Besides losing the plane, ejection is a terribly stressful thing on the body and the pilot may be grounded for a while, even permanently unable to fly fighter jets.
Based on my interaction with technology and tech support. If I was on an hour long call with tech support in my *fighter jet* and we hit the point of turn it off and on again I'd just punch out. Fuck if I'm going to risk my life for some lowest bidder boondoggle plane. If they don't bother maintaining it properly let em buy a new one.
on a mobile device, it is "hard". It is too long for deleting it single digits, but too short for long press, ie you accidentally usually delete the url part also. And automatic select did work before, so it cut at ? making it easy... but Google made a fix, that it won't select the ?si= part as a breaker. It is engineered annoyance. At the same time they allowed app advertisement to go 60 or 90 seconds and forced sounds.
Step 1: Aviate (keep the plane flying). Step 2: Navigate (work out where you are, where you're going to be, and where you could land/crash). Step 3: Communicate - talk to people on the ground to let them know your problem, and hopefully they will have solutions you don't. If you need to crash land, ideally you want as little fuel left as possible (so less fire), so you might as well chat about possible solutions while you burn fuel.
As a Swiss taxpayer I laugh at myself for spending billions ordering 36 of the same jets from a country that just hit us with a 39% tariff and can basically render the jets useless by denying us access to their servers anytime.
Patently false. It was 49 minutes of being on hold followed by 1 minute of being connected to the person who worked on a completely different part of the F-35 and has no idea what the problem is.
Remember folks, if you want to criticize the F35, that's fine, but you REALLY need to look at the crash rates of basically every other US military aircraft. Then we need to realize that the F35 being "unsafe" juuuuuust might be a little overblown compared to almost anything else in the sky.
It goes that way with airliners as well. They do the checklist in the manual first. That doesn't work they do the next checklist. They run out of checklists, they call the maintenance troubleshooters. If they can't solve it, then it's a call to the builders engineering dept.
As the kid of one of the people who (tangentially) worked on developing that plane, and the sibling of someone who currently still works for that company...
This is what fucking happens when you rely on capitalism to develop your shit. The company had to nix a bunch of development time because of the low-balled bids. In order to keep giving the execs their ridiculous and unearned bonuses, they had to cut people who were actually doing shit from the project. And now you have shit that don't work
(Before anyone comes in with a "it wasn't properly serviced, there was ice on the landing gear so it didn't retract" - there were supposed to be sensors for that. They cut the sensors in development because they cost money, and people were going to be servicing it anyway. But, of course, we see where that went.)
Apparently they did, in fact, do that. The problem is that when the plane's computers booted back up, they assumed the plane was stationary and on the ground, which since this was very much NOT the case lead to the avionics becoming completely FUBAR.
That is patently false. The landing gear not fully decompressing (due to water contamination in the hydraulic fluid and zub-zero temperatures) after a touch-and-go caused the aircraft to remain/revert to ground mode.
Fine is relative. Apparently, the ejection seat is terrible on your spine and you can only have quite few ejections before you're forcefully retired. Better than dying in a ball of fire ofc, but certainly not "fine".
Tl;dr - the hydraulic systems were improperly serviced allowing water to get in. This caused the landing gear to not properly retract after takeoff in freezing conditions. This caused the sensors to not read the gear as fully extended (because it wasn't) which when power cycling the flight controls lead to (after several other things) the jet assuming it was on the ground and becoming unflyable. It was _probably_ safely landable, but the pilot couldn't know that.
It's not like he could hop out to see if they were up or down, and give em a kick to see if they are properly locked in place. No one is going to try to belly land a fighter potentially loaded with things that go boom.
That's kind of like when the pitot tubes freeze over on a Blackhawk and the stabilator slews full down ( because it thinks it's on the ground, or at least 0 knots airspeed) that's what crashed a lot of them in the 80s.
Ah yes, the true question of aviation. Who will win? Complex, sophisticated, expensive machines flown by trained personnel, or a clogged lil metal pore?
The computers rebooting in flight isn't accounted for in the design? Even with the landing gear down, that seems like a scenario it should be able to figure out
They really should have put some blame on LM too, not only on the ground crew. When the pilot went back to afterburner and pulled on stick the aircraft should have switched to flight mode. It didn't. And that's bad coding.
A clarification: the gear didn't properly retract initially, it extended normally except the nose wheel wasn't straight/centered. This was the _probably_ safe landing configuration. The gear not fully decompressing after a touch-and-go caused the aircraft to revert to ground mode and that is a 100% unlandable aircraft.
My very limited understanding is that the f35 is basically unflyable without the computer assistance, so if it thinks its on the ground, I'd assume it is unflyable. I dunno though, its classified. We need to ask the war thunder community for guidance.
