes a plane will land itself even after the pilot ejects. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber

If you read that Wikipedia page, it’s pretty clear the plane would have not recovered without the change in nose attitude from the ejection.

Which contradicts your original claim that "no AI is going to regain control at that point."

Ok. I admit I was wrong then.

I doubt an autopilot would have regained control in a flat spin without an ejection to drastically change the dynamics of the aircraft. I also made the point later that a sufficiently capable AI that could would essentially be able to replace the pilot, rending them moot.

Look, the OP clarified that he meant he wanted an autopilot that tries to lawn dart the plane in an incident of ejection, the purpose of which was to save sensitive technology from the enemy. I still maintain that is silly and if we funded such a program it would be a waste of money.

It seems AI was ablento regaim control after the ejection stabilized the aircraft.

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

> By the time a pilot ejects they’ve exhausted EVERY other option to control the aircraft, no AI is going to regain control at that point.

Every other option with the pilot on board. The plane _may_ be easier to fly without it.

FTA: “The loss of the weight of the crew, seats, and canopy, as well as the shift in the center of gravity, have seen aircraft pull out of an imminent crash with nobody left onboard.”

What Scoundreller meant is that if most of the controls are lost, then the few controls remaining could still be used to intentionally destroy the plane as much as possible. For example, the elevator (to control the pitch) might be the last working control, and it could be used to intentionally nosedive the plane after ejection.

I got that and I was trying to answer in the least sarcastic way I could. I’ll try again.

Autopilot isn’t an all knowing AI that is better at dealing with emergency than a pilot. In the region of flight that involves a pilot ejection, especially in a plane like the F-35, the “autopilot” that would be created that could successfully scout a target area that was safe to crash in, eject the pilot, then somehow move the plane to that area with the canopy off the plane and the degradation of control that would involve, plus the million issues that could have caused the ejection in the first place… it’s not plausible to create this and still have a pilot. You’re talking about a system that is a better aviator, with more SA and more detail about aircraft systems than the human at the stick.

So, first, I don’t think we’re there with AI that is better than the pilot in this region of flight, second, to make that would be so expensive as to be ridiculous, for the incredibly rare event that a military plane needs to eject over a populated area yet also has a safe area like a body of water to crash into. Third, making that system would negate the need for a pilot in the first place so again, what’s the point?

I get the thought, but it’s silly.

I was not thinking of some highly advanced AI, just something ultra simple like: after ejection, attempt to pitch the plane to nosedive as vertically as possible. The intent being to to crash the airplane as badly as possible to prevent the enemy from recovering anything useful from the crash site.

Sounds like a good way to destroy your own runway, barracks near the runway, etc.

Modern ejection systems are zero-zero systems designed to allow ejection at zero speed and zero altitude which means that the aircraft may not have enough energy to successfuly destroy sensitive components across the full ejection envelope.

Why not rig it with explosives around the sensitive components and avoid the messy endeavor of trying to orient the plane for maximum destruction after ejection when that is likely to be unreliable at best?

Because then you would have introduce a brand new safety-critical system that also happens to be the most dangerous on the aircraft.

to add

4 - if you had control with some badass AI why not land the plane safely for a recovery... the example in both the OP and the GP are planes lost in the country they are from not in enemy territory. The planes are not cheap... why would you purposefully wreck it in in a safe location.

Actually my example assumed being in enemy territory. Nosedive the airplane for maximum destruction, to prevent the enemy from recovering anything useful from the crash site.

What do you think they’ll get? China already hacked in and grabbed the full design docs for the F-35. They have a stealth clone of it.

EXACTLY

> Autopilot isn’t an all knowing AI that is better at dealing with emergency than a pilot.

b...bu... but all the twitter influencers told me... /s

I don't think that solves anything. With critical secret pieces of hardware you will still want confirmation that they were destroyed or recover them. So even if the plane can attempt to self-destruct as much as possible, the military is still going to want to confirm the result.

The skin and coatings of these planes is secret. How do you self destruct the skin?

Anyway, it’s moot. The people with the resources to actually make this stuff already hacked in and stole it. They compromised a whole CA just to get the F-35 design docs.

> If the plane is capable of control, the pilot will move it on a trajectory away from populated areas if possible. Protecting innocent people on the ground in the case of an emergency was always top of mind, you can see this in the crash reporting for multiple real world incidents

One of the things I remember from Chuck Yeager's autobiography (his first one - I think he eventually had several) is that he called bullshit on this. His view was that the pilot was putting all his attention and focus into saving the aircraft, and stories about how the pilot steered a failing aircraft away from something important on the ground were not true.

Of course, after the fact a pilot is going to say he tried to save people on the ground...

(his view might have been cynical, but I expect it often holds true)

There’s many voice recordings, instrument logs, and even ATC conversations of people aiming doomed aircraft away from populated areas. Military pilots may have different priorities as they can eject, but many civilian pilots have spent their final moments trying to minimize casualties.

Exceptions defiantly exist, but it’s a very common reaction.

Yeah these are by far the most harrowing ones to listen to. You can hear the resignation in their voices before they steel themselves to try anything left to avoid loss of life on the ground.

Real rough shit.

I do expect having an ejection seat might alter behavior, as well as the encouragement of an ATC. And Yeager was a test pilot who was part of a community of test pilots...

In my memory, my impression of Yeager's brief anecdote was that "the pilot heroically sacrificed himself to save the lives of innocents on the ground" was a common enough bullshit news story that he wanted to debunk it. A pilot would be focused on saving himself and his aircraft to the fullest extent possible.

Test pilots are also generally avoiding populated areas where civilian airports are often very close or even inside them. The trope of military jets crashing into a desert, ocean, or farmers field represents the most likely outcomes.

I've seen few episodes of aircrash investigation (mayday), and multiple times pilots try to crash or land where they will do less damage on ground.

My problem with the OP's comment is that a couple of different things are stated as universal truths, even though they definitely aren't.

Maybe Chuck Yeager was a selfish asshole.

There are many incidents that prove this wrong. The comment above yours is one example.

Chuck Yeager emphatically was a selfish asshole, but...

> There are many incidents that prove this wrong.

No, there aren't, and your saying so is just a failure in logic. Literally every instance of a crash would have to play out the way you insist it should, with a pilot taking into account the presence of population centers before ejecting, in order to "prove this wrong."

The tag team duo of MiG pilots who crashed in Michigan a couple of weeks ago didn't even agree on whether it was time to eject. They certainly hadn't placed the plane on some kind of safe trajectory (it landed literally right next to an apartment building). For that matter, maybe that incident is somehow an argument for selfishness: if they hadn't punched out right when they did, they would have been outside the envelope for a safe ejection, and that would be two dead people for sure.

All that said, I don't think you and I would disagree on how pilots should handle the situation. I just don't think it plays out as well as we'd like every time.

So you posit that the ejection seat adds some selfishness to the pilots? Because I’m not kidding there are a lot of incidents where we have inflight recordings of pilots without ejection seats steering away from populated areas in their last action, as well as the incident where an Israeli pilot with an ejection seat choose not to eject (and died) moving his plane off line.

Then, I’ll just tell you in my personal experience in the airplane, I’ve seen 2 pilots risk their lives moving away from a town and not die (luckily) but crash and destroy their airframe. The other pilots I flew with, I’d say 95 out of 100 would do the same.

Maybe Chuck was just a selfish asshole.

> By the time a pilot ejects they’ve exhausted EVERY other option to control the aircraft, no AI is going to regain control at that point.

See, you say that, but this one seems to have done a good job of flying off to who the fuck knows where after the pilot ejected.

lol. The first incident I’ve ever seen where this happens. Just perfect that I pop off with absolute statements and then am proven wrong by the incident I was responding to.

The F-35 is really a game changer. What a shitbox

Happens to the best of us.

And could potentially still be flying.

Will this always be true though? Not even thinking about advancements in AI, but from a human body g-force standpoint, surely those jets can already pull way more Gs than the pilots can handle.

I doubt the software is doing that today but why couldn't there be maneuvers the plane could do at 15 Gs that would help it survive?

I’m sure there is somewhere at the extreme edge of the bell curve that this might be true for, but in general, no.

For one, the jets are engineered around the limits of the pilots. These are high performance military aircraft where every ounce of weight matters, the airframe isn’t over engineered to support 15g maneuvers. Ripping the wings off wouldn’t help in an emergency.

I made the point later that by the time the AI is a more capable aviator, with the SA to do what OP was suggesting, the pilot is redundant. Take them out, engineer the plane to make those 15g turns with the extra weight you save not having life support, seats, canopy, etc.

Right -- I had the same thought coming back to this. We know planes aren't capable of this because as soon as they are you wouldn't have pilots. Maybe 'planes' is too strong since there are a bunch of people playing video game drones in the middle east from Alabama or whatever.

Depending on the situation, there might be not enough room or time to save lives in ground.

Sample dual ejection:

https://youtu.be/zN_Zl64OQEw?si=5Nk-LGBFxf4pmEDr

Actually, no. A pilot might punch from a perfectly flyable aircraft that ran out of fuel and can't be glided in due to terrain. Or a plane that has no propulsion for other reasons. They might even punch from a plane with some fuel but damage that precludes landing--if they're over civilization they might point it into nowhere and punch so they come down over civilization.

Ok, and here we go with the armchair aviators. Time in a Microsoft flight simulator doesn’t give you expertise.

I’ll just reiterate, by the time a pilot is ejecting from the aircraft, everything has been done. Read through the incident reports and find me an incident where this wasn’t done, cite it please. I can’t find one.

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/docs/type/accident/

I'm not saying they would punch if there was something to be done--the pilot could have found the problem was one that couldn't be dealt with. I'm saying that the control surfaces might be operational on a plane the pilot was punching from. Desert Storm an Iraqi pilot punched from an intact plane--he beat the Phoenix (long range shot) but ran out of fuel doing it.

I mean, are there detailed accident reports for the sort of military plane with “keep it away from the enemy” type equipment onboard? Seems like you wouldn’t want to give away information about crash behavior since that could help the enemy recover the equipment.

Not saying it is plausible or not in the first place, I have no idea, but I don’t see how a lack of published reports of this happening in the real world proves anything.

I think people think ejecting from one of these planes is like something you would do casually if things aren't going well.

My limited knowledge leads me to believe this would be an absolute last resort and has a high risk if injuring the pilot.

Also, installing these in the passenger seat of your car is expensive, difficult, and illegal just in case anyone is also thinking of this right now.

The key point is that the plane does not crash in a populated area (and secondarily that a military plane is destroyed if crashing in an area not controlled by the owner); in both of your examples, the pilot routinely does the first if not necessarily the second.

Well usually it is pilots responsibility to try to aim it in safe direction as much as possible and only then eject. Basically like captain on the ship you don't eject but you are last one to leave the ship after you made what is possible to save others from harm (unless they are of course hostile forces).

I think quite some pilots died this way because they were trying to the last second to save other lives.

If plane is that much out of control that you cannot do much, adding some code to try to do something might make things actually worse from my perspective.

Yup, plenty of stories of pilots going in with the plane because they were guiding it away from people on the ground. That's why modern ejection seats can save you even if you're at ground level (although you do have to be upright in that case.) It lets the pilot ride it as long as possible and yet escape.

Including Gagarin

I doubt it. You do not want an uncommanded activation of that system for any reason. You may actually _want_ your disabled plane to continue in a specific direction for tactical reasons. You generally do not allow auto pilot to make large deflections in control surfaces, as you always want a pilot on the stick to be able to overcome any uncommanded autopilot actions.

> I wonder if some of the "autopilot" functionality for military aircraft is to swan-dive into water/forest if everyone has already ejected.

Not quite the same you are thinking about but something similar is documented behaviour of the Global Hawk. Obviously since that is a remotely piloted aircraft “everyone has ejected safely” is not the trigger for it.

The way it works at the flight planning stage the operators define pre-determined points, and if the system detects certain faults it cannot recover from it tries to fly to these points and crash land into them. They call these point “termination point” on land and “ditching point” over water.

In this document[1] you can read more about the selection criteria of such points.

This document[2] details for air traffic control under which conditions flight termination points are used. In short (page 22) when the aircraft is uncontrolable for landing or landing at a suitable airfield cannot be achieved safely.

1: https://static.e-publishing.af.mil/production/1/af_a3/public...

2: https://www.eurocontrol.int/sites/default/files/2019-05/atm-...

Some Hollywood points in this direction. E.g. the Behind Enemy Lines ejection scene.

Seems like a pretty good idea to self-destruct the most sensitive hardware (computers/chips/storage modules/etc) if recovery of the aircraft is no longer feasible.

> self-destruct

Ooh, yeah. Let's add even more failure modes!

For drones it makes sense. Drones could boot up with all config in RAM so as to be completely devoid of mission parameters once power is cut.

Sure. There's no way that in combat you could experience a temporary power loss. Nope, that could never happen.

If your drone has power loss during flight, I think you have other problems.

Pay close attention to the word "temporary." In normal flight, it's not that unusual for flight instruments to have to be rebooted because of unexpected glitches.

I think the failures leading up to ejection preclude any kind of automated flight control afterward. Seeing how modern aircraft are all fly by wire.

It's relevant to note that the aircraft disappeared from radar in the evening while doing "low altitude exercises" and was discovered the next morning (bad weather preventing the rescue teams from finding it earlier).

The linked article mentions that the pilot and navigator were considered missing. Other news reported also the presence of human remains near the crash site.

More details on the Mirage 2000 crash: https://www.lamontagne.fr/saint-oradoux-pres-crocq-23260/act...

From the satellite images of the area, you have several urban areas with large swaths of farmland and some forest around them. One of the lakes is a dammed river. The flood plains downriver from the dam are quite lush. It’s in a field, under a tree, or in a pond it dug itself if the water table is high right now.

Just like Luke's X-Wing on Dagobah!

Surprised they didn't get Yoda to Force-levitate it out.

But why? Don’t these billion dollar machines have a GPS tracker on them?

They have transponders. But military airplanes can and sometimes do turn them off. When airplanes broadcast signals they can be detected. The military sometimes wishes to avoid this.

One of the article updates quotes from a Washington Post story:

> "The jet’s transponder, which usually helps locate the aircraft, was not working “for some reason that we haven’t yet determined,” said Jeremy Huggins, a spokesman at Joint Base Charleston. “So that’s why we put out the public request for help.”

It could activate after ejection, certain acceleration pattern (i.e. crash) or could start broadcasting only after receiving very specific signal (one-time code) on a specific frequency. There are probably plenty more options, it doesn't seem like a hard problem from engineering standpoint.

If you’ve gone down you probably don’t want the plane to be announcing it because that will tell the enemy where your pilot and hardware is.

There’s pros and cons to the enemy finding you but generally I’d imagine you want to give the pilot the chance to escape.

Civilian aircraft, even 2 seaters, have had ELTs for decades. They are being replaced with better systems, but they were designed to do just that: broadcast a signal on a specific frequency after a crash.

Doubtful you want to broadcast the position of the latest generation stealth fighter, however.

As mentioned, it can be silent until receiving specific signal. It can be single frequency it can be multiple, but if it's specific string of bytes or specific timing it's practically impossible to brute force when it's long enough, and when looking for the plane you can broadcast it with high intensity because it is only single use.

I don't think stealth aircrafts normally have trackers or anything broadcasting a signal. Kind of defeats the purpose...

I did read that stealth aircraft have transponders installed when operating in US airspace, so commercial radar can see them better. But it was not installed on this flight.

The article mentions that they have transponders that can be used but apparently in this case it was off or not working. They can also attach a radar reflectors when they want to be more visible to radar, and apparently the weapons configuration plays a role too:

> "Also, the jet's configuration and its avionics' operability are an issue. The F-35s wear radar reflectors when on transit flights, as well as on many training missions and some operational ones. The Marine jets often wear missile rails for AIM-9Xs, as well. But if the aircraft was in its full stealthy configuration and had avionics issues, tracking it may have been troublesome."

They're always installed, just selectively disabled as needed.

In civilian planes, sometimes, standard ADS-B tracker turned on automatically.

But in military planes, it must be turned on explicitly, because, depend on target of flight, it is possible, it must be OFF.

In general, this is very frequent case, when pilot just forget to turn on ADS-B.

They have transponders that transmit their identity and location on the most modern, but those depend on being active (for some reason the one in the F-35 was not) and on there being receivers nearby to pick them up. At lower altitudes in remote locations coverage is spotty.

So it's not a guarantee.

Why would an AirTag not work in this scenario? I’m guessing it would be a security risk?

First, yes it would be a security risk. Second, AirTags depend on there being a set number of iOS devices nearby to provide location data and an internet connection. You're not going to get that in a rural area.

Alright maybe not an AirTag but a Tile tag would surely work?

That would be a worse option, given they share location data.

It operates on the exact same principle. So, no.

Turn your stealth fighter into a regular one with just $30!

GPS is not reliable underwater, I'd expect it to have an ELT/EPIRB but those don't work with GPS as far as I know, and the crash could have been hard enough to render it inoperable.

Jesus, imagine the thrill, that you have a full blown airplane in your backyard. Going out during the nights and sleep next to it, sit in the cockpit, whatever.

Why don't these aircraft get 10Hz GPS updates and send them to StarLink as they are going down? It's 2023 already.

Because they're stealth military planes and broadcasting it's exact position to Musk owned network is literally the primary thing it should NOT do.

Well, for the plane in the parent comment's article, that reason is likely because the design for that plane was started in 1972.

An 80's movie dream is playing out for some rural kids, where they stumble upon a smouldering high-tech wreckage and as they explore it, men in suits pour out of black SUVs and talk to them in taciturn ways.

Seriously though, these jets sound terribly overpriced for how unreliable they seem to be.

I'm no expert on aircraft procurement or government contracts (I'm an engineer who used to work on fighter jets) - that being said, it's my understanding that the F-35 is actually a very successful project, and a very affordable one at that. I haven't got any citations or evidence to present, I could be wrong about all of this, it's a topic I've got only casual knowledge about.

A broad overview of my understanding of the situation: Most critics are making unfair comparisons (e.g. criticizing the F-35 for its inability to dogfight, or comparing its cost to 4th generation fighters, rather than its 5th generation peers)

This argument is further complicated by (as I understand it) a general lack of knowledge in the west concerning the true cost of Russian and Chinese 5th generation fighters (PAK FA and Su-57)

All of that being said, I think this is a heavily politicized topic, and I can never discount the possibility that I've been hoodwinked when it comes to such matters.

https://www.aviacionline.com/2022/01/f-35-cheaper-than-the-g...

Specific figures will differ depending on how exactly one calculates acquisition costs. These numbers differ depending on the acquiring country, the block numbers, etc. But as rule of thumb the F-35 cost is roughly 10 million USD cheaper than the much less capable Gripen. This is notable as the Gripen is being marketed as the cheaper alternative. The F-35 has much higher operational costs (mostly due to the costs of maintaining stealth coating), but here's the opinion of the Finish and Swiss governments on full life-cycle costs from the article:

> However, both the Swiss and Finnish authorities argued that the F-35 was the best cost/benefit investment, if its full life-cycle economics were taken into account.

From the article the cost per flight hour is around $8,000 for Gripen and $33,300 for the F35A.

The Finish and Swiss most likely have no clue what the final full life-cycle costs will be. No-one knows this cost. The US who sold it knows a bit more than the Finns and the Swiss, but not even they know. Time will tell.

The F35 program has overrun it's costs over and over. The purchase price of the F35A (the conventional version) is being artificially low as a lot of the costs have been pushed onto the F35B and F35C models so they can offer an attractive price for their exports.

It's all politics at the end anyway.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...

> The F35 program has overrun it's costs over and over.

Note that you need to compare with competing programs.

Notably, F35 can be actually seriously produced (unlike say its supposed competition Su-57)

What makes stealth coating particularily expensive?

Probably made out of special radar absorbing shit and requires specialized to make sure it is uniform (or not) in its application.

I used a really thin ceramic based paint coating and it was really difficult to apply in a uniform manner. I can’t imagine how hard getting stealth coating onto a fighter jet is.

All that might turn out to be irrelevant as the drones prove detrimental in a warfare.

With the advancements in AI in recent years, it will probably get harder and harder to justify carrying a biological being and all the support systems onboard. At some point, a warplane capabilities might become irrelevant and the only important aspect would the the implications of carrying a solder onboard and making the downing of the device much more politically significant than downing a drone.

How do drones get around the issue of communications jamming? I suppose they have some way (autonomous would be one way), but it seems to me that if communications are cut off, having a pilot with human judgement to respond to changing conditions will almost always have some advantage. Although, you could get a pretty advanced autonomous system that responded to changes from a pre-programmed attack plan.

> How do drones get around the issue of communications jamming?

AESA derivatives as bidirectional communication devices seem like they will render jamming a lot less effective. Simply by virtue of being able to pump radar levels of power into communication.

And current trends seem to be converging on flocks of drones, of which one or two can be specialized with uplink. Or simply babysat by stealthy HALE platforms like the RQ-180.

You'll have to blanket an area with ungodly amounts of energy to fully jam point-to-point, highly directional links, especially for close range hops.

Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez is a great book (great in audio book form!) about autonomous drones and comms blackouts.

Can you give us a TLDR what it says about comms blackouts and jamming?

The book talks about how they serve multiple purposes. They can be used to hinder enemy operations, mask one's own activities, or isolate units to force them into pre-defined roles. Increasing reliance on digital and wireless communications in warfare can thus be viewed as a double-edged sword, offering advantages but also creating new vulnerabilities.

> How do drones get around the issue of communications jamming?

For one, by making it harder to jam in the first place. Starlink with its extremely directional antennas is a good example - an opponent would need an equally massive fleet of satellites or high-altitude ECM planes to jam it, and the latter ones can easily be targeted by anti-radar rockets.

This is why the US government has been pushing insane amounts of money into SpaceX... Starlink is the future of interconnected wars.

SpaceX is not fully under operational control of the US government, if some of the reports from Twitter about geofencing are to be believed.

I have yet to see a credible report of them denying a US government request.

Big big big big difference between "they usually do what we ask" and "we have operational authority over this system, and can court martial anyone that impedes its operation"

Isn't everyone with the root password a US Citizen? Last time I checked SpaceX's job opening, a US clearance was required.

Which is partly why the DoD commissioned a second constellation specifically for military use: https://www.spacex.com/starshield/

Wow. Is there any concrete info about the build-out? Or do you think they will just provision X% of existing sats / bandwidth to military use? I recall learning years ago that modern "long lines" (telco) were all pure data lines, where a certain portion was reserved for guaranteed bandwidth required for (voice) telephone calls.

Assuming that the US ever enters any war directly, guess what their first action will be: take Musk out of the picture, deal with the legalities later on.

The legality isn't in question; Defense Production Act very much applies.

> Starlink is the future of interconnected wars.

Maybe, but what do you figure the US military will use?

Starshield

A near peer adversary will attempt to degrade Starlink (and other military satellite constellations) as their first step in any major conflict. China is making huge investments into EW, cyber, and ASAT. The US military has to plan to fight with little or no satellite support.

The plane-sized drones are capable of some autonomous operation. It may or may not be possible to spoof that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...

The smaller drones are not usually autonomous. See the Starlink alleged incident.

Inertial guidance is popular but very expensive to do accurately with laser gyros. I'm surprised there haven't been more "terrain following" systems.

There's probably always going to be a continuum between manned and unmanned platforms, and a discussion about SEAD.

> See the Starlink alleged incident.

Ukraine says it happened and Musk does too - is ‘alleged’ needed?

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But one says ‘I did it’ and the other says ‘he did it’.

What other agenda could be going on here? They are both hiding some Russian capabilities from us?

Depends on your definition of expensive. In comparison with other military hardware, inertial navigation systems aren't that expensive. They're also used in large numbers in civil aviation.

Can’t jam every frequency.

Hold my beer, and volunteer to pay the power bill.

You say that as if it isn't incredibly easy to do to the point we have entire enforcement orgs built around trying to keep people from unintentiinally doing just that.

Ok, let me clarify - can’t jam every potential drone frequency without taking out your own coms and giving the operator cancer.

> How do drones get around the issue of communications jamming

The same way the F-35 does I guess. Besides, it's pretty common for AI systems to overtake human capabilities these days, so when jammed they can just carry on.

Sure, they do mistakes but humans do these too and the advantage of not carrying 80kg of fragile human and all the life support systems onboard is quite significant. It makes the thing much cheaper, it removes the need to come back thus doubles the range, it makes the thing smaller thus harder to detect and destroy, it doesn't have to limit its manoeuvres to human levels this makes the thing much more agile.

> The same way the F-35 does I guess.

No, because that's in part "let the human pilot make decisions".

> Besides, it's pretty common for AI systems to overtake human capabilities these days...

Not in the realm of "should I shoot that thing?" sort of decisions.

> Tarnak Farm incident

Canada's first losses in a combat zone since Korean War.

> "Let's just make sure that it's, that it's not friendlies, is all"

> Twenty-two seconds later, he reported a direct hit. Ten seconds later, the controller ordered the pilots to disengage, saying the forces on the ground were "friendlies Kandahar".

The argument is not "humans never make a mistake".

There's little evidence autonomous combat fighter AIs are better than humans at tough calls of this nature. They may be someday, but given the state of the art in self-driving, that day probably hasn't arrived.

Weren’t they in Croatia under UNPROFOR in the Medak pocket?

let the human pilot make decisions == let the machine make decisions

It's not like pilots are making political decisions. They pilot and shoot predefined targets, avoid hostile actions. AI is capable of doing this.

> Not in the realm of "should I shoot that thing?" sort of decisions.

On the contrary, AI is very capable of making that decision. There are no philosophical dilemmas or children in the skies and even if there were we are at the point where we can tell the device not shoot children. There will be mistakes but human pilots makes mistakes too.

Military pilots absolutely make all sorts of decisions, like "that looks like a civilian target, maybe I have incorrect info" or "a little kid just ran into the target area" or "the controller says I just shot at friendlies".

I would not currently trust an AI to handle those very well.

What would an AI have done in this situation? What should it have done? "Russian pilot deliberately fired missiles at a Royal Air Force surveillance plane in international airspace over the Black Sea last year": https://apnews.com/article/uk-russia-fighter-jet-missile-bla...

AI can absolutely say "that looks like a civilian target, maybe I have incorrect info" or "a little kid just ran into the target area" or "the controller says I just shot at friendlies".

What makes you think that AI can't incorporate those into decision making? Pilots do these through instruments anyway.

> What makes you think that AI can't incorporate those into decision making?

The fact that state-of-the-art AI already fails at much simpler decisions.

In the case of the Black Sea incident, the potential consequences include global thermonuclear war.

The same AI that gets confused when you stick a traffic cone on the hood? Yeah, I don't want that algorithm deciding who to bomb.

Self-driving cars are a much harder problem than anything airborne.

Maybe we can use autonomous drones to shoot the traffic cones off the self driving cars then.

Wrong. Flying from point to point is easy. Following complex ROEs, using combined arms tactics, dealing with system failures, identifying valid targets, and employing weapons are all much harder problems than self-driving cars.

It's always hilarious to see the confidently incorrect comments by a bunch of ignorant software developers. The Dunning–Kruger effect is on full display here.

LOL, OK. You've listed a lot of problems that have been largely solved already, and are trying to convince us that they are harder than a problem that has eluded the brightest people in the tech industry, armed with computational tools that the aerospace community never dreamed of and backed by more-or-less infinite capital.

Nothing is harder than self-driving cars. Nothing. We'll colonize Mars before we have a solid solution to that problem. Why? Self-driving cars have to coexist with human drivers and human infrastructure.

Nobody in aviation has that problem. If they did, they'd run screaming for the hills.

You've been watching too many movies and are just making things up. Those problems haven't been solved in tactical aviation.

No, it's just that every time I drive somewhere, I try to maintain a low-priority thread in my head to work on the problem, "How would I write code to do what I just did?" Frequently the answer is, "I have no idea, and wow, I'm glad it's not my job."

That simply doesn't happen when I fly my quads. "How would I write code to dodge an attacking drone? How would I modify my drone to drop a grenade or a Molotov cocktail, or otherwise cause a large amount of grief to people below? How would I build a SLAM model that allows the drone to do this without intervention from the ground?" None of these engineering problems bug me the way driving a car would. They are all addressable with multiple degrees of freedom, both literally and figuratively.

Meanwhile, on the road:

"Hmm, the light at this intersection is out. There's a cop with an angry look on his face, flapping his arms at me like a dying chicken. What does he want me to do, exactly?"

"Huh, here I am in Seattle, and it looks like they have chosen to mark the stripes on the road with some sort of paint whose complex impedance at optical frequencies is identical to that of rainwater. I'm sure glad I'm driving, and not my lane-keep assistant, which I had to turn off because it tried to steer me into the median the last time it snowed."

"Whoa, where'd that ambulance come from. The law says I have to move right, but the only way I can get out of his way is to move left, and in any case, that's what the car ahead of me is doing. What to do, what to do."

In most of the airborne scenarios you mention, doing nothing is a fail-safe answer when confronted with a situation the hardware or software can't handle. If we approach driving that way, a few miscreants can brick an entire city, intentionally or otherwise.

I'm not surprised Karpathy tapped out at Tesla, let's put it that way. My guess is, I've thought about this a lot more than you have, and a lot less than he has.

Or the USS Liberty for that matter.

Nonsense. AI can work well enough for striking certain known targets. But it is simply not capable of following complex rules of engagement or adapting to highly dynamic situations in real time. We are at least decades away from that capability in a general sense. What you see in movies is not reality.

Sixth-generation tactical aircraft (the successors to the F-35) are likely to be optionally manned. They will be able to operate with remote pilots and/or autonomous control for high risk strike missions but most of the time will still have human crews on board.

If you haven't notice, lately AI is pretty good at woking with information that never seen before.

It's also pretty good at hallucinating convincingly.

Apparently you haven't been paying attention and don't understand the basics of AI technology. It is terrible at handling novel situations, especially in something as complex as tactical aviation.

I'm more worried about domestic use. It's hard to get soldiers to carpet bomb wrong thinkers.

> It's hard to get soldiers to carpet bomb wrong thinkers.

I'm not sure how accurate that is historically.

I didn't say it's impossible, but it isn't sustainable. With autonomous drones, it's easy. Ask your generals if autonomous drones are right for you.

> It's not like pilots are making political decisions.

In the age of the Strategic Corporal, they absolutely are.

The F-35 was designed with the capability to be later converted to remote operation, turning it into a drone (they call it a remotely piloted aircraft).

Of course whether the F-35 platform makes sense for that role is a different question. There are probably great niches for a drone F-35 (e.g. targeting anti-air installations), but Ukraine shows that having lots of $1000-$100,000 drones might be more valuable on the battlefield than one $75,000,000 drone.

The cheap drones work well in Ukraine where the adversaries are locked into attrition fights with largely static positions at short ranges. But those drones lack the range, speed, and sensors necessary to be effective in a potential conflict with China around the first island chain. The US military is currently pivoting to focus on that scenario.

If you're trying to defend the beaches of Taiwan or the Philippines, cheap drones sound like a great asset. If you're trying to project power into Chinese mainland less so.

A big reason why the US will continue to prefer drones measured in tons instead of grams is that cheap drones are most useful when you have boots on the ground, which the US likes to avoid. But with the budgets available it's not like they have to choose between F-35 sized drones and Dji Mini sized drones, they can just get both.

The Loyal Wingman concept seems to lend itself to small squadrons of f35 and f15ex command planes managing much larger groups of drones that are actively running radars and using AESA arrays for command and control.

Those drones seem to look more like cheaper loitering weapons platforms than F35s but who knows what happens when the other side isn't so stupid.

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I believe the F-35 software is designed to allow it to be sort of a forward base for controlling a large number of drones.

The big "advancements in AI" in recent years have all been around LLMs, and there's really no way I want one of those driving a jet.

And even aside from that, self-driving cars still regularly are observed to make stupid mistakes. When warplanes start making stupid mistakes, the consequences are going to be a lot more dire.

They've been in transformer models... which we've seen bring SOTA image segmentation that would have taken millions of dollars and armies of researchers to match become widely available https://segment-anything.com/

'Advancements in AI' have reached a point where they can affect everything from your smartphone to a box of cereal.

Drones operating in the fighter plane envelope are going to be basically the same plane.

Which the US is wholly aware of given the "Loyal Wingman" program, which the F-35 is designed to work with: commanding unmanned fighters/aircraft as support or missile trucks if what have you

This is one of the things I never understood. "Cheap drones" is a code word for Chinese made quadrocopter toys. Military drones will be fixed wing and have combustion engines. Suddenly things start getting expensive and you can no longer have a million plastic toys for the price of one F35, you'll get 3 reapers or maybe a dozen "Wingmen".

The closest analog would be converting cessnas. Half a million dollars plus drone kit = 1 million dollar bomber => 75 bombers or one F-35.

At that price point one might start thinking about sending the bombers first (to deplete air defenses), then the F-35s...

> > All that might turn out to be irrelevant as the drones prove detrimental in a warfare.

I highly doubt it. At least I hope so.

Nobody dreams of becoming a drone pilot. At the end of the day it's a cubicle job.

I mean maybe.

Maybe they view it a a job with a lot of the upside but none of the safety downsides of rocketing around the earth at 1000 miles an hour half a world away from home...

Any job you can do with an Xbox controller is someone’s dream job

If F-35 is such a failure, how come many countries have chosen to buy it? Consulting this next page, I count 8 countries besides the US that have taken delivery of F-35s, plus many that have ordered it, but not yet taken delivery:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...

The UK for example currently has a fleet of 32, and Australia has 50.

I'm not taking a side on this particular issue, but there are many reasons a person or a country might buy something that wasn't very good, even if they knew it wasn't. Maintaining a relationship with the vendor (aka a foreign nation with whom you maintain diplomatic/economic relations) is a big one.

It's both until its not. If only 1 or 2 countries signed up, it'd be an expensive failure. If everyone signs up, cost go down and economies of scale make it a wild success.

Yeah, F35 turned into something I would never have anticipated: it's actually not that expensive anymore.

Because they are buying USA weapons, not the weapons that fits what their country needs. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/fighter-jet-purchase--...

> If F-35 is such a failure, how come many countries have chosen to buy it?

What's the alternative? How many other models can be purchased at all?

Canada went through a bunch of drama to find a replacement for the legacy F/A-18s, and the main options were: Eurofighter Typhoon, Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, F-35, and the Saab Gripen.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...

Gripen wasn't in the same league, so we basically have the Typhoon and SuperHornet as other options, and both were at least a decade older with regards to their 'base' design (though there have been further upgrades).

So if you're going to be stuck with a plane for 20+ years, you might as well pick the newest model year.

Personally I'd be happy with the Super Hornets (and thrown in some Growlers) for Canada given "6G" fighters are starting to be designed—basically skipping the "5G" F-35—but Boeing were a bunch of dumbasses when the decision was being made:

* https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/18/justin-trudeau-says-canada-w...

> Personally I'd be happy with...

There's a lot of armchair quarterbacking in these comments, this one taking the cake.

HN weighing in on military stuff is always comedy to those of us who've been in the military. It's nobody's fault – this stuff can be baroque in its complexity – but it does make for some entertaining reading!