Thank you for the breakdown. I wouldn’t have read/understood most of that, I’m glad pilot survived. I still reserve the right to be pissed off that my taxes paid for this overly complicated mess. More so that this mess had nothing to do with the over priced, overly complicated jet doing its job, instead just acting out a big ol fucked up publicity stunt. If I missed something or you can justify any of it I’d honestly listen to your opinion, but it seems fucked up to me.
The only bit you missed is that tech support was 1000% on trying to solve the problem, instead of make the jet recoverable. There were some options there, but instead they tried to solve the problem until the last second, so he had to eject and ditch the plane in an unrecoverable fashion. Otherwise, the real takeaway is "everything should have a manual override"
Manual override is problematic. If you need manual overrides for 'never' occurances, you end up with pilot errors shooting up. A related example is the very far from unique 'shut down working engine, not broken one', 'try to troubleshoot failing plane and end up failing to fly the plane'.
Sure, overengineering your manual overrides can be problematic, but at some level there needs to be a way to tell the computer its malfunctioning and needs to be bypassed. Maybe thats a combination of command codes from ground and a flight sequence which gets input to prevent bad actors, but the computer can glitching and no one can do anything about it is a design flaw.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuMDwMxzNkU is related. This is an occasion when the pilot failed to consider what would happen if his diagnostics failed to fix the plane immediately - flying in a MIG23. He _barely_ survived when his passenger pulled the ejection handle for both of them. POssible failure of flight controller unit and he was attempting to revert to manual mode.
If his troubleshooting hypothesis was correct, he had a several second margin - perhaps - in which he could save the jet. However, if he was wrong, he was 1s from killing both himself and the passenger as the seats barely worked due to the attitude and sink rate.
I suppose I didn’t outright say that but meant to imply it with “overly complicated” etc. well done by tech and pilot, but as you said, why no manual/analog backup in the first place? Seems like getting in the plane without a parachute, or a car without seatbelts.
And before anyone gets pedantic, yes I’ve flown on planes, driven cars before but my point is there are safety/backup measures in place that don’t equate to “call tech support”.
Not a pilot but adding manual options takes space and adds weight and looking at the cockpit of an F35, where do you put the manual controls? You'd want them to be unobtrusive so they don't get actuated accidentally yet easy to get to when you do need them
In this case, "manual" is a system to override the computer, not a physical stick which bypasses the wire controls. Even something like a fuse box which prevents certain info from passing in, so you can yank the whole malfunctioning section and it hands control back
It ought to have a joystick and a throttle at least, right? "the jet assuming it was on the ground and becoming unflyable" is the kind of situation that doesn't seem like it should be possible. My car may believe the parking brake to be engaged but does not refuse to drive in that case.
Not in my case. In such a situation, I'm positive I would have thoroughly assessed the facts I had at hand, panicked, fucked up, and died a horrible death. I'm glad I'm not a pilot.
You're buying in to literal Russian propaganda; they're the ones who have been selling you the idea that the F35 is problematic from the start. Every early complaint about the plane has been directly linked back to Russian money/influence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH8o9DIIXqI
It has a better safety record per flight hour than the F-15 or the F-16.
However, when an F-16 crashes today due to poor maintenance it doesn't make a headline, the F-35 does. Then that crash gets waved around for weeks and investigated while 2 more F-16s crash.
It requires a lot less hours, the hell are you talking about? The F-16 is sitting north of 10hours per flight hour while the F-35a is less than 5. Counterpoint is that it does cost more to operate than an F-16, the US wanted higher sortie rates so the F-35 has faster turnarounds and less man hours at the cost of more expensive parts. Upside is you need fewer of them to do the same missions because they can be ready to go much quicker.
And there is something to throw in as well, the F-35 costs more to operate but it's going to survive, which means you don't have to replace the airframe and the pilot.
Then what is your problem with it? It's not safety record, as it has half the accidents per flight hour which is great because it doesn't have 50 years of development time like the f-15/16 to work out bugs so it's only going to get better.
Not really. That money didn’t just disappear. The vast majority of it went to buying labor and parts (produced with more labor), which meant it’s ultimately paid to people.
That includes me. I spent a few years of my life working on the F-35 program, which is how I avoided being poor and hungry.
He said it's a piece of shit, but was offered evidence it isn't, and you ignore it. Learn to change opinion based on evidence and you will be smarter than most people in the world
but that's not evidence of that. it's like going "oh who cares that your brand new car set itself on fire when it was a week old, 40 year old cars break down loads! the news just doesn't bother reporting on it!". it's ok for a 40 years old car/plane to have problems. and it was ok for a new car/plane to have problems 40 years ago. it's not ok for a new car/plane to have problems this severe now.
4bRigger
Call clippy.
eion85
Besides losing the plane, ejection is a terribly stressful thing on the body and the pilot may be grounded for a while, even permanently unable to fly fighter jets.
That's another cost in terms of lost training.
NPaine
But did he open a ticket?
zubax
Ok pilot, you win. You had worst day than me. I'll come back stronger tomorrow.
SMarkt
yeah, we all know that 48 of those 50 minutes are the pilot waiting in the waiting queue
TheWeebleWobler
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
bambinod
"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"
EggFooYung
Well that's what happens when you're talking on the phone instead of paying attention. /s
BosunMark
next time buy the landing gear app...
Hmffff
https://media0.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1aDY0c3h5eXhvMTZqZ2lzaGNzZmh2MXp2dG1hNnVtajk3dW4yaGVnaSZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/3o7ypWrikZsZXOURwI/200w.webp
TankardHoot
It's actually a subscription. The trial period had ended though.
doccynical
Thankfully the ejection seat trial was still valid.
UsuallyARabbit
It was actually the vehicle ejecting them for a rejected credit card.
FuzzyX
Or simply a camera underneath the aircraft to be able to visually inspect the landing gear.
EstoyPoopis
Fuck, of course. Somebody hire this guy.
jackal696
Well they could have tom cruised it you knowfly upside down while another plane looked down. Then angled that to the sun to unfreeze it. Geez
TravelingTableTop
Based on my interaction with technology and tech support. If I was on an hour long call with tech support in my *fighter jet* and we hit the point of turn it off and on again I'd just punch out. Fuck if I'm going to risk my life for some lowest bidder boondoggle plane. If they don't bother maintaining it properly let em buy a new one.
perseco
They couldn't just fly over a spotter to confirm the landing gear position and then use the VTOL to land?
GorillaFLicks
Call Center: No, I’m sorry sir. There’s a subscription fee of $14.95 per month to activate the landing gear option.
Pilot: What? Fine, here my Visa number…
Call Center: I’m sorry but that card has been declined…
Whatdoyousaytoanicecupoftea
Im really hoping the hold music was the Top Gun theme
Whatdoyousaytoanicecupoftea
Actually, revised option https://youtu.be/h0V5xiMK8_4?si=DTaBQSm2HVsGShbg
UNHchabo
Fyi, when you see an "si=" tag on a URL that's almost always tracking information, you can get rid of it.
SergeyPrkl
on a mobile device, it is "hard". It is too long for deleting it single digits, but too short for long press, ie you accidentally usually delete the url part also. And automatic select did work before, so it cut at ? making it easy... but Google made a fix, that it won't select the ?si= part as a breaker. It is engineered annoyance. At the same time they allowed app advertisement to go 60 or 90 seconds and forced sounds.
UNHchabo
Yeah, deleting text I often need to do short bursts so that it deletes like 7 characters at a time.
phuzz00
Step 1: Aviate (keep the plane flying). Step 2: Navigate (work out where you are, where you're going to be, and where you could land/crash). Step 3: Communicate - talk to people on the ground to let them know your problem, and hopefully they will have solutions you don't. If you need to crash land, ideally you want as little fuel left as possible (so less fire), so you might as well chat about possible solutions while you burn fuel.
cousteau
Step 4: Procrastinate (too complicated; will do all that later)
Bebrown1
Step 4: Fly it as far into the crash as possible. - per Bob Hoover
yamamasyamaha
I laugh at people who buy expensive unreliable cars
Now I laugh at myself for spending $76 billion on 100 jets that barely work
(I’m a US tax payer)
PragmaticPrimate
As a Swiss taxpayer I laugh at myself for spending billions ordering 36 of the same jets from a country that just hit us with a 39% tariff and can basically render the jets useless by denying us access to their servers anytime.
yamamasyamaha
Helllll yeah you get it!
As Americans, the companies could do tha same to th government, yay!
PileOfWalthers
No, I _am_ tech support, asking ChatGPT “what is fighter jet, precious?”
terajack2048
Omg he rebooted didn’t he……”Sir I clearly told you to park the jet first prior to reboot”
Tarmaccian
Fun fact: the computers in the F-35 can be rebooted while flying, and it’s something the pilots actually train to do.
sindail
https://media4.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1eWdtdDB5b2hwbzR0azFxMTQ5ZXA1Zjlsdnh5eDdmYjlubzA1MWlpaSZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/sbI5Merh3wkc4sU0Zm/200w.webp The pilot for the first 45 minutes of the call. The other 5 were spent trying to transfer him to someone that can speak and understand English
StarSumiaki
Patently false. It was 49 minutes of being on hold followed by 1 minute of being connected to the person who worked on a completely different part of the F-35 and has no idea what the problem is.
lemmerustlethosejimmies
Remember folks, if you want to criticize the F35, that's fine, but you REALLY need to look at the crash rates of basically every other US military aircraft. Then we need to realize that the F35 being "unsafe" juuuuuust might be a little overblown compared to almost anything else in the sky.
nojustsayitdont
It goes that way with airliners as well. They do the checklist in the manual first. That doesn't work they do the next checklist. They run out of checklists, they call the maintenance troubleshooters. If they can't solve it, then it's a call to the builders engineering dept.