HN weighing in on anything outside of tech is comedy

Also tech, a good portion of the time.

Management is the most comedic topic of all, but it borders on tragedy.

This thread is the HN equivalent of Dale Gribble laughing at those sheeple.

Finance / economics is the same here. Medicine can be hit or miss. Sometimes medical researchers show up and do surprise.

> There's a lot of armchair quarterbacking in these comments, this one taking the cake.

If one's government is going to spend billions and billions of your money, having some level of public satisfaction for its use isn't a bad thing to have. Or at least having a decision making program that people have confidence in.

The F-35 is a decent enough result, especially in comparison to what's going on with Canada's naval procurement program.

> If F-35 is such a failure, how come many countries have chosen to buy it?

The F-35's "killer feature" is non other than the US nuclear umbrella.

There's a bit of a problem because even if it's a (partial) failure as far as project management goes, competition is so low that if you're a US-aligned state and want a 5th generation fighter, the F-35 is still the only reasonable option.

In general, even if something is awful as product and its development was a disaster, if it's monopoly on something important it is still going to sell.

Because it cost $2 trillion and it's so so. Mostly becausr it cost $2 trillion. $2 trillion is a fair chunk of cash.

Allies buying American hardware isnt necessarily a sign of quality, also. America puts pressure on them to buy its hardware.

Turkey seems awfully broken up about not being allowed to buy the F-35.

Turkey had a choice between S400s from Russia and F-35s and they chose the S400. Theyve since doubled down on that choice.

Realistically it was probably the better choice.

The US MIC was probably more cut up about it than Turkey which is probably why this stunt was pulled: https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/06/29/us-could-buy...

Even if it was come to a war situation where they had to trade off 10 s-400’s for a single f-35, they’d still be significantly ahead financially from what I remember.

Russian air defence has had a rather poor showing lately, so perhaps not.

I think that's a skill issue. Ukrainians are operating similar equipment with better success. Much like how India and China seem to have no problems operating the sister ships of the kuznetsov

Air defence was a weak point for Ukraine until Western countries provided some. As for the S-400, it's a post-Soviet design, and if the T-14 is vaporware and the Su-57 overhyped at best, perhaps one should not take claims on the S-400's capabilities at face value, especially given that there is visually confirmed evidence for two of them having been destroyed.

Not really. Ukraine had perhaps the most comprehensive ground based air defense network in Europe apart from Russia by virtue of the sheer quantity of S300 batteries.

The problem they faced last winter was that they were finally starting to run low on missiles and that using S300 on $20,000 drones was incredibly wasteful.

The only capability they were really missing as opposed to just running short on was the anti ballistic missile capabilities.

A window or two in Moscow needed repairs I suppose.

Like the storm shadows I'm still waiting for my invitation to the much vaunted Crimea beach party, but it seems air defenses may have canceled the scheduled bridge explosion.

I've read some analyses of the F35 vs A10 which don't favour the F35 for CAS operations much. The main thing I saw was that F35 requires more maintenance and longer runways than the A10 and is more fragile. It depends on what kind of a war that is being fought, but in a major great power war, you couldn't always guarantee having nice high quality air bases, runways, and support teams near the front. Sometimes it is preferable to have a low tech; that fancy new wifi connected oven can be great, until your wifi goes out for a few days and you find out that it won't turn on, and you have to get a special maintenance guy.

The F-35 has a much faster response time than the A-10--and, more importantly, survivability. In a contested environment, "suboptimal" CAS from an F-35 dropping precision munitions is much better than non at all (A-10 would get shot out of the sky by any near-peer before it could approach the theater).

The A-10 also has high maintenance costs and a relatively low loiter time. For fighting terrorists in flipflops, something like a super-tucano does its job for a tenth of the operating cost.

Fundamentally, the A-10 was not built for CAS. It was built as a last-ditch, suicide strafer of Soviet convoys during a land war in Europe. Very few were projected to survive past the first week.

This is an… unorthodox take from the ground commander/fires perspective or conversely the orthodox take from the USAF perspective.

Hard lessons from the GWOT have firmly put the A10 as the most capable CAS platform, and it’s taught as such in all joint fires classes to forward observers and also via unit history/anecdotes fires units (“A10 saved my butt in ‘12”). A10 pilots and units also have a much better rep for CAS than F16 etc units (w/e the USAF name is?).

As in, from the ground units perspective, the unit actually needing and coordinating the CAS, everything you’ve argued is against the grain.

However, the USAF has been running the exact argument you’re using for years.

What matters more - IRL combat experience and successes with the A10 platform, or the 10 year PR campaign to get rid of it for no good reason from the combat perspective.

The most capable CAS platform, and one of the most widely used, was the B-1 bomber. Flying in circles for hours and dropping scores of guided bombs.

The best CAS in GWOT would have been the Super Tucano if the program hadn't taken so long. It would have done the same job as A-10 but much cheaper.

The CAS mission is obsolete outside of counterinsurgency. MANPADs mean that going low and slow is a death trap. Getting low and slow was needed in the past to identify targets and make dumb weapons accurate. Now fighters fly at medium altitude for safety and drop guided weapons. Ukraine shows that medium altitude is dangerous with near-peer conflict without air supremacy.

The F-35 is required to gain air supremacy. If you have them, might as well use them for ground support. I think drones will change things with CAS. On one end, can have small attack helicopter drones for direct support. On the other, can have large drone that loiters for long time dropping bombs. The F-35 will be used for things it is good at.

In neer peer conflict air supremacy is probably pipe dream because of combination of ground based anti aircraft systems and inability to take out airports for more than 1-2 hours without using tactical nukes. Tor/S300/S400 and western/Chinese alternatives are highly effective, mobile and hard to detect - you can never take out all of them. AWACS are big, expensive and slow targets so they will have limited utility in a conflict - so limited visibility on what's in the air.

Go low - you will get MANPAD. Go medium - Pantsir will get you. High - S300. Not everytime but often enough that all sorties will have to be very quick with no loitering and unpredictable flight paths (so no CAS).

Drone loitering seems to work really well. We call army units on boats marines. What do we call army units that provide their own air cover? Aerials?

The combat footage out of Ukraine is very enlightening. Communication, drone surveillance, full stomachs and no booze is apparently how you win a land war in Asia.

Does this perspective assume that Ukraine is “winning” the war at the moment?

They are certainly reversing momentum and reclaiming taken territory. By this time next year I would bet they are “winning”

Yeah good luck getting any long lasting air superiority if you have S400s less than 100-200 miles around. And there are newer models in the pipeline with better reach, although they may be as useful in this decade as Armata.

Is the GWOT relevant though? It seems like one of the biggest issues the us military is facing a shift back towards "conventional" military matters, aka potential future faceoff's with China or Russia. These opponents field a significantly different set of weapons than we saw in GWOT.

The mil has accounted for “Near-peer” training scenarios at the training centers (literal war prep, “enemy force” with their own tanks etc) since mid 2010’s. A10 still features in them.

> Hard lessons from the GWOT which must be unlearned for an neer-peer engagement.

and again, a turboprop light attack aircraft armed with smart bombs can play a similar role as an A10 for CAS but significantly cheaper and with a longer loiter-time to boot.

> a turboprop light attack aircraft armed with smart bombs can play a similar role as an A10 for CAS but significantly cheaper and with a longer loiter-time to boot.

Well, if you ignore how much quicker it will be shot down (in any environment where at least one of the two would be usable at all against combat forces), sure.

OTOH, the set of environments in which even the A-10 is usable is only going to shrink over time.

The point is if you're in an environment the A10 survives in, so would the prop aircraft. If you aren't, neither works anyway. The A10 exists in a middle ground where it is much more expensive but not really any less vulnerable regardless.

As long as the Air Farce runs CAS, instead of the army, they will continue to attempt to kill any mission that doesn't involve winning wars through the holy doctrine of Air Power (ie incinerating as many civilians as possible).

...Is this supposed to be a defence of the A-10?

Not really, but I think the A-10 drama is an example of what can happen when an organization that doesn't share your own goals is able to take over a task critical to you. Perhaps like outsourcing your engineering offshore. It may be more efficient to find cheap labor overseas, and push a button from 30,000 ft while going mach 2, but efficiency only makes a few people happy.

My point is that if you hold incinerating civilians (and friendly troops) to be a bad thing, then the A-10 is a strange platform to idealize.

This is the gist of the issue

You have to remember the GWOT was fought against ill equipped combatants, unarmored vehicles, and cinderblock structures. The US is generally not worried about those types of threats in planning for future conflicts. There is a reason why Ukraine is getting F16s and not A10s: The Russians brought more than just AKs and Toyota Hiluxes across the border. The A10 is a good aircraft but times have changed and we have much better platforms now.

And the A-10 was built before the MANPAD threat become serious. Sneak in at treetop level against gunners in turrets and you very well might be able to get in and get out in reasonable safety. Now, you'll be getting out with a missile (or maybe even more--the response will not be coordinated, those who have a launcher and a shot will take it) on your tail--it can't be evaded, you have to decoy it or blind it.

> "The A-10 also has high maintenance costs..."

Isn't the A-10 the cheapest-to-operate combat jet the U.S. uses?

I mean, maybe you could argue that you get more capability per dollar for some other platform, but A-10s aren't expensive. (Or at least, historically they aren't. Maybe they've been getting more expensive because the airframes are so old.)

The replacement for the A10 is the AC-130.

F35 is the multirole fighter. You build it because you don't know if you are doing a stealth mission, a dogfight, CAS or wild weasel.

F35 can do it all, but as a jack of all trades master of none.

-------

Consider the A10 in the current Ukrainian war: CAS is impossible because both sides have too much antiair. You need wild weasel (aka: anti-air defense) fighters right now.

Eventually, one sides air defense will be destroyed to the point where CAS is needed. A multirole fighter can perform both jobs.

While a specialized wild weasel (ex: stealth bombers) would be kinda useless after air defenses are down. While A10 is useless before air defenses are down.

I think MANPADs somewhat negate traditional Wild Weasel tactics.

Wild Weasel worked because you could use a jet as bait to find the position of a SAM site. That worked fine when a SAM site was multiple trailers, and took a day to move.

With MANPADs, you don't have a fixed base, and if you discover where one is (because it shot at you), that information isn't useful, because by the time you know where it is, it isn't a SAM site anymore.

I suspect that when fighting wars against people that aren't insurgents, we end up being much better off with remote piloting, and relatively cheap guided munitions for air support. I.E. its a strategic win to get your $3k drones shot down by $50k MANPADs.

MANPADs can't even shoot at a jet because they're flying too high. There's only so much rocket propellant you can put onto a shoulder-mounted device that humans have to carry around.

If you're only guarded by MANPADs, then a traditional bomber will blast your position repeatedly. The MANPADs are really there to deal with low-flying aircraft (A10 and Helicopters).

EDIT: I guess the AC-130 cruises at high speeds, but since its gun-based it has to drop relatively low... 7000 ft or less, which might open it up to MANPADs.

But the lower your aircraft, the more at risk vs MANPADs. Helicopters and A10 are probably the worst off since they're far lower to the ground than even an AC-130.

Furthermore, the AC-130 has the AN/AAR-44 Missile Approach Warning Systems, and a _TON_ of flares to misdirect missiles like a MANPAD. The A10 doesn't have nearly as many flares and is therefore far more vulnerable.

-------------

Anyway, CAS are vulnerable to MANPADs (be it A10 or AC-130) because of their mission type.

But jet fighters and fighter-bombers, like the F35 or F16 (or at least, fighters that can play the fighter-bomber role) fly too high and too fast to ever be hit by a MANPAD. They're only worried about the bigger missiles who have enough propulsion to actually reach 10,000+ feet.

> Because its large profile and low operating altitudes around 7,000 feet (2,100 m) make it an easy target, its close air support missions are usually flown at night.[7]

AC-130 is only effective against a flipflop army... which doesn't have a friend which would supply tons of MANPADs to the gallant people of your country.

And the A10 is even lower-altitude than that.

Welcome to the CAS role. You fly low and shoot cheap bullets (lots and lots of cheap bullets), but you're also vulnerable to ground fire.

At least the AC-130 has a ton of flares to misdirect enemy missiles automatically. A10 basically has no form of defense. In any case, a CAS aircraft is in a position of higher risk than most other aircraft since it needs to travel low enough (and long-enough) on the front-lines.

That doesn't mean that CAS is useless. It just means you need a _LOT_ of support before CAS is helpful. That's why an aircraft like F35 (which can perform SEAD / Wild Weasel, as well as CAS later in the war when the air-defenses go down) is better.

Not to mention, F35 has stealth capabilities, so I'm not even sure if MANPADs can lock onto an F35 reliably. Stealth is more than just invisibility, its also one of the best layers of armor since missiles need a RADAR signature to hit airplanes these days.

-----------

But you're right. In the current Ukrainian war, there's almost no need for AC-130 or A10. Neither side has air superiority and both sides have incredible amounts of anti-air defenses. If anything, this is the war that shows why the F35 would be such an incredible aircraft.

> And the A10 is even lower-altitude than that.

So the window where you are vulnerable to MANPAD operator is less than of that AC-130.

> Welcome to the CAS role. You ....

Ah, yes, sorry, sir, looks like I need to take my Hazelnut Bianco Venti Latte and get out of your lawn, sir?

> AC-130 has a ton of flares to misdirect enemy missiles automatically

There is no ejection seats on AC-130. It would be never be operated where MANPADs are the norm.

> A10 basically has no form of defense

Oh ffs, A-10 is armoured with 15-40mm titanium plates, while AC-130 armoured with hopes and prayers.

> so I'm not even sure if MANPADs can lock onto an F35 reliably

If F-35 is at the MANPAD altitude then somebody (pilot) fucked greatly. F-35 in CAS role would never drop to MANPAD altitude and Shilka doesn't care about the plane stealthiness.

> If F-35 is at the MANPAD altitude then somebody (pilot) fucked greatly. F-35 in CAS role would never drop to MANPAD altitude and Shilka doesn't care about the plane stealthiness.

*Multi-role* fighter. F35 has gun-pods and absolutely is expected to play some CAS role.

Its not a dedicated CAS aircraft, no. Its not as good as other aircraft at the job (AC-130 has more loiter time, bigger guns, etc. etc.), but in a war you use what you can get your hands on.

--------

And suddenly talking about different weapons now that MANPADs are (probably) useless vs a Stealth Aircraft is the case-in-point of a multi-role fighter with multiple advanced capabilities.

No weapon is immune to all weapons or defenses. But F35 is immune to most missiles due to the nature of stealth. Stealth is the modern armor: if you can't be seen or can't be tracked, you can't be hit. I wouldn't say that F35 is ideal for gatling-gun strafe runs of enemies, but the fact remains that it _CAN_ do the job if forced (thanks to those configurable gunpods).

IMO, the war on the ground being fought right now? A system that can kill enemy Helicopters, perform SEAD, stealth capabilities and even do CAS (albeit a crappy job at it but "can do the job") is so obviously useful to the Ukrainian war that its hard to take any counter-argument seriously.

> If F-35 is at the MANPAD altitude then somebody (pilot) fucked greatly. F-35 in CAS role would never drop to MANPAD altitude and Shilka doesn't care about the plane stealthiness.

What's the Shilka's RADAR-guided gun supposed to do against an airplane it can't even see? Are the operators expected to aim and shoot purely on optics?

> Stealth is the modern armor: if you can't be seen or can't be tracked, you can't be hit.

Next gen weapons are going to make F-35 stealth irrelevant in a handful of years.

F-35 is visible on low-frequency radar for hundreds of miles along with general heading and speed.

Most missiles are using 30+ year old technology. Since then, the cellphone economies of scale in both R&D and manufacturing have made CMOS cameras both incredibly good and incredibly cheap. Meanwhile, modern AI technology seems like a match made in heaven for interceptor missiles because you get all of the accuracy, but there's not much to cause the edge case interference we get with something like a self-driving car.

A missile with a $80 cell-phone chip would have enough processing power to run cameras to visually spot the fast-flying plane in multiple light spectrum ranges, lock in, and dynamically adjust to any changes the plane might take all while being mostly immune to modern chaff interference.

In our theoretical interception, low-frequency radars triangulate a stealth plane within a 50-100km cube (30-65 miles). Verify that you don't already have air assets that can take on the threat. If not, SAM sites shoot fire and forget missiles into that general area without even needing to turn on radar. The missiles fly into the given area and attack any fast-moving plane(s) they see. It is even possible to send back telemetry and add that to the training models making the missiles even better the next time.

> Next gen weapons are going to make F-35 stealth irrelevant in a handful of years.

The Ukrainian war is being fought with T-55 tanks, originally produced in 1948. I think you're overestimating the speed of progress in practice. New weapons take time to mass, decades to gain relevance.

F35 making earlier weapons obsolete is a big enough deal on its own. All weapons discussed in this thread so far are basically irrelevant. Of course new weapons will come eventually, but its generally better to negate the current stockpile of weapons around the world (and force our enemies to research/build new weapons) rather than sending 40 year old A10s out there and pretending that we don't have any better tech ourselves.

Tanks simply peaked in the couple decades after WW2. We increased armor and cannon size a bit, but there's just not much to improve on an armored box. Even the most advanced tanks can be disabled by a mine (not much changed since WW2) then taken out by artillery (as seen with the Challenger 2 recently destroyed).

WW2 saw the creation of HEAT and the 1970s saw the perfection of HEAT with stuff like the TOW ensuring that any near-peer conflict turned any tank into a necessary, but risky infantry support platform. Modern drones and fire/forget ATGMs have made this even more true.

> New weapons take time to mass, decades to gain relevance.

This is primarily a function of how governments and government contractors work. When you eliminate barriers, you can get something like the famous P-51 which went from design to working prototype in a mere 102 days.