Telemapus
Then flaming death.
PaddyPatrick
Have you tried turning the jet off, waiting a few minutes and restarting?
auldsong
You mean rebooting, right?
PaddyPatrick
Reblogging
cousteau
Apparently that's exactly what happened, but then the plane avionics assumed it was on the ground and refused to fly.
Akaszkronos
https://media0.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1bGQ1aGdrMmVkOW1sdW9zdWo2OWFpazRkY3ZrYTZubTEzNHkzd3locSZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/FspLvJQlQACXu/200w.webp
Alienduck2
Is it plugged in?!
umbrellamaker
I don't think they made it to "on again" this time
NightOwlRally
"Sign into Zoom to continue"
ALTITUDE...ALTITUDE...
cousteau
"Please select which of these squares contain a picture of a motorbike" RAAAARGH
cousteau
(this was me trying to order a taxi on the app when I was late to the train station, btw)
NeurodivergenceMedley
As the kid of one of the people who (tangentially) worked on developing that plane, and the sibling of someone who currently still works for that company...
This is what fucking happens when you rely on capitalism to develop your shit. The company had to nix a bunch of development time because of the low-balled bids. In order to keep giving the execs their ridiculous and unearned bonuses, they had to cut people who were actually doing shit from the project. And now you have shit that don't work
JustLettingPeopleBeWrong
Nah. I wish all fighter planes were shitty and fell out of the sky.
"If this factory ever produces a shell that can actually be fired. I'll be very unhappy" - Oskar Schindler.
NeurodivergenceMedley
(Before anyone comes in with a "it wasn't properly serviced, there was ice on the landing gear so it didn't retract" - there were supposed to be sensors for that. They cut the sensors in development because they cost money, and people were going to be servicing it anyway. But, of course, we see where that went.)
huffnpuff72
Tech support: have you tried turning it off and then on again
Pilot: you want me to what?
mithiwithi
Apparently they did, in fact, do that. The problem is that when the plane's computers booted back up, they assumed the plane was stationary and on the ground, which since this was very much NOT the case lead to the avionics becoming completely FUBAR.
HenryLongfellowIII
That seems like unwanted behavior.
ReturnWinchester
It is unwanted, which is why it never happened and is completely made up. See my response to his comment for what actually happened.
ReturnWinchester
That is patently false. The landing gear not fully decompressing (due to water contamination in the hydraulic fluid and zub-zero temperatures) after a touch-and-go caused the aircraft to remain/revert to ground mode.
The11thPlague
Revert to ground move? That doesn't sound any better!
Apeofdeath
All lines are busy, please be patient
icouldntthinkofabetterusername2
*bossanova muzak doesn’t intensify but instead stays at a non intrusive level*
tavinjer
Nonintrusive?!? You’ll never get callers to hang up with that attitude!
jayman0123
"We are experiencing higher than normal call volume."
Apeofdeath
Phone battery low
vicvalour
"Did you know we have a website?" (Every 2 mins)
DimwitF
"Your call WILL be answered in the order it WAS received."
override367
"You can handle most fighter jet tasks, such as ordering the new AIM-120E, from our app, available in the app store and google play"
YesButMaybe
$102 million up in flames. oh wait. $101 million in flames. the ejected seat is $1 million and re-usable.
Neurisko
Yeah only $750k to refurbish!
solemnwar
Was glad to read that the pilot was fine. God, imagine your final moments being on tech support...
bottledham
"Next time you really need to submit a ticket"
insaaanity
Fine is relative. Apparently, the ejection seat is terrible on your spine and you can only have quite few ejections before you're forcefully retired. Better than dying in a ball of fire ofc, but certainly not "fine".
Ghlargh
I heard you're generally not allowed to sit in an ejection seat if you've had 2 or 3 ejections. Of course it could fuck you up on 1st one.
FuzorFishbug
I've heard if your ejection lasts longer than four hours, you should consult a physician immediately.
SithElephant
Tl;dr - the hydraulic systems were improperly serviced allowing water to get in. This caused the landing gear to not properly retract after takeoff in freezing conditions. This caused the sensors to not read the gear as fully extended (because it wasn't) which when power cycling the flight controls lead to (after several other things) the jet assuming it was on the ground and becoming unflyable. It was _probably_ safely landable, but the pilot couldn't know that.
CyberHexx
TL:DR Trillion dollar plane and it still doesn't fly properly.
Magus25
It's not like he could hop out to see if they were up or down, and give em a kick to see if they are properly locked in place. No one is going to try to belly land a fighter potentially