We are seeing something similar with the Lancet drone where a complete redesign has been completed and shipped in a few months and has radically shifted the game in Ukraine. We saw something similar with the FPV drones employed by the Ukrainians.

> rather than sending 40 year old A10s out there and pretending that we don't have any better tech ourselves.

A-10 would be more survivable in the current Ukraine war than the F-35 (which probably couldn't get off the ground most of the time due to the runway conditions).

In the SU-25, targeting the engine means blowing up right next to the cockpit, wings, and munitions resulting in an extremely high loss rate when hit.

In the A-10, the engine is away from the wing and pilot with the wing standing between the engine and munitions. The upward position of the engine also makes it harder to target in the first place. This is why there are quite a few images of them returning with damage to one engine and little else.

T55 can't even shoot while moving my man.

The fact remains: the big war you're talking about is being fought with incredibly obsolete weapons.

T-54/55 can shoot while moving, but the accuracy is bad. The real question is whether that matter.

If the T-54/55 is going against tanks, it has already losing because those should have been taken out with ATGMs and HEAT drones. If it's going up against trenches, inaccurate fire while moving doesn't matter because the tank will be getting super-close anyway. If it's firing at APCs, then stopping really doesn't put it in any danger and they're in for a very bad day.

Until we can work out the point defense issue vs drones, cheaper "disposable" tanks aren't a terrible idea. That new tank design could probably outperform the T-54/55, but the tank you already have that is good enough to support infantry assaults is better than having to make another and leave it to rot.

One MACE and all drones in 3-mile range are effectively negated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr7ym1zkda8

Cheap bullets firing airburst rounds effectively negate drones in a close range. The issue with MACE is that it remains vulnerable to helicopters and other more advanced weapons. Etc. etc.

-----------------

But that's... fine. Its war. Each weapon has a cheap-and-effective counter. If you know what the opponent is bringing to the frontlines, you can kill them easily.

Your argument style is fundamentally flawed. You're arguing about counter-weapons as if they're the main threat. You should instead be discussing the capability the tank brings to the frontlines.

* Immunity to all small arms fire.

* Immunity to anti-personel mines (and I've seen plenty of Leopards clearing up anti-personel mines by just rolling over them, providing highways for infantry to travel through later).

* High-power gun that kills a vehicle every 6 seconds

* Advanced therman and night-vision sensors enabling accurate 3mile or 5km shots.

* Resistance to artillery: infantry die to shells that are within 100m of them. Tanks require a more-direct hit, closer to ~5m instead. This forces inaccurate enemy artillery to expend far more shells to kill a tank rather than a group of infantry.

--------

Tanks have always been vulnerable to airplanes, helicopters, and now drones. That's never changed in their 100+ years of use and history. Taking to the skies is the tank's greatest weakness. But against any ground thread (including against lesser tanks), the tank reigns as the supreme anti-ground unit in the world.

-------

Just because tanks negate AK-47 or other small arms fire doesn't mean that the AK-47 is useless. It just means that you've complicated the frontlines and have forced the enemy to bring multiple weapons to the frontlines to combat effectively. The more weapons you force the enemy to carry, the better. IE: Combined Arms combat.

You bring soldiers (who lose to snipers / AK-47s). You bring light-armor, that defeats those. You bring medium vehicles (like IFVs) to defeat the lighter-vehicles. You bring tanks to defeat the medium vehicles. You bring air-assets (helicopters) to defeat tanks. You bring jets to defeat the helicopters. You bring artillery to defeat different bits. Etc. etc. etc.

> F35 has gun-pods and absolutely is expected to play some CAS role

> in a war you use what you can get your hands on

In a war you don't use a multi-billion toy for it's marketing qualities. Because this is the way lose your multi-billion toy.

> MANPADs are (probably) useless

Beam riders (eg Starstreak). And as soon as you are -lt 2km then you are in IR/UV/Image recognition danger zone too, because: low, fast, precise - choose two.

> albeit a crappy job at

*sigh*

No. It can't do CAS with it's guns. It can do precision drops for CAS (which were done by F-16 against fortified and non-moving targets quite effectively) but it never would be deployed in A-10 style, because that would be the one step before the embarrassment of losing a modern stealth fighter to some MANPAD.

> an airplane it can't even see

At 5-7km? Are you sure it can't be seen at all at that distance? It's a radar absorbing and a radar dispersing materials, not an invisibility cloak from Harry Potter. And yes, you can point it and spray-n-pray. With AAA rate of fire you can do this.

> Are the operators expected to aim and shoot purely on optics?

"but in a war you use what you can get your hands on"

> In a war you don't use a multi-billion toy for it's marketing qualities. Because this is the way lose your multi-billion toy.

The most recent batch of F35A unit cost was $110 Million.

I think you've got some severe misunderstandings about the nature of the F35 project. Its a multi-billion $$ *research* project, but each airplane is much cheaper than that.

> The F-35’s price per unit, including ancillary costs like depot maintenance, ground support equipment, and spare parts is $110.3 million per F-35A, $135.8 million per F-35B, and $117.3 million per F-35C.

This airplane is designed to be mass produced well. The mass production / upfront engineering costs are massive, but the airplane itself is... ya know... an airplane.

> No. It can't do CAS with it's guns.

That's why the F35 has gun-*pods*. It can equip the pods and turn into a CAS fighter.

The F35's ability to equip gunpods and perform a CAS role is well known. Its not very good at it and has all kinds of restrictions, but it is in fact a use-case that had some level of design thought go into.

------------

> At 5-7km? Are you sure it can't be seen at all at that distance? It's a radar absorbing and a radar dispersing materials, not an invisibility cloak from Harry Potter. And yes, you can point it and spray-n-pray. With AAA rate of fire you can do this.

Uh huh. https://media.cheggcdn.com/media/1fe/1fe5f562-7e84-4761-9bce...

You know that bullets drop different heights given the distance to target, right? You can't just spray-and-pray at these distances, the difference between 5km and 5.5km is a lot of space that the "bullet drops".

Ask _any_ hunter or marksman. They'll have tac-marks on their rifle for how high to aim even at 100m vs 300m shots. When you start dealing with much further out targets things get even worse, especially if you're "aiming up" and the ballistic trajectory of bullets starts to grow very complex.

Doubly so when these aircraft are moving at 500mph+, so you need RADAR to calculate how far to lead the bullets. At 5km, an AA gun will take as long as 5 to 10 seconds before it reaches the target, so you need significant amounts of calculation on the Jet's direction-of-travel (and leading your shot) before you even have hopes of hitting it.

Now yes, RADAR + Computers do the job well... against an A10 or otherwise aircraft devoid of stealth. If you blind the RADAR system and none of these computers work anymore, you pretty much have free reign and are nearly immune to bullets. You can't be tracked, you can't be calculated, you can't be hit.

Hitting a 3D target maneuvering in the air is very difficult. That's why we built aimbot / Anti-air gun systems to calculate these things.

All of those computers cease to function the minute the aircraft is stealth. If the computer doesn't know the distance, bearing, or velocity, it cannot compute and will not be able to hit the target.

-------------------

But that doesn't change the fact that you're playing "Batman utility belt" with these weapon systems. We started with MANPADs and now we're talking AA guns, but in either case the stealth-capability of F35 defeats both so it doesn't matter. Are you gonna pull any other weapon out of your bag of arguments? We're like 3 or 4 arguments through weapon systems that would have made the A10 fully irrelevant and you're still struggling to make a coherent case on what weapon would reliably hit an F35.

There are some automated AA guns (Oerlikon or Rheinmetall IIRC) who lock with combination of radar and visual, or just one of those. No locking missiles, just good old ammunition and 21st century computing power. Well not precisely, every round is primed to detonate at exact altitude/flight duration.

Put a hundred rounds in few seconds (so 5-10k projectiles) on the sky where the plane will be in 3 seconds, they will create basically impenetrable cloud and yes you can quite easily shoot down F35 flying during day flying low enough just by visual lock.

One example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdwjcayPuag

You aren't going to get valid distance from a single platform like that.

If you had a large scale integrated sensor network, then yes you can triangulate an F35 and track it.

Except the F35 would switch to Wild Weasel mode and start shooting down your sensors (aka, SEAD missions) until it was safe to approach closely.

--------

That's the thing, if the F35 is already in your face to take direct gunfire like that,bits because the commanders are already sure that all advanced radar sensors are destroyed by HARM missiles.

That's the power of a stealth CAS fighter. It's got way less ammo and runtime than an A10 but stealth more than makes up for it.

> Except the F35 would switch to Wild Weasel mode and start shooting down your sensors

Ie not performing CAS. As stated near the start of the thread, nor AC-130 nor F-35 would perform CAS against anything more dangerous than a flipflop army with a complete lack of AA capabilities.

QED

AC-130 cannot perform Wild Weasel missions.

F35 can perform both Wild Weasel and CAS missions. F35 is also cheaper than the AC-130 and responds faster due to much higher speeds (proper supersonic Jet vs Turbine).

Even in a CAS scenario, some scenarios will prefer an F35 over the AC-130 is the enemy is lightly armed and response time is a priority (traveling at 1200mph or faster vs 299mph means the F35 responds 4x faster)

From what I understand both sides have plenty of Buks but Russian ELINT and ECM has been remarkably inflexible outside of counter battery roles (besides some broad spectrum jamming earlier in the conflict)

But you have to fly low to avoid the area SAM defense. Stuff like the Patriot doesn't stop enemy aircraft, it forces them down low where MANPADs and even guns are useful.

Wild Weasel literally is baiting SAM to shoot at them. That's the point of Wild Weasel, you bait the RADAR then kill the air defense before they lock in on you. Any RADAR works by emitting radio waves, and those radio waves can be tracked with a homing missile.

Just looking at the wild weasel causes the RADAR system to possibly be bombed. SAM installations vs Wild Weasel tactics are very complex.

In any case...if your SAM is too scared to engage with the wild weasel, they just bomb you from 12,000 feet altitudes.

Winning at 12,000 feet altitudes 50 miles away is the point of the US Air Force. Their goal is to never even engage at lower altitudes until they know they have won in the standoff, long range game.

Using drones to bait them like in Baghdad in 1991 would work too.

How would something like that help Ukraine? Does Russia even need HARM when they have so much artillery they can just turn the surroundings of the radar site into the surface of the moon? My understanding is Ukraine preserved its air defenses by moving them right before 2/24 and is betting on Russian cruise missile avionics and military intelligence sucking.

Drones won't work for stealth because you need the radio-wave link.

F35 is better because the pilot can turn off all communications when doing the SAED mission, forcing the enemy RADAR to increase their power to even try to see the F35. I don't think drones are in a position (yet) to go radio-silent and accomplish their mission.

> "Consider the A10 in the current Ukrainian war: CAS is impossible because both sides have too much antiair."

Not really. It's true that anti-air has prevented aircraft from dominating the battlefield, but both sides still use jets and helicopters to come in at low altitude, fire off a bunch of rockets, do a quick U-turn (releasing a bunch of flares) and run away.

Both sides use MI-8s and SU-25s. Not sure if Ukraine has MI-28s, but Russia does. Both sides use glide bombs to hit fortified defense lines.

The Russian KA-52s in particular have been very effective lately because they have guided missiles and night vision equipment, and don't even have to be very close to the front.

If MI-8s, MI-28s, SU-25s, and KA-52s are all being actively used in this war and aren't immediately shot down, I don't see why an A-10 would fare any worse in that situation. Might not be a game-changer, but not useless either.

It is unnecessary to have a manned CAS fighter doing strafing runs. A cheap Drone in the 1-5MM range could do the job better. Or rely on high altitude/stealth precision bombing.

The A-10 was built for a war in Europe that never came. You can see how well the equivalent SU-25 Frogfoot fairs against Manpads in Ukraine today.

The F-35 is for deleting (or helping others delete) air defenses and other fighter aircraft. Once those are gone you can use whatever you want for CAS. I can't imagine troops being so far forward that the air above is still contested.

Also this cannot be stressed enough: you can't fly under radar anymore.

Modern radar can detect and track low flying aircraft just fine.

Genuinely interested in how modern radar would get around the line of sight issues? Doesn't line of sight mean that yes, you absolutely can still fly under radar?

LoS is different to the original concept of "flying below radar". The original concept was based on the problem of ground scatter - below a certain altitude the radar beam is hitting the ground and producing spurious returns which mean they swamp out any interesting signals.

But modern radar is much more sensitive, and the noise-handling algorithms better - basically it's much more able to distinguish "I hit some trees with my beam" versus "metal". Combine that with modern transmitters which can also produce tighter beams and all the other electronic goodness, and the net effect is that you can scan just as low as you can see in all directions and filter out everything which is boring (i.e. the ground doesn't actually move very much, so really it's a fixed background on your radio image).

The other element of this, is AWACS: AWACS radars are higher, and look down. So not only do they go much further, but there is no "below radar" with them - they can be operated from much further away, and have all the same advantages (i.e. much better signal return discrimination). An AWACS will see you on radar long before you're in weapons range (hence the body of them orbiting near the Ukraine border these days).

The final element is that "flying below radar" was also just plain never that effective. You can test this by asking how often it's actually been done, if it's so effective. If it worked all the time, then that's what military's would train to do. Instead the only real advantage it provides is it reduces light of sight, and that's not uniformly applicable - i.e. a radar on elevated terrain would be able to spot aircraft making low approaches around it because it can just look down and pick out the airplane-like returns and ignore the ground scatter - and said radar can be far behind the lines.

IMO it's more a multirole/strike aircraft.

The A-10 is great, but you can replace 1 A-10 with 100 loitering drones and get 90% of the capability.

The A-10 would be shot out of the sky at impressive rates with today's proliferation of MANPADs, the same way the ukrainians are shooting down russion KA-52s in ukraine whenever they get too close to the line of contact. The F-35 could require 100x more maintenance than the A-10 but it will accomplish the mission and come home afterwards. The A-10 is useful for shooting someone who can't shoot missiles back at your planes.

Look at actual kills of SU-25 and KA-52 vs the damage they have done. I've seen a single KA-52 mission take down around a half-dozen vehicles and completely halt an advance. That helicopter more than paid for itself in just that one interaction.

There have been no doubt thousands to tens of thousands of missions flown over the past year and a half by Russia, but only around 28 SU-25 losses and 36 KA-52 losses[0]. At 19 months into the war, that's 1-2 per month which would be more than acceptable losses. Even looking at total aircraft losses per side per month, the worst case is Ukraine with 307 losses over 19 months or 16.2 per month.

Perspective is important. We lost 2,714 planes in the Korean War[1] over 37 months. That is 73.4 aircraft per month or a little more than 4.5x as many each month and it was considered acceptable losses.

I don't care to add up all the things, but even in far less heated wars with basically zero anti-air capability, there are still a ton of aircraft losses[2].

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

[1] https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaFamWebInKoreanAirBat...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aviation_accidents_and...

> Even looking at total aircraft losses per side per month, the worst case is Ukraine with 307 losses over 19 months or 16.2 per month.

Unless this includes UAV's (which would be a bit strange) I don't see how this is even possible Ukraines airforce doesn't even have 300 combat aircraft.

Looking at most sources I cannot find where this number could have come from.

Going per oryx's numbers.

Ukraine (https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...).

- 71 Aircraft

- 35 Helicopters

- 25 UAV's

- 166 Recon UAV's.

297 total.

But.

Russia (https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...)

- 90 Aircraft

- 105 Helicopters

- 14 UAV's

- 286 Recon UAV's.

495 total.

>a very successful project, and a very affordable one...

I've read several articles today that called it the 'most expensive weapon', that the program is '10 years behind', that each costs $80M, and '$9M/year to maintain', that over 1000 have been built etc. For decades it has been a troubled project, many experienced insiders have called it a failure, from the day the first one rolled out ... long ago. 'Very successful' in what way?

There has been a great deal of honing to the jet and its production processes over time. The prototypes were overpriced and underperforming but with scale all that was overcome.

It is quite clear dogfights happen only in the movies. But all my knowledge about fighter jets comes from YouTube fighter jet pilot channels.

>Russian and Chinese 5th generation fighters (PAK FA and Su-57)

PAK FA/T-50/Su-57 is the same Russian fighter.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-57

I found this article illuminating on the F-35. Certainly convinced me that the costs have been misrepresented.

https://www.navalgazing.net/The-Case-for-the-F-35

Well at least in close combat we know who turns first: "F 16 vs. F 35 - Turn Comparison" - https://youtu.be/SPqUvCnWcrk

First, there are very few aircraft that could beat an F-16 in a rate fight, but the likelihood that 2 aircraft enter a merge are extremely low, and even if everything went wrong and two aircraft entered the merge the ability for modern missiles to fire absurd off-bore shots kind of negates the requirement to get nose on.

You might point to the early days of the Ukrainian War as a sign that BCM is not dead but that wouldn't track these days. Russia is sitting with MiG-31's flying over Belarus and Western Russia firing extremely long rage missiles. The enviroment is simply not permissive enough for the type of aggressive CAP that might result in BCM.

The entire point of the airplane is to never get into close combat. It's like asking which navy has better bayonets.

F-4 Phantom was a great fighter serving US Navy, Marine and Air Force. It equipped with missiles to kill enemies in the beyond visual range, didn't equip internal guns in the first generation because "it shouldn't get into close combat" .....

The issue with the F4 wasn't the lack of a gun alone, and focusing on that aspect 50 years after the Vietnam war clouds the current state of things. The issue was that missile technology was in it's infancy and unreliable, coupled with US fighter pilot training focusing on interception of long-range Soviet nuclear bombers. The US never really envisioned a conventional war being possible in a post-nuclear world. Note that despite this, what the US deemed "inadequate" air dominance was still a roughly 4-1 air-to-air kill-ratio in their favour during the beginning-middle of the Vietnam War.

Once pilot training changed to focus on fighters, the kill-ratio shot up to 15-1 for the last half-year or so of the war. The number of these kills made by F4s with guns was small compared to F4s with missiles (even given the unreliable state of the technology at the time), as you can see for yourself: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_aerial...

(Note that this is the case even in the later years of the war, when F4 mounted gun-pods were more common)

The narrative of the Vietnam War that gun > long-range missile wasn't even true then. And certainly isn't so now that missile technology has matured. A quick glance over to modern air campaigns is proof. Beyond visual range missiles and long-range radar systems are king. There's nothing wrong with having a back-up close-range weapon (same reason why soldiers carry knives), but the use-case is niche, and we shouldn't be designing our fighters around this combat situation. The equivalent would be arguing that soldiers should carry broadswords, and using the handful of knife engagements as evidence to why edge-weapons are superior to guns.

An additional problem F4 pilots had early in the war was the horrible Rules of Engagement they had to follow in hostile airspace. They were forced to get close to migs for ID and observe hostile behavior.

Naturally, by the time they accomplished that, they had thrown away all their advantages and handed the migs their disadvantages on a silver platter.

And the F-15's design slogan was "Not a pound for air to ground". Guess what it's being used for now?

The F-15E Strike Eagle is a different, significantly heavier and higher payload was produced by a separate, later project abd competition from the original air-to-air F-15 (its competitor was thr F-16XL, which would have been the F-16E/F if selected.)

And the F-15EX Eagle II is an even newer aircraft.

The F-15C/D are still air-to-air fighters.

Same with the F-16, which started life as a skunkworks project that prioritized dogfighting but is today heavily used for close air support and bombing.

While the skunkworks project and even the initial government Lightweight Fighter project had an air-to-air dogfighting focus, the program under which the F-16 development was conpleted and it was eventually purchased was for a multirole fighter, that wasn't a post-purchase usage evolution.

Quite amusingly, Su-27 was an air superiority fighter at it's infancy.

A theory pushed constantly by the F-35 program, but quickly dismissed by the Ukrainian War.

"Dogfight Over Ukraine Shows The Air War Is Still Very Much Being Fought" - https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/dogfight-over-ukraine-...

That dogfight is newsworthy because it's exceptional, and even still it's not a turning duel by any stretch of the imagination. The real takeaway from the Ukrainian war is that stealth and engagement range are paramount.

…plus SEAD/DEAD are incredibly important and (AFAIK) there is only one air force on the planet that systematically develops and deploys tech and trains for it.

This is a video of a fighter plane launching 2 missiles. It doesn't dismiss anything.

Just because the F-35 was designed to be a strike aircraft more than a dogfighter doesn't mean that it won't be put in those situations. We've been using butter knives as screwdrivers for as long as we've had a butter knife but no screwdriver.

> theory pushed constantly by the F-35 program

Because F-35 operation manual, chapter 1, "Combat prerequisites":

Lob anti-SAM missiles till the enemy wouldn't have any operational SAM, then you can fly in on your fancy F-35.

/s but only slightly

If you actually talk to pilots who have been in dogfights with F35s, they will tell you the radar-assisted guns basically could not properly target the F35 even at dogfighting range. It doesn't do a lot of good that, in order to fight the F35 you have to remember how aviation gunnery worked in 1944, before you had a computer doing most of the ballistics for you.

what in the world is that proving? it's 2 separate videos taken at totally different times. I'm not saying that the F35 is better than the F16 at turn radius, but this video is worthless as evidence of anything other than people are bad at tracking jets with a video camera.

I gather that everyone who actually knows their stuff consider the F35 very capable for its price, but still the number of reports of it crashing seems quite odd to my civilian ear, is this much crashing just normal for military equipment? As a comparison I searched for data on a civilian plane of roughly the same age:

- The F35, with ~965+ units made since 2006, had 12 incidents with 9 or 10 hull-losses

- The Boeing 787, with ~1,077 units made since 2007, had 7 incidents with 0 hull-losses

I know that military does more dangerous stuff that civilians (e.g. one of the F35 crashes was during aerial refueling, other one while landing in a carrier), but still a ~1% hull loss (without enemy fire) is surprising for me.

You don’t hear about the ones that don’t crash.

To determine that this crash is evidence of unreliability would require you to have detailed knowledge of the operational and training volume and tempo they’re flying with - in comparison to other aircraft and their comparative failure rate.

An iPhone would be over a billion dollars if we only made 40.

No, it wouldn't.

Scaling up a new TSMC node (only the iPhone 15 has this tech) is at least $10B alone. They spend $30B on capital per year.

I'd love to have a civilian version of the F-35 for joyride operators, but I guess half of the point of a military aircraft is that your enemies can't buy one.

There's a private company that has bought F-16s now. They do work with the military, but they're still a private company. If someone were able to get an F-16 and sell rides, I'd be willing to fork over a fairly absurd amount of money.

The Musk v Zuckerberg cage fight would’ve been much better as a dog fight between their private F-35s. I mean, why should mega billionaires fight the same way any two broke guys from Jersey would anyway?

I am quite sure they'd die before engaging. I'm not even sure they'd manage to take off and maintain steady flight.

There's a lot of very low volume niche Chinese phones for reasonable prices. So it doesn't need to be so expensive.

You could argue that an iPhone would cost over a billion because you need to develop iOS. But why would you do that instead of modding android for 1/100th of the cost, if you're only gonna make 40?

The hardware for the niche Chinese phones can only be so cheap, because an ecosystem exists around the mass production that is built around the mainstream iPhone and Android devices.

If not for the insane scale of phones being developed, the components that go into those cheap Chinese phones would be far far far more expensive than they are today.

This assumes the aircraft analogy uses all one-off parts, no? It would be interesting to see if there's any data available on this. I would expect big ticket items like the engines to be bespoke, but even they would likely use some common parts. I'd imagine it's not likely every seal or bolt would be unique to that airframe.

Cheap Chinese phones get to take the mass production benefits of the iPhone and Android markets and then *relax* most of the requirements to get cheaper parts.

The military tends to *tighten* the requirements when it’s procuring parts, so more things end up as custom development.

I have no idea what ratio something like an F-35 is for COTS vs custom hardware, though.

I’m not sure there’s much relaxing in quality control in aerospace. The specs are already pretty tight.

You could, but usually that causes lower performance. When building an airframe, a gram not needed is a gram wasted. In fighters it's far less stringent than spacecraft - for those, even a screw one turn longer than needed is something to avoid.

(FWIW, when I'm saying 'aerospace' I'm using it to jointly refer to "space" and "aeronautics," just in case I gave the impression I was only talking about spaceflight.)

Those are technical specs, not quality specs. The quality specs would deal with things like machining tolerances, manufacturer traceability, etc.

Point being, if Pratt & Whitney took a seal design from another aircraft to apply to the F-35, it's not like they aren't already tracking the tolerances, material compatibility, etc. When I worked in aerospace, it was very rare that we went to the machine shop to ask for them to make a bespoke component.

it wouldn't be an iPhone then.

Fighter jets in general are a constant maintenance marathon. They are pushing the edge of engineering and performance. That means that they are less reliable and more expensive to maintain than a 777 by a wide margin. However, the F-35 is significantly more reliable than it's predecessor the F-16.

The F-35 represents the result of a changing model for warfare. Less dogfights and missile duels, more managing a fleet of strike drones, loitering ordinance, ECM, and acting as an observability platform. With the advent of extreme long range, datalink guided, air breathing, air to air missiles, BVR is transitioning to over the horizon combat. I see you, I kill you. F-35 is a reaction to that.

F35 has a lower mission capability rate than the F-16, and it's not even close (< 50% vs 73%). They're complicated (overly) machines...The DOD industry has come a long ways from Edwards Demming.

According to the GAO, the F-35 has a much better MCR than the F-16. However, the UH-1N Huey has a higher mission capability rate than ALL of these aircraft. Be careful which metric you optimize for or you will be attempting to fight artillery with trebuchets.

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-106217

We got to move away from fighter jets for the most part. It’s the age of slaughterbots baby, bring on the tens of thousands of highly intelligent drones.

The AI just isn't there yet if we would even want it to reach that point. You have to have someone in communications range to make kill decisions, confirm target designations, and keep the expensive parts of your swarm intact. Drones are pretty awesome as front line aircraft, but they haven't replaced humanity yet.

Then tens of thousands of people directly controlling those drones. We have the manpower and the ability to build these drones. Azerbaijan and Ukraine basically kicked ass with essentially DJIs and grenades.

You are correct. However, the people need to be close to such drones. DJIs cannot be controlled from very far away. Similar to non-improvised drone munitions like Switchblades. For supersonic aircraft you need something a bit different.

The F-35 is cheaper than it's contemporaries, and has a lower accident rate.

The real question IMO is whether the 6th generation fighters (Next Generation Air Dominance program in the USA) are making the right design trade offs. They are projected to be bigger, more expensive, and ordered in fewer numbers than even the F-22. Are we better off with fewer but more advanced super weapons, or with many more cheaper weapons? In the era of UA/RU war where few-thousand-dollar drones are spanking multi-million dollar EW and AA systems, this may not be the right trade off.

The Air Force and Navy NGAD programs are separate and different. The Air Force is building a fighter larger than the F-22 cause they want the range to fly across the Pacific. They are also working on wingman drones and already gave order.

The Navy NGAD is more of a replacement for the F/A-18E/F. It will probably be the same size because of constraints of carrier. Another difference is that the Air Force is working fast while Navy NGAD won't be ready until 2030.

Unfortunately there is no alternative. In order to be relevant in a potential conflict with China around the first island chain, NGAD must have a size and fuel fraction similar to the F-111. It will probably also need a second crew position to manage the workload including controlling "loyal wingman" type disposable drones. There's just no way to do that on the cheap.

Small, cheap drones have been effective in Ukraine because the ranges are so short. The battle space in the South China Sea is completely different.

Yeah, far more F35s will be ordered than F22s, in the end the program ground out a pretty successful jet.

The next generation may be the questionable one.

You'd hate the F-104, which killed 116 pilots while in German service, which is the kind of casualty rate you'd expect from actual war, not training. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-104_Starfighter#Wes...

Criticism of the F-35 has been coming from a vocal selection of loons who's most common media appearances tended to be on Russia Today, and who's qualifications have been to lie about their qualifications, and misrepresent actual events which happened.

Here's the thing: you don't know anything about the F-35. Because the project is secret. The capabilities are secret. And in a US political system that's incredibly fractious, civilian oversight has been satisfied with the project for multiple administrations. But it's still secret.

I was an early armchair skeptic, and I've always had a not-so-secret love of the F-16. But after watching an F-35 demo at a recent airshow, I'm a convert. Anyone who says this plane can't out-dogfight an F-16 is delusional.

Was it worth $1,700,000,000,000 though ($1.7 trillion)? I'm all for aviation innovation, but the US defense budget is just wild.

I wouldn't blame the F-35 for the entirety of the DoD budget.

As far as the plane itself is concerned, however, the F-35 is actually a good deal. That's why we're able to sell it to other countries -- it's cheaper than than comparable Gen 4.5/5 fighters. And more reliable, too, than most everything else in our inventory.

It's had downstream benefits in the hardware, IoT, cybersecurity, devops, missle research, and aerospace segments just off the top of my head. I don't want to dox myself but a lot of GovCloud can be attributed to the F35 development cycle.

Interesting, I haven't looked into GovCloud before. While it seems weird that the US government would entrust their data with AWS, it's probably a lot better than their antiquated systems.

This 2020 article is a good read for anyone still listening here: https://siliconangle.com/2020/06/30/us-navys-largest-migrati...

I think so far the F-35 has had 1 death and maybe half a dozen crashes in hundreds of thousands of hours of operation.

Just from perusing the stats for other military planes that seems pretty good actually.

The F-35 has a lower mishap rate and higher availability rate than most other tactical aircraft.

Maybe you are thinking of The Machine-Gunners [1]. I loved to watch the BBC adaption as a kid.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Gunners

I was thinking more The Nightmare Man [1]. Scared the absolute piss out of me as a kid and I don't think it was even on that late:

https://ayearinthecountry.co.uk/the-nightmare-man-part-1-col...

Something to keep in mind that I do not believe anyone else has mentioned is that the F-35 was built in several variations to serve different branches of the military in roughly similar configurations. The Navy and Air Force can both successfully operate and maintain the aircraft as older planes are decommissioned, and eliminates the need for other aircraft to be developed to serve the specific use cases of the various branches of the U.S. military.

It makes maintenance far easier and over the long run results in significantly reduced costs.

The F-35 has a comparable or better safety record than most other American Fighters. You just don't see articles written about a single aircraft incident for the F-18 anymore.

I've seen some analysis that, per hour of flight time, these tend towards the most trouble-free end of the spectrum. Someone will need to run those numbers again, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if, even with this incident, that was still the case.

My personal favorite is the short story "Night Rescue" from Bertrand Brinley's Mad Scientist Club books.

http://madscientistsclub.com/books.html

> these jets sound terribly overpriced for how unreliable they seem to be

I'm in no way suggesting your comment is an example of this, but, if I was a hostile foreign power I'd do everything possible to amplify messaging that my enemy's wonder-jet was an expensive boondoggle to try and hurt political support for it.

>Seriously though, these jets sound terribly overpriced for how unreliable they seem to be.

There are a number of possibilities you are not considering. Having our adversaries believe that the F35 is unreliable, for example, would be exceptionally useful. Other possibilities include intentionally attempting out-of-spec maneuvers or experimental hardware.

> overpriced for how unreliable they seem to be

The high price may cause them to be unreliable, because they are so expensive to operate they don't get enough flying time to work the bugs out.

[dead]

Maybe it's another Cornfield Bomber (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber):

> The "Cornfield Bomber" is the nickname given to a Convair F-106 Delta Dart, operated by the 71st Fighter-Interceptor Squadron of the United States Air Force. In 1970, during a training exercise, it made an unpiloted landing in a farmer's field in Montana, suffering only minor damage, after the pilot had ejected from the aircraft. The aircraft, recovered and repaired, was returned to service, and is currently on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force.

Given it's a military plane (which IIRC, aren't required to have transponders or have them activated) and stealth. it seems understandable that it would be hard to find if it didn't crash immediately.

> aren't required to have transponders or have them activated

Seems like you'd want them activated in domestic airspace.

The confluence of events that allowed an unpiloted jet to land with its engine idling.. its unbelievable.

Incredible:

> One of the other pilots on the mission was reported to have radioed Foust during his descent by parachute that "you'd better get back in it!"

The best part is he actually did (nine years later.)

Most aircraft are designed to be inherently stable so as long as it doesn't hit anything a good percentage of them should be able to manage pretty well w/o a pilot.

The F35 and other modern fighter jets are the exception to the rule: they are inherently unstable because this makes them more maneuverable. They use electronic control systems to keep themselves stable.

It was only possible to fly the original stealth fighter, the F-117, with the help of computers controlling the plane, due to its unorthodox design.

So what does a FCS do after an ejection.

I've always wondered what his squadronmates changed his callsign to afterwards.

O'Chute

Scarecrow?

Walkhome?

Valet?

The big question here is was it a Martin-Baker ejection seat?

If so, there's a limited edition high end wristwatch in it for the pilot:

https://us.bremont.com/pages/explore-bremont-partnerships-ma...

Simple enough to google, yes it is:

https://martin-baker.com/products/mk16-ejection-seat-for-f-3...

and a Tie

https://martin-baker.com/ejection-tie-club/

Wearing a tie during ejection can be dangerous.

Unless it's a Colin Furze Safety Tie

It's more affordable than I thought, I expected one more zero on the price tag...

This is a fine timepiece.

A worthy chronometer to suit a crashed pilot.

A watch without GPS?

It's not uncommon for jets to fly for long distances after a pilot ejects. In one incident I responded to, the crew of an F4 ejected due to a fire, but the jet continued to fly over about half of Nevada until it eventually crashed near Tohnapah.

This is a particularly interesting story:

A Soviet MiG-23 flew all the way from Poland to Belgium without its pilot after they ejected from the jet shortly after takeoff back

https://community.infiniteflight.com/t/the-ghost-mig-over-be...

That F4 is shaped in a way that wants to stay in the air.

The F35 is shaped in a way that only flys well with 10-40 thousand pounds of thrust.

I am extremely skeptical a modern fighter jet wpuld coast and set it self down in a field.

It has been found: https://x.com/TeamCharleston/status/1703898175138894214?s=20

So I guess at least the stealth part is working as designed...

> "How in the hell do you lose an F-35? ... How is there not a tracking device...?" -- South Carolina Republican Representative Nancy Mace

Considering it is a stealth jet, broadcasting its location through easily detectable radio waves would be a serious bug, not a feature, wouldn't it?

stealth aircraft usually fly with radar retroreflectors deployed when not on combat missions so as to prevent adversaries from assessing their cross-section

How Luneburg lens radar reflectors are used to make stealth aircraft visible on radar screens[0]

[0] https://theaviationgeekclub.com/these-devices-make-stealth-a...

A B-17 once landed at an airfield in Belgium without any crew on board. Just by chance it was pointing in the right direction, with the right amount of lift and drag and thrust.

This sounded like there had to be more to it but found this [1] and it makes it even weirder.

> The parachutes were still onboard and no indication of gunfire or blood caused by hostile attacks were seen on the plane.

[1] https://worldwarwings.com/still-unsolved-story-of-b-17-landi...

A Quora answer[1] suggests that the "parachutes" found were just the empty packs, and the crew was found safe.

That the plane landed intact is pretty cool though!

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-happened-to-the-crew-of-the-B-17-...

FTA: "The Second World War II"...

I think there were experiments with RC B17s. I wonder if this was one and they chose to emergency land it but had to keep it a secret from the Belgian airfield crew.

When my grandpa was navigating B24's in WWII, he saw a B24's wing flying by itself. The Japanese had set the plane on fire from nose to tail, and the body separated from the wings. The B24 has the wings on top of the fuselage, so the wings could stay together. The body, of course, fell into the clouds below, but the wings stayed aloft. And naturally, because they didn't have to carry a fuselage around, they accelerated, and lazily curved out of sight of grandpa, who thought he might have been the only person to ever see something like that (and survive to tell the tale...)

Awesome and terrifying story, thank you for sharing.

Also in Belgium, in 1989 a MiG 23 crashed in a house killing one person after the pilot ejected over Poland.

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

It may be naive to ask this but... can I get a tail number? I'm not 100% sure these would have one I could look up on flightradar but a national post asking people to help find their plane would be way more useful with a little more info about the actual aircraft. We know it was "Sunday afternoon" over South Carolina somewhere but if we had some "last known location" info or something this might be solvable with some math estimates.

With all due respect, I would hope that anything you could do with ADSB-out data is something that the US military has already tried.

US military: Yeah, right, we definitely tried that

(Goes to check ADSB-out data)

That's my assumption as well but I'd have assumed that'd be the case with basically anything except on-site search parties (though I'd hope they could do that as well haha). I'm with you though!

From the article -

"The jet’s transponder, which usually helps locate the aircraft, was not working “for some reason that we haven’t yet determined,” said Jeremy Huggins, a spokesman at Joint Base Charleston. “So that’s why we put out the public request for help.”

Ah shoot, I missed that. Thank you!

If you happen to find it report here: https://twitter.com/TeamCharleston/status/170352338547553496...

Please no jokes about losing a stealth fighter...

"Yuri, you lost another submarine ... ?"

Aren't those F-39s invisible anyway?

We are looking for an F-35...You were not supposed to disclose the existance of the F-39 ;-)

After the development of the F-35, the idea that the US government could fund and develop a new fighter without the public knowing is somehow heartwarming!

Well, the F-117 was developed in complete secrecy. And, I'd like to add, in busget and on time. All that using a bunch of stuff coming from the F-15 and F-16 programs. My pet theory is, that those twonhad a ton of cost overruns regarding spares and such because avionics and engines for the F-117 had to be sourced somehow.

Yeah… that was the 70s though.

F-35 > F-39 # true

I’m wondering where they get the keyboards for these; I have a IBM terminal keyboard and it only goes up to F-24.

You joke, but some people are still searching for the “Any” key.

It's close to the Windows key: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Keyboard...

Hand over as much intel to 4chan as possible and watch them find this thing in a matter of hours...

Came here to say that. Thinking topographic maps of the region for higher probability impacts, wind direction maps, air quality data, last known trajectory, shodan cameras, cell tower signal interference blips, RF noise from surviving electronics or beacons. Not a lot to go on though.

And don't forget current fuel load to estimate radius of search area.

Wow, the Warthunder forum arguments are getting way out of hand

> Warthunder forum arguments

Context: [1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Thunder#Documents_leaks

>In January 2023, Raytheon denied media reports that security clearance background checks for jobs at the defense contractor investigate whether applicants play War Thunder.

wtf

A redditor lied on the internet and a bunch of second and third rate media sites parroted it, this is why we can't have nice things

https://www.reddit.com/r/Warthunder/comments/10kqto9/ahoy/

Relevant crashes into swamps:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ValuJet_Flight_592

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_co...

They should put Apple Airtags in the F-35s.

I have one on my cat and when he runs away he is not hard to find.

Still needs someone with an iPhone to walk by and update its location

Interesting. The article doesn't say why the pilot ejected. If the jet were able to continue flying for hours in autopilot, maybe the pilot ejected a bit prematurely, no? Though it it continued flying I would expect it to be on ADS-B.

I'd think there's clear procedures for pilot of such a craft? If x occurs & can't be fixed by doing y or z, then eject.

> Though it it continued flying I would expect it to be on ADS-B.

This is a military aircraft. Depending on its mission, transponders may or may not be enabled.

What did surprise me: if a 2-plane mission, why didn't the other jet follow the now-empty one? As a opposed to landing right after. Low on fuel?

At least it could have recorded speed & heading.

With all the software issues how do we know the plane didn't just randomly eject the pilot due to some buffer overflow...

Add the transponder not working, and you come to the conclusion that the jet was operating exactly as it was supposed to, by design...

It's using a tiny subset of C++ and C, designed to prevent errors like that, but I wonder how well that works given the F-35 has several years of empirical data now.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27602606

Or the AI they were trying on decided so...

Hopefully that isn't a networked system. It should be physical action only.

Eject-by-wire, I can envision some proponents for automated ejection in case the pilot is not responding or a machine is able to determine ejection is needed before a pilot realizes and it would be too late.

> I'd think there's clear procedures for pilot of such a craft? If x occurs & can't be fixed by doing y or z, then eject.

Indeed they do (or at least did)

https://youtu.be/Aa1Ba_NEobs

It would seem to me that a missing F-35 is a pretty big security threat.

> It would seem to me that a missing F-35 is a pretty big security threat.

If you believe what is written on HN: actually no, not at all.

When you have to eject anyway, you would probably want to do it in an area where you can get help relatively quickly, due to it being quite a bit dangerous, and not in an area with no infrastructure or over the ocean.

> maybe the pilot ejected a bit prematurely, no?

He just wanted to be sure. With all those issues F35 had i wouldn't think twice when to eject. /s

Have they said whether the transponder was active on the jet? They usually have the ADSB beacon live when flying near airports, but if it was turned off it would be a bit trickier to find. Also, if the retroreflector wasn't extended it might be hard for active radar to track it as well. Worst case scenario would be if it was in "full stealth" mode -- that would be the situation where we discover that NORAD air defense systems can't detect our own jets!

It wasn’t active, reasons were not given. [1]

[1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/f-35-cant-be-found-aft...

They should be able to track gross location on radar. The stealth capabilities are mostly focused on thwarting precise location and missile guidance radars.

The issue here is finding the precise crash site. General location should be known. Trying to find it under the tree canopy could be more challenging depending on how rural it is.

I think they do have the general location, they keep mentioning two lakes near the base. So I suspect it's at the bottom of one of them, although then it's odd they are asking for public help finding them.

"Dagobah" was how I heard the search area described. Or parts of it at least. "The weather was horrible" when the pilot ejected, so if it was pouring rain and slipped nicely into a swamp somewhere - and then the rain doused anything smoking...

It's not too odd to ask for help. Generally they want anyone who heard/saw something to report what they saw. I witnessed a jet crash once. Even though I was a kid and they knew the exact location, they still wanted the information. If it did crash into a lake, it's possible someone heard it while they were fishing or something.

For that matter, Joint Base Charleston is only around 25 miles from the Atlantic Ocean.

It doesn't take a Mach 1.6 aircraft very long to go 25 miles. That's only about 75 seconds of flight time.

This is odd because military jets in the area here in the area (in CONUS) invariably have their transponders on.

> invariably

You keep saying that word...I do not think it means what you think it means.

More seriously, military aircraft throughout the US often do not have their ADS-B or transponders turned on.

Well they still missing an atom bomb from 1958 dropped by a B47 bomber near Tybee island Georgia.

Wait, whaat?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_coll...

It's not the only missing nuke, either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Mars_Bluff_B-47_nuclear_w... is probably the (darkly) funniest one in the list. That one was recovered, but "the Air Force tried to nuke my kids' play house" is a story not many people can tell.

  Fortunately, the fissile nuclear core was stored elsewhere on the aircraft

Yeah, the early ones were designed to be armed in-flight.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/mk6.htm

> This weapon was a capsule bomb, meaning that the nuclear material for the bomb was kept in a special capsule separate from the rest of the device for safety's sake. Just before the bomb was to be dropped from the delivery aircraft the capsule was inserted into the bomb casing and the weapon became armed. It was also the first atomic weapon to offer the delivery aircraft's bombardier the option of changing the detonation altitude while the bomber was in flight to the target.

Veritasium just did a video on this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILgSesWMUEI

They found it

Debris found from F-35 jet in South Carolina after US pilot ejected

What might cause a pilot to need to eject from an airplane that is not in any distress? The pilot apparently had the time to put the airplane into an auto-pilot mode before ejecting. Why not just fly the plane back to base?

I always thought pilots ejected when the plane was about to crash.

Given that the plane costs $150 million, it seems like an extraordinarily expensive decision to make if the plane is not about to crash.

[dupe]

Earlier discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37552740

Context: this comment is from a newer post whose comments were merged into this post.

A debris field has been found:

The debris field is approximately two hours northeast of Joint Base Charleston. JB Charleston, which led the search, “is transferring incident command to the USMC this evening, as they begin the recovery process,” the Marine Corps said in a news release.

Members of the community were cautioned to avoid the area so the recovery team can secure the debris field and begin the recovery process.

<https://lite.cnn.com/2023/09/17/us/south-carolina-fighter-je...>

Two hours by car, or two hours by F-35 jet? Quite a big difference.

I demand reasonable units of length: bananas, giraffes, or smoots.

Though I suspect information is being kept deliberately vague Because Reasons.

The repeated referral to "debris field" is interesting. As if it's saying "nothing to see here."

Or maybe it's really just a field of debris.

Am I the only one shocked that it's stealth was effective enough that they couldn't track it even with a malfunctioning transponder?

Not in the slightest bit.

Should have put an AirTag on it. I'm kidding. Maybe.

Planes have transponders to make it easier to find them, though that's mostly for when they are in the air. The issue is that the military likes to turn them off.

$1.2T to OPERATE the F-35 program, yikes! I would love to see the TCO figures on an F-35 (or not). US Military budget concepts have always blown my mind.

Not to say $1.2T is nothing, but that's over the lifespan of the program. It's like if you paid for your car plus all the fuel, oil changes, spare parts, tires, car wash, toll roads, all up front.

> $1.2 trillion to operate and maintain the fleet over more than 60 years.

Headlines kick harder when you leave out divisors.

Holy cow, 60 years is the design life of the F35?! We will somehow still be operating these things in 2150!

F16's 50th anniversary is next year. They're still being flown by many countries around the world, including the US, and will soon be fighting in Ukraine.

I believe the U-6A Beaver is the oldest design still operated by the US military.

Initial design was 1947, still being used as tow planes for gliders in the Navy.

That feels a bit like cheating. B-52 is nearly as old and is legitimately widely used.

The B-52 is getting new engines and going for a full century of active service.

Debris was found.

https://wpde.com/news/local/missing-f-35b-jet-search-lake-ci...

Guess the stealth is working.

I’m surprised that a crashing F-35 wouldn’t generate enough fire and smoke to be easily detected.

If it flew until it ran out of fuel and then crashed the amount of fire and smoke would be significantly reduced.

It sounds like they’re looking in lakes. Could have gone splash without leaving much trace on the surface.

Maybe not? This article references some examples of planes landing intact: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/f-35-cant-be-found-aft...

Planes like the F-22 are inherently aerodynamically unstable because it allows then to be highly maneuverable, The stability of the aircraft is handled by the electronics. So back then planes of the that type would be able to just glide down and land but with a F-22 or any modern military jet, it wouldn't.

It could fly until it finds ocean, runs out of fuel and then darts in. My god think of the bill.

If the plane is in trim (does the F35 even have manual trim?) and/or on autopilot, I can see a long glide to somewhere with a stable flight path, at least until the loss of thrust due to fuel exhaustion leads to an aerodynamic stall. But in of these circumstances, there would have been no need for the pilot to eject. Strange indeed.

I heard a story about an FA-18 where the pilot passed out, suffocated and died, and the jet just flew until it ran out gas and went down in the ocean.

We know the JSF is a giant expensive computer. I wonder what code is in the exception block for when the plane is working but the pilot leaves. Maybe it does just try and gently crash somewhere. It's more surprising it didn't have some sort of phone home, become a drone, style fall back mechanism. I certainly think that'll be on the Jira board next sprint.

> We know the JSF is a giant expensive computer. I wonder what code is in the exception block for when the plane is working but the pilot leaves. Maybe it does just try and gently crash somewhere.

I doubt there's an exception block for that. What if there's a fault and it triggers while the pilot is still in the plane?

> It's more surprising it didn't have some sort of phone home, become a drone, style fall back mechanism. I certainly think that'll be on the Jira board next sprint.

I doubt it. All of those ideas seem to have deal-breaker drawbacks in a military system. What if there's a fault and it "phones home" during a mission, breaking radio silence? What if an adversary figures out how to activate drone-mode, then hijacks and crashes the planes when they need to perform?

I think the Ukraine war and Russia's poor showing has proved that in some ways the west is overestimating the capabilities of it's enemies.

> I think the Ukraine war and Russia's poor showing has proved that in some ways the west is overestimating the capabilities of it's enemies.

That attitude is a recipe for overconfidence and failure, and is probably the biggest reason for Russia's poor showing in Ukraine.

Also, from what I've read, electronic warfare is one of the areas where the Russians have shown strong capability. It's a mistake to misinterpret "sucks at some things" as "sucks at all things."

Remember too that significant amounts detailed technical data for the F-35 have been stolen:

https://thediplomat.com/2015/01/new-snowden-documents-reveal...:

> Last week, Der Spiegel published a new tranche of documents provided to the German weekly magazine by the former U.S. National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden. The documents are the first public confirmation that Chinese hackers have been able to extrapolate top secret data on the F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter jet. According to sources, the data breach already took place in 2007 at the prime subcontractor Lockheed Martin. A U.S. government official recently claimed that as of now, “classified F-35 information is protected and remains secure.”

> ...

> The Snowden files outline the scope of Chinese F-35 espionage efforts, which focused on acquiring the radar design (the number and types of modules), detailed engine schematics (methods for cooling gases, leading and trailing edge treatments, and aft deck heating contour maps) among other things. The document claims that many terabytes of data specific to the F-35 joint strike fighter program were stolen.

When designing military aircraft, it makes sense to reduce attack surface and avoid implementing exploitable features to address unusual scenarios.

WRT to Ukraine, it's a mistake to think that competence at EW and incompetence at land warfare balance each other out when the fight is primarily land warfare. And you need to be better at the land warfare to win.

Also, the B21 is reported to be designed for remote control. And that's the sort of thing you put the really big weapons on. I understand the idea behind reducing attack surface. But the JSF is a hub of interconnected technology it's not unreasonable to think they don't have a software package for all sorts of remote options.

> WRT to Ukraine, it's a mistake to think that competence at EW and incompetence at land warfare balance each other out when the fight is primarily land warfare. And you need to be better at the land warfare to win.

That's not what I said or meant.

What I'm saying is: it's stupid to design something for an adversarial situation like war, under the assumption that your adversary will be incompetent and unskilled. You seemed to be inferring that US adversaries would be incompetent at EW, because Russia's competence at land warfare has been far less than was previously assumed, and I don't think that follows at all.

> Also, the B21 is reported to be designed for remote control. And that's the sort of thing you put the really big weapons on. I understand the idea behind reducing attack surface.

If a military jet will not regularly remotely operated, it makes total sense to not implement remote operation features at all. Adding the feature introduces unneeded risk, as well as development cost and weight.

And (IMHO) if you do add a remote operation feature (because you think you'll use it), it should be locked behind a physical shutoff, so it cannot be adversarially-activated when it's not wanted. That would mean it would likely be of little use in a case like this.

> But the JSF is a hub of interconnected technology it's not unreasonable to think they don't have a software package for all sorts of remote options.

I don't see how it as all reasonable to think they've developed such a feature without any kind of evidence. The only hits I get trying to find information were for scale-model RC planes, stuff about F-35 pilots controlling drones, and this speculative article from a likely non-reputable website (https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2023/09/16/american-stealth-f-...) which outlines extensive modifications required and ultimately concludes such a thing would be a bad idea.

> Also, the B21 is reported to be designed for remote control.

AFAIK, that is all misreporting the (also abandoned) idea of an bomber drone companion aircraft and/or speculation about a potential future application of its modular upgradability.

> But the JSF is a hub of interconnected technology it's not unreasonable to think they don't have a software package for all sorts of remote options.

I agree that its not unreasonable to think that they don't have that.

I think the Ukraine war and Russia's poor showing has proved that in some ways it is far more catastrophic to underestimate your enemies than to overestimate them.

But the West also underestimates, for example, cheap Iranian drones that can be easily mass produced and cost much less than the missiles to shoot them down.

The West does not. Major R&D effort went into laser based SHORAD that is basically free to fire, with units being already deployed. Besides that, good old C-RAM would take those out no problem.

> But the West also underestimates, for example, cheap Iranian drones that can be easily mass produced and cost much less than the missiles to shoot them down.

No, it doesn't. It failed to anticipate the large-scale transfer of Iranian loitering munitions to Russia for use in that role, it didn't underestimate their utility. And once they started showing up, the West started supplying more cost effective countermeasures, like the Gepard, which use autocannons rather than missiles.

It's the most advanced plane the military has. You would think that an eject would trigger some additional communications or allow remote control of the jet.

"Remote control of jet" comes with fairly obvious adversarial risks the military likely wishes to avoid.

Drones?

We’ve had this trouble with them, yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–U.S._RQ-170_incident

No one wants to lose a B-2 or F-22 this way.

There is no remote control of manned tactical aircraft. That was never a requirement.

The jet may have been transmitting it's position via civilian ADS-B or military data link. But those systems could have been switched off, or malfunctioned during the mishap.

Pilots don't eject from controllable aircraft. If the pilot ejected, remote control won't help.

Wait.. does this mean an enemy fighter jet with F-35 level of stealth capabilities can penetrate the US mainland without being detected?

I thought US had the air defense system that can defend against some level stealth aircrafts. Is that not the case?

That depends on what you mean by detected.

Stealth technology shrinks radar signature, meaning all else being equal, a radar pointed at a stealth aircraft will return a substantially weaker signal than for a non-stealth aircraft, particularly at certain wavelengths it's optimized to be stealthy in. Thus a system of radars that might have no gaps a non-stealth aircraft could fly through might have gaps where it couldn't detect a stealth aircraft, or radars with the resolution to accurately locate the aircraft might not be able to distinguish it from background noise. Generally very large, long wavelength radars can detect that a stealth aircraft is present, but can't accurately determine location. The only time an air defense system has ever shot down a stealth aircraft was during the 90s when a Yugoslavian force shot down an F-117, but they relied on the fact that the plane was flying along a known flight route. Under ideal circumstances defense against stealth is theoretically possible, but a system that can reliably defend against stealth under arbitrary conditions is at best impractical.

Now that's the case for a radar deliberately set up to try and detect military aircraft flying through some area. The US isn't particularly expecting any foreign nation to fly a small sortie over North Carolina any time soon. Radar coverage in the US is limited; airports have radars that can detect very non-stealthy civilian aircraft a few dozen miles away, and there are many radars at military bases and weather stations and such scattered around, but air traffic monitoring relies heavily on transponder signals for most of the air space. While a foreign adversary probably shouldn't count on the ability to overfly the US completely undetected, we almost certainly would not be able to track it along its flight path.

Of course the US does not rely on detecting foreign aircraft to protect against an attack on the mainland, but instead practices a strategy of deterrence.

In addition to the other comments, it's worth pointing out that (a) stealth aircraft deliberately use radar corner reflectors and other methods to increase their radar signature, reserving "stealthing up" for missions that require it; (b) almost all forms of identifying and locating an aircraft in flight besides radar require it to be transmitting RF (eg ads!) yet the conditions likely to lead to ejection likely lead to a reduction in the ability to do this; and (c) search and rescue in deep water is really really hard as water strongly absorbs and scatters most forms of radiation likely to be used .

If I'd lost an aircraft with a bunch of classified stealth features, and I perhaps also had air defense systems with a bunch of classified stealth countermeasures, I might be inclined to ask the locals if they've seen the thing in the swamp out back before I did anything that might reveal anything about the limitations of that stealth tech or abilities of the system that could track it.

If the enemy aircraft teleported inside the US then yes. Radars are usually directed across the border.

Quote: "The jet’s transponder, which usually helps locate the aircraft, was not working “for some reason that we haven’t yet determined,” said Jeremy Huggins, a spokesman at Joint Base Charleston.

That's such a convenient event, isn't it? I mean, this screams of a middle manager screw-up and what is the best way to cover your financial losses (read embezzlement) other than staging a bank robbery, a fire or losing a jet? Yeah, that's my 2 cents conspiracy theory.

They should’ve put an AirTag on it.

I'm curious if the F35 had a luneburg lens installed or not. If it didn't and did not have an active transponder it would make things much more difficult.

>“Now that I got that out of the way. How in the hell do you lose an F-35?” South Carolina Republican Representative Nancy Mace said on social media. “How is there not a tracking device and we’re asking the public to what, find a jet and turn it in?”

Sure lets put tracking devices in these stealth planes, will make it easy for anyone to find, even the Russians or Chinese.

How dumb can a Congress Person get, they surprise me everyday.

How dumb could a person be, suggesting that something be installed in an expensive airplane that couldn't possibly ever be turned off!

Sigh.

Turning it on would be very hard after a crash. Plus if you eject and you turn it on, the "other" people could trace it too. AFAIK, the purpose of F-35s are to be used in hostile areas, not only training.

Also, ever hear of cracking" ? You think hackers in China could not crack that tracker given enough time ? Stealth usually means "unable to track" in case you are wondering :)

"why isn't there a tracker on those planes", it feels to me like a tracker is the last thing you would want to put on a stealth fighter

I need a tanker truck of jet fuel and a copy of the movie FireFox from 1982.

I'll be sharing a table with Jeff at the next gun show. https://joshdance.medium.com/who-is-jeff-and-why-does-he-hav...

/s

Debris found: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/19/debris-of-us-f-35-f...

As another commenter has noted, this confirms that the stealth capabilities of this fighter jet are truly magnificent.

Anytime something like this happens, wouldn't they have seismic sensors that would detect a crash of this size?

I can't see one of these things going down softly once pilot ejects unless it had some kind of drone mode, in which case god help us who knows where it is?

Seeing some (probably very fake) tweets that the unmanned jet landed in Cuba. No reason to believe that's true, but I do wonder whether it would be remotely possible for someone to take the jet over. I imagine it has a lot of proprietary software inside

Tbh my conspiracy mind went somewhere like that. An F35 costs hundreds of millions, I'm sure there are plenty of state (and non-state) actors willing to pay, say, 50m for access to its hardware. If you're an enterprising arms dealer, you find a pilot willing to cooperate for 5-10m, ask him to point the plane in a particular direction and eject, and then wait for it to come to you. A soft crash would probably still give you enough to turn a decent profit.

I wonder why they don’t have a human on the ground ready to fly it like a drone via sattelite as soon as the pilot is no longer capable of flying. Sure sattelite is probably way too slow to really maneuver a jet but seems better than crashing it.

Why don't they fly with transponders on during training, precisely for this reason?

It was inop at the time:

"The jet’s transponder, which usually helps locate the aircraft, was not working “for some reason that we haven’t yet determined,” said Jeremy Huggins, a spokesman at Joint Base Charleston. “So that’s why we put out the public request for help.”

Oh, someone sure is going to have to answer some tough questions. If not in purely military airspace, or combat operations, military aircraft have to be airworthy according to civil standards.

That being said, no casualties, loosing a stealth fighter is somewhat funny.

If it was a two-ship, could have been only the lead had their transponder on. Keeps the ATC traffic alert systems a little happier.

Thanks, haven't yet read the article through when I commented, stupid of me.

Reminds me of the movie The Pentagon Wars. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars

Definitely a SPECTRE operation.

And they want to replace A-10's, F/A-18's, and F-16's with this overpriced MIC boondoggle. It costs almost 2x/engine hour of a Viper, and the total program cost will exceed $2 trillion.

They should have placed an Apple AirTag under the pilots seat… *sarcasm off*

A bunch more discussion on this dupe over here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37555172

So.. Can one deduce jet vectors from disturbed clouds? Soldier movement from grass swinging in the wind. Can one visualize patterns not following a model?

Worth mentioning that the jet was on autopilot:

> But here's the kicker: the DoD is saying the F-35B was put on autopilot prior to the ejection.

When I read this, the first thing that came to mind was the F-35 malfunctioning ejection seat issue that was due to counterfeit parts.

From this F-35 crash video last year at least it looks like they fixed the ejection problem at least!

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/pilot-ejects-from-f-35-at-...

This would be the mother of all heists if it was one - probably to the serious detriment of the western world

Didn't anybody think to stick an AirTag or such similar gadget onto a $150 million plane?

Something tells me the pilot did something stupid (read Ejected by mistake) and his wingman is covering for him (who by the way could have followed the jet and reported where it crashed). There is no reason for him not be able to fly what is arguably the most sophisticated jet on the planet in limp mode at least.

Sounds like a job for Rainbolt

The fact they waste taxpayer money on the military only for them to admit that they don't even have the tech to track these 100 million dollar planes is so disheartening. You know that the giant cost of these planes is just lining military contractors' pockets.

I wonder how many people are going to lose their jobs over this

That's what you get for investing in stealth tech!

These things can carry nukes and we can lose them. Hmmmm.

Not yet:

https://theaviationist.com/2021/10/06/f-35-b61-12/

Best you could hope for would be a test bomb over Nevada but with no nuclear components.

Very unlikely to be a broken arrow if they're asking for civilian assistance. Much more likely is it had blanks, went AWOL, and is lost in a lake.

This time.

Maybe the news reports are in error? They said autopilot was left on. The pilot survived. Surely they must know the settings for the course. It sounds like an episode in one of those spy thrillers.

so the 'Stealthy' feature works then. handy if you eject over non-friendly territory, at least it would buy some time.

Looks like it did not cause fire and after crash

anyone have any solutions / ideas -- how would you go about locating the lost F-35 if you were so inclined?

Have fun searching for a stealth fighter...

Finders keepers!

It's at Diego Garcia with MH370

It's in Sasquatch country now, we'll find it 20 years from now in an area we already searched.

The answer has been found!

It crashed into a secret US Navy project: the Stealth Aircraft Carrier.

Could it be hijacked by an adversary that hacked into the plane's computer?

Did they find it jet?

so they were not kidding about that low RCS!

Unfortunately, no one had installed FindMyPlane

2034?

Why not use the Find my F-35 app?

what a clown state lmao

UFO: Unfound flying object?

UNFO: *not flying

So is this the "invisible" F-35 Trump used to talk about?

Funniest headline I read about this:

"F-35 carrying Epstein client list goes missing"

from a news satire site

Found it: https://babylonbee.com/news/bad-luck-military-announces-lost...

Too stealthy.

This sounds too ridiculous to be true.

I'd be more inclined to believe that it's a gambit to flush out an intelligence leak rather than an inability to find their own $160M plane.

You'd be surprised to learn then that the United States has lost several (6, last I knew) nuclear weapons over the decades.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220804-the-lost-nuclear...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear...

> The US Department of Defense has officially recognized at least 32 "Broken Arrow" incidents from 1950 to 1980.

https://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/media/filer_p...

> Unofficially, the Defense Atomic Support Agency (now known as the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)) has detailed hundreds of "Broken Arrow" incidents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear... ("Broken Arrow refers to an accidental event that involves nuclear weapons, warheads or components that does not create a risk of nuclear war.")

My jet-plane brings all the spys to the yard.

I guess I don't watch enough spy movies, but... how do you use a not-really-missing jet to flush out an intelligence leak?

I'm delighted you ask because I watch too many.

You crash an end-of-life trainer dressed up as an F35 in a carefully chosen site with no natural foot traffic. The FBI then sits in a bush and arrests everyone that turns up.

The F35 is the prime intelligence target for Russia before it gets in Ukrainian hands so they might risk some of their most valuable "illegals" i.e. the long-term embedded agents with flawless identities. For a big target, you gotta go big. Hang out the biggest prize in the most embarrassing way you can. This is a typical type of plot from The Americans TV show.

That or it's testing the adversarial satellite or balloon surveillance tech for how long it takes to find the craft. Maybe it's a test of Open Source Intelligence networks. Maybe it had genuine stealth tech and they are monitoring channels to find out if it was being successfully tracked. A top of the line stealth craft is hell of a honeypot so there are endless things that might get revealed - I imagine all hostile intelligence networks are lit up like christmas trees - it's like a barium meal.

Do I believe any of these? Nah. Reality is more ridiculous than fiction so no doubt it really is the case that they have just lost a prize intelligence asset.

let's be realistic. even their highly prized illegals can't collect much intel about an f35 on us territory.

don't let a crisis go to waste

It’s definitely BS. Transponders aside, the US has radar and near real-time satellite imagery of every square inch of American territory. There is a zero percent chance they don’t know where this plane is.

The US military absolutely does not have total ground radar across the entire country.

(And even if it did, radar is not magic. If the plane is at the bottom of a murky lake, then no amount of radar or satellite imagery is going to find it.)

>And even if it did, radar is not magic. If the plane is at the bottom of a murky lake, then no amount of radar or satellite imagery is going to find it.

The purpose of the radar would not be to see the plane at the bottom of a lake, but to provide a flight path after the ejection. If they had radar coverage, they should be able to see either where it ejected with an unstable flight path that put it within a fairly small circle of the ejection or on a stable flight path that gives them a more or less straight line to search along.

If you watch YouTube replay simulations[0] with ATC (air traffic control) when pilots violate a TFR (temporary flight restriction) for something like The President it's comical how long it takes for the interception fighters to find the target. It turns out the F-* radar is terrible at these kinds of situations. They almost always end up getting vectored in by air traffic control with their much more powerful ground based radar.

Just one example of how this kind of stuff plays out in the real world.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onx46fLyncM

Individual radar tracking on the F-* planes is kind an advantage as they are typically vectored in by airborne radar like AWACs in actual combat. There are advantages to this, with the most obvious is the opponent doesn't know where the attack is coming from since they are only being lit up by the AWACs. They can be vectored in from the most advantageous angle for the attacker in total passive mode.

That's a really good point - I'm certainly familiar with AWACS in concept but I didn't connect the dots here.

Thing is, in these scenarios they're the only armed aircraft around and their targets never have radar or any instrumentation/defense/even detection for it. So they could (and likely do) blast and paint all day and they still can't find bug smashers in dense urban environments like you most often see with TFRs.

I can understand the fighter radar is probably designed assuming assistance from AWACS but it still seems really strange to me.

It isn't - the fighter is not designed on the assumption it can rely on an AWACS, because they're very vulnerable aircraft. For many F-* jets, AWACS datalink was actually added later on.

The fighters can actually receive the radar information from AWACs, so the pilots see the radar image. However, just like not having total CAPs coverage over the US, there's not a lot of AWACs coverage either. I'd be shocked if there's any mechanism for them receiving civilian ATC radar. To that end, how much radar coverage is actually there? Isn't civilian traffic pretty much IDs broadcast from the planes?

Civilian air traffic control relies mainly on secondary surveillance radar including aircraft transponders, plus ADS-B. Primary radar coverage is limited to larger airports plus a few border and military areas. An aircraft can hide pretty effectively in most US airspace by just flying low with transponders switched off.

There are not going to be many situations where you need this advantage, have an AWACS but your opponent doesn't, and your AWACS is able to survive while being close enough to be helpful (both Russia and China have missiles that outrange an AWACS's radar, and the China and the US have stealthy planes and slightly lesser range missiles). It's a real limitation, it's problematic, and it has no upsides.

The fighter response to 9/11 was proof enough of the incompetence of the modern american air defense system.

Even after that event and two decades it's still a joke.

Which is why the regulations on passenger aircraft got tightened up, it's easier to get rid/impede the attack vector than to overcome the physical limitations of a radar antenna in a fighter jet's nose cone vs a many meters large ground radar antenna.

All of these TFR violations are early/inexperienced Cessna 172 pilots (or similar) who aren't up on TFRs, just lost, etc. They often can't even manage the radio and just go completely silent, blissfully unaware anything is happening until an F-16 shows up next to them hailing them saying things like "US military armed fighter aircraft. Acknowledge this by rocking your wings.", etc. Of course assuming the fighter eventually finds them in the first place...

What's really scary about ATC vectoring the fighters in is a bad actor could just as easily use that open comms to evade the fighter aircraft. Although they're obviously faster and more maneuverable it gets back to the first scenario I mentioned - the fighters can't find a target when they're not actively trying to evade them.

It would be pretty easy and straightforward for a bad actor to get a few hours of lessons, take up a Cessna loaded with improvised explosives of some type, and do a lot of damage. A lot of smaller air strips/fields don't even have a tower so they could get up there before anyone really has a clue.

> All of these TFR violations are early/inexperienced Cessna 172 pilots (or similar) who aren't up on TFRs, just lost, etc.

I'm (as a German) a drone pilot myself and looking to start ultralight next year, and the topic of TFRs/NOTAMs annoys me to no end even when just flying a drone. Tons of junk, hard to parse and keep track of, and hell I get that the primary glass of aircraft is supposed to be certified, but why on earth aren't there smartphone/tablet apps that keep up with TFRs and alert a pilot? Most of GA is low altitude anyway so in reach of cellphone towers.

[1] https://fixingnotams.org/the-problem-why-are-pilots-deeply-c...

> the topic of TFRs/NOTAMs annoys me to no end even when just flying a drone. Tons of junk, hard to parse and keep track of

Like many unusual situations there are usually at least two things that need to happen to cause the scenario I described:

1) Ignorance to TFRs/NOTAMS (Notice to Airman for those unfamiliar).

2) Loss of communication with the correct air traffic control.

When air traffic control notices these people violate airspace they always try to reach them via radio. In the event they're reachable it's "we have a phone number for you". When they go silent it's send up some fighters AND "here's a phone number for you".

> Most of GA is low altitude anyway so in reach of cellphone towers.

This is frowned upon. When airlines ask you to turn off your cell phones it is for two real reasons:

1) Pay attention to the safety briefing (no one does anyway, and no one turns their cell phones off).

2) The request of cell carriers. From what I understand cellular devices at altitude with significantly better line of sight are somewhat problematic to the towers as devices are able to attempt connection/association to many more than they usually would. Apparently combined with the faster speed the carriers don't appreciate this. Of course they deal with it with all kinds of means in terms of directional antennas, etc but like I said I've heard it's an issue.

I point out #2 because there's likely little industry support for the approach you describe. Additionally, you add an additional safety issue because users (pilots) will learn to depend on them and the variability of cell connectivity at altitude, weather, speed, geography, etc is uncertain. Aviation doesn't like that.

> Like many unusual situations there are usually at least two things that need to happen to cause the scenario I described:

> 1) Ignorance to TFRs/NOTAMS (Notice to Airman for those unfamiliar).

> 2) Loss of communication with the correct air traffic control.

Yeah, #1 is easy enough to happen because NOTAM (and, while we're ranting, METAR as well, or the fact that aviation still uses feet and knots despite everyone but the US and UK being on metric) is fundamentally broken, a relic of very old times that has never been updated (similar to the clusterfuck that is flight/staff planning and booking) because no one wants to invest money into upgrading all the legacy crap. So all it takes for a serious incident is a simple human error: forgetting to change a comms frequency, overlooking a NOTAM in all the spam, or accidentally using metric units.

> I point out #2 because there's likely little industry support for the approach you describe. Additionally, you add an additional safety issue because users (pilots) will learn to depend on them and the variability of cell connectivity at altitude, weather, speed, geography, etc is uncertain. Aviation doesn't like that.

I wasn't talking about commercial air flights, I was referring to the Cessna and other small-scale GA. They're barely faster than a high-speed train (an 172 manages 300 km/h, a German ICE 350 km/h, and I can use LTE in the latter), so for wide parts of any GA flight a pilot should have LTE access on their phone.

Anyway: yes, people will learn to depend on their phones/tablets to alert them if they enter a TFR zone or that they have to change their radio frequency. But ffs... the status quo leads to so many issues every year [1], because pilots have zero assistance if they're in an older plane with a classic, no-glass setup, or in a plane with a glass cockpit but no assistance. Adding a fallback option is the safer way, it avoids incidents.

And the truly safe way would be to upgrade all the legacy crap, or at least augment it in a backward-compatible way: a digital carrier in radios that can carry cryptographically signed messages for radios that signal new frequency and squawk codes, for example, that the pilot simply has to confirm and be done.

[1] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/8751/how-often-...

Check out foreflight. It's an app that does exactly what you are talking about. It will definitely show relevant NOTAMs and TFRs and update in flight. I don't know about europe, but its pretty rare for people to fly GA in North America without some sort of phone app running.

There is also FltPlanGo which is free, but it is less full featured than foreflight.

>Although they're obviously faster and more maneuverable it gets back to the first scenario I mentioned

This reminds me of Barry Seal taking advantage of his slower aircraft with a million dollar door to avoid the faster jets with short legs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODIZKyevVxQ

of course, the majority of that movie turned the creative license knob to an 11

> the US has radar and near real-time satellite imagery of every square inch of American territory.

have you been watching prime-time crime fighting drama TV shows?

the implementation of that system is probably 8x as bad as it sounds, and it sounds too complex to implement in less than two decades.

real-time (or "near" real-time, whatever that means) imagery of every square inch of the continental US? No.

Even if the imagery was real-time, the process to get access to it most surely isn't.

That's simply not true. The US military only has primary radar coverage over a small fraction of the country. (Air traffic control primarily relies on secondary surveillance radar.)

Only the weather satellites in geostationary orbits provide near real-time imagery, and they lack the resolution to spot something the size of an aircraft. High resolution images come from spy satellites in highly inclined low orbits which provide only intermittent coverage of any particular location. And they can't see through clouds.

Isn't the whole point of an F-35 that it is really hard to track with radar?

Outside of combat missions, stealth aircraft have little widgets on them which multiply their radar signature. Stealth aircraft are meant to be stealth only in real combat missions.

Seems to be this thing discussed here,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luneburg_lens#Radar_reflector

(caption: "Luneburg reflectors (the marked protrusion) on an F-35")

edit: Also here (with quotes from a US Air Force Avionics Technician):

https://theaviationgeekclub.com/these-devices-make-stealth-a... ("How Luneburg lens radar reflectors are used to make stealth aircraft visible on radar screens")

It can be.

I believe for “routine” training they’ll keep a radar reflector in them. Very little need to have stealth when bouncing around the US.

I was in a stealth fighter squadron. It really depends on the mission profile as to determine if the reflectors will be on the plane during CONUS training. If we're doing BVR 'tag' drills, they won't have them installed. If we're just putting butts in seats to keep certs current or maybe some air to ground training, then the reflectors will be installed.

Caveat, I was in the Air Force and I'm not too familiar with NATOPS which is what I believe the Marines would be operating under to determine SOP. I was not a pilot, but I was in operations and received the same briefings. My training was also from when we first got real stealth fighters and SOP has probably evolved a lot in the last decade.

What's most interesting about this story to me is... What sort of mishap would lead to an ejection with autopilot left functioning? That all seems very peculiar. Weird way to join the Caterpillar Club.

“The Caterpillar Club is an informal association of people who have successfully used a parachute to bail out of a disabled aircraft. After authentication by the parachute maker, applicants receive a membership certificate and a distinctive lapel pin. The nationality of the person whose life was saved by parachute and ownership of the aircraft are not factors in determining qualification for membership; anybody whose life was saved by using a parachute after bailing out of a disabled aircraft is eligible. The requirement that the aircraft is disabled naturally excludes parachuting enthusiasts in the normal course of a recreational jump, or those involved in military training jumps.“

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_Club

Brought back memories of my dad's "induction" into the Caterpillar Club in 1962. When we cleaned out and sold my folks' house, I took a picture of his framed membership certificate; he often wore the lapel pin on civilian sport-coat lapels.

https://www.commondraft.org/Caterpillar-Club-certificate.png

Amazing. Thank you for that. Do you exist because he had an ejection seat?

> Do you exist because he had an ejection seat?

No, I was a little tyke at the time. (The story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33348425)

Dunno but if they dont find the aircraft it will be difficult to determine how it happened. My guess would be weird software. There might be something with the F35b's because there are a few crashes in the headlines.

Worst case scenario someone slaved it to a netowrk and stole it since the f35bs have VTOL.

It's really hard to track with active radar, which is why the first thing NATO does in a foreign country is bomb all TV and radio stations off the air. With passive methods it's no problem at all.

What do TV and radio stations have to do with active radar?

TV and radio stations can be used for passive radar. Passive radar is when you use existing radio sources as you illumination source and your radar system is listen-only. Stealth aircraft tend to be more visible on passive radar since passive is usually a longer wavelength that the aircraft was not designed for. You can even DIY a passive radar.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/passive-radar-with-sdr

You could use a focused receiver to look for TV signals being emitted from an object thousands of feet in the air over (say) the ocean off the coast of California. Since you know there is no TV station antenna floating in the sky out there you know you are getting reflected rf from a plane.

Your receiver is "passive" - it doesn't emit a signal - so the attacking enemy has to find it visually. If the enemy bomb all the TV antennas then you need to emit your own signal to generate the reflection.

The other way around, it's easy to track these with passive radar which is why all radio emitters get bombed.

Nothing. That's the point. You don't need active radar with the right mix of broadcast stations and math tricks.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time.

This is not even close to true.

ATC radar regularly loses small planes on 'primary' radar (primary radar being pure radar), and has to rely on the transponder. There are many areas where you simply don't have primary coverage, especially close to the ground. I've flown through military controlled airspace where they lose radar contact with me in a Cessna less than 10 miles from the base.

Ah, yes, radar. Notoriously effective on a stealth fighter.

BTW, the only real-time satellite imagery of all of the US is from weather satellites in geosynchronous orbit. Which has the resolution of a city.

If near real-time, you mean a couple of times per day. There aren't enough LEO observation satellites to provide complete coverage.

There's a handful of missing nukes in the US from some very large crashed planes that we still haven't found.

Still missing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash

Or a new marketing campaign from Lockheed Martin - 'stealth technology so good, even we can't find it'.

Meanwhile the loony tune demographic has decided that it flew to China on Biden's orders.

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Sort of an absurd thing to say. However, it’s repeated all the time, and in every generation in some form.

One really has nothing to do with the other. If we could educate people at a younger age so they understand this, maybe we can make more progress in creating a better society.

Start with the fact that military spending has decreased as a percentage of GDP:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/217581/outlays-for-defen...

What an odd form of comparison, Military spending is almost entirely a function of tax, not Gross Domestic Product of a country.

But taking just one aspect of that graph – overall military spending - it's true that spending has decreased since we were involved in a full scale occupation of another country, assaulting several others, then whack-a-moling the downstream consequences of those wars. It is also (in my humble opinion) extremely disingenuous to not include the direct financing of another country's war (Ukraine) which at this time is something around 80 billion.

- Also something to note is underneath your gdp<>government-spending graph it states spending in 2022 was 746 billion, predicted to increase to 1.1 trillion next year.

While spending on education was 42.5 billion in 2022.

You are correct in that we need to educate people better, it is not accurate to say we could solve a plethora of societal issues with just a fraction of the financial fuel the military industrial complex requires.

In the US, education spending significantly exceeds defense spending. It is almost entirely allocated under State budgets, the number you are referring to is Federal. The Federal government could stop spending on education entirely and expenditures would still exceed the military. The US spends far more on education per student than almost any other country, per the OECD. It raises the question of why the US still has mediocre outcomes in education given the amount of money spent on it.

The US spends a lot on the military but at least the outcome of that expenditure is an exceptional and unmatched capability. One can argue whether or not that capability is needed, but at least they are getting what they are paying for to some extent.

> While spending on education was 42.5 billion in 2022.

In case anyone was curious, https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/ reports total spending of $1.76 trillion on education in fiscal year 2022. (It also reports defense spending of $1.11 trillion. The subpage https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/defense_spending includes the number $765.8 billion as part of a breakdown.)

Color me corrected. I did pull federal data.

You don't actually have to crash the jet, just tell everyone you did.

It's a ploy to get foreign adversaries to clean up pollution.

"We can't find the wreckage ANYWHERE! Maybe if we cleaned up some of this pollution, we would find the plane underneath it? Is there anyone who wants to find F-35 wreckage? Chinaaaaaa?"

The federal government provides billions of free or reduced price meals to school children every year. American schools do not let you not eat lunch, if you try to skip lunch you will have a lunch forcibly given to you for free for as long as it takes the school administration to figure out what is going on with your parents. Your parents will be billed for the lunches if they can afford it, and if not you will be signed up for the federal free lunch program. But either way this plays out, they will not allow you to not eat a lunch.

Even if you plead that you ate a huge breakfast and you aren't hungry, they will put a tray of food in front of you anyway.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/ch...

We don't have children starving in schools

It's not pretty right now. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/05/03/1173535...

The problem that the US has is that calories are too cheap. Look at the class demographics of obesity. It's pretty clear no one is starving.

blanket free lunch is disgustingly wasteful and a terrible solution for needy children. It is like buying a new car whenever you have a flat tire.

I can feed my own kids, I don't need them picking up an extra slice of pizza every day for fun and throwing milk and plates and disposable utensils in the garbage. Ask any lunch worker about the additional garbage and waste it generates.

The correct solution is to remove the barriers stopping children from getting free lunch- stop requiring parents to sign up for it. If a lunch aide feels like a kid needs food, they should be able to sign them up without anyone having to know about it or consent to it. Let the schools give kids in need double lunches if they want them and/or something to take home with them. Double down on the kids in need, don't force it on everyone.

There should never be any judgement regarding a child's financial situation during the school day.

The place where I grew up handled this in the best possible way: Every kid got a lunch if they went through the lunch line, without exception. The school system simply kept track of which students got a meal, and at the end of the month, they'd either mail a bill or it would be covered through the free lunch program.

Under this system, there was no opportunity for students or staff to pass judgement on students for their financial situation.

the issue here is that how is it determined who is eligible for the free lunch program after the fact? The parents are too negligent to sign up, their account goes into arrears and the kid ends up skipping the line out of fear getting punished for it. Parents have to sign up and too many don't give a crap

> and the kid ends up skipping the line out of fear getting punished for it.

No, as I said above, every kid got a lunch without exception. The record keeping was unidirectional. The lunch line tallied the quantity of lunches that were handed out to each student and reported this to the district, but the district did not report back anything about paying bills to anyone at the school. Nobody in the lunch room knew anything about the finances of any student. They were tasked only with handing out lunches.

> Parents have to sign up and too many don't give a crap

This is better to make a problem of the district's finance department, not the individual school. They can solve this by mailing bills to parents and/or information about signing up for lunch programs. This is not a problem to solve by holding a child's lunch hostage.

I’m often shocked at what my kids are able to choose (as elementary students, much worse for middle school) when buying cafeteria lunch. Admittedly I went to a small parochial school, but when we bought “hot lunch” we were given a pre-determined, food pyramid compliant assortment and are only choice was chocolate or plain milk. And you were done when your tray was empty, or recess was over. There was very little waste from cafeteria meals.

Now my middle schooler will choose two cookies and a juice and the lunch attendant doesn’t bay an eye. Any retroactive punishment is long after he’s enjoyed his food treats or diabetes in early adulthood.

Are there any stats/citations that back up your assertion that kids who bring their own lunches in universal free lunch states are wasting food en masse?

> a terrible solution for needy children

The kids who previously weren't getting fed are now getting fed, aren't they?

The tire got replaced too. Who cares if we are killing the environment because of lazy policymakers right?

I don't understand what you're saying here.

> a lunch aide feels like a kid needs food

Giving random overworked, often bigoted people the power to let a kid eat or not? What could possibly go wrong?!

As of 2021, roughly 1 in 8 children in the US experience food insecurity[1].

[1]: https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/child-hunge...

"food insecurity" is not the same as starving.

I was wondering how 1 in 8 children could be experiencing food insecurity in a nation with a 40% obesity rate, and what food insecurity was exactly, so I poked around in their methodology a little.

https://www.feedingamerica.org/sites/default/files/2022-08/M...

Happy to be corrected if I'm misreading this. But if I understand correctly, they go into it on page 8, and there are basically two ways they calculate food insecurity.

The first is a weighted average of variables that are unrelated or indirectly related to food - including income, race and disability rate.

The second is self-reporting (basically asking households if they need more money for food).

Hmm.

It's paradoxical.

Historically wealthy and high status people were "fatter" and had pale skin. It signaled that you had ready access to food and didn't work outside.

Now high status people are thin/muscular and have tanner skin - cheap and quick food is terrible for you and it signals you have the time to workout, pay for a trainer/gym membership, go on vacation to sunny destinations, aren't chained to a desk/working retail, can pay for and have access to high quality and fresh foods, etc.

More and more high quality and healthy food is expensive and/or requires more time to prepare and plan. If you're shuffling between multiple minimum wage jobs you're often eating fast food all day because you either can't afford or don't have time for anything better.

Then start looking at food deserts[0]. Stop at a bodega in a poor neighborhood that serves as the only food source around and prepare to be shocked at the absolute garbage they have available that's still covered by SNAP.

[0] - https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts

My kids go to a school where the majority of the kids are somewhere around poverty level (easy to be under there in Silicon Valley if you are not an engineer in tech).

I absolutely believe the administrators when they say that the meals some of the kids get in school might be the only ones they get for the day (by far not the majority: those are hard working parents, dedicated to their kids). And watching how much hand-holding is needed for some of the families on the pre-school-year paperwork day (back to school night) I am fully convinced that the worst-off kids are likely to wind up without food if their receiving it depends on their parents filling out forms.

And I want to be clear that the kids I think might be on the edge are not (in most cases) there because of neglect. They are there because living here is more expensive than their parents can afford completely, despite working long hours. That is a condemnation of a society that mis-appropriates the wealth (like on Engineers like me).

Yes, it is a waste of money that my kids (kids of a Silicon Valley Engineer) get their food for free, but looking at the alternative (kids going hungry), is it really that much of a waste?

I support free school lunch programs; no child should go hungry. But in California at least, many of the families with children who struggle with food insecurity entered the country illegally or with dubious claims of refugee status. That is a broader societal issue that can't be addressed through school funding or wealth redistribution.

Citation needed. We have a lot of homegrown poverty here.

Sure but they still need to eat.

I've seen this before, you end up with a bunch of overweight households reporting that it's too expensive to maintain a 4500 calorie a day diet.

You would probably have a different perspective if you were in that situation, especially as a child.

EDIT: Downvotes for compassion, HN is rough today!

I grew up in a household that would qualify. I know exactly how I feel about it having experienced it as a child.

I’ll be sure to let the kids know!

If 1 in 8 kids experiences food insecurity, then it's likely that there are at least some, maybe 1 in 100, who are starving, however you define it.

Also, there are two kinds of starvation: in one case the quantity of food is insufficient, in the other its quality is. Eating fries with soda in great quantity every day could still starve a growing kid.

Entirely credible. Right at the top it says it's a stealth aircraft. It's just doing what it does best.

Incompetence is positively correlated with salary and responsibility. The more money you handle on your job the likelier you are to be incompetent.

It comes as no surprise to me that people responsible for these machines of war are more incompetent than you or me.

> The more money you handle on your job the likelier you are to be incompetent.

And your source for this data is…?

He handles _lots_ of money at his job.

Sorry, no, I’m just stating an opinion. And even if I had a source, the definition of incompetence varies so widely, that surely this statement would hold no additional weight.

Why do you believe it?

Because of my misbelieve in capitalism and the belief in the corruption of governments. Or as the saying goes: “All power corrupts” and all that. On top of that, I am no believer in meritocracy (that is I don’t believe people advance in position based on merit).

Now lets do some thought statistics. I—as a bayesean—assign the uniform distribution as a prior to competence, that is I assume that competence is equally distributed across occupations and positions independent of responsibility. Now, lets allow some movement between positions and assume correlation between responsibility and salaries (that is people being payed more are responsible for a greater proportion of the system). Now assume there is not a 100% correlation between competence and being moved into a greater position with a greater salary (that is we assume some level of corruption; people moved into greater position because of favors, family ties, wealth, gender, etc. Even misattributed skills of those promoted [i.e. incompetence of those responsible promoting and hiring; i.e. suspect positive feedback of incompetence]).

Finally we acknowledge the fact that being moved into a position with more responsibility and you don’t gain skills as you are moved, your competence will decrease (that is competence is a function of responsibility and skill).

It should be easy to see that your posterior distribution of competence to salaries and the posterior distribution of competence to responsibility should both be skewed towards the right. That is you as you increase responsibility and salaries, you will find relatively fewer people competent at their jobs.

So basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

They are the CEO, handling more money than us plebs.

They handle the most money on their job out of anyone ever.

I’m so confused? Is it that they can’t make a gps tracker that works after a catastrophic crash?

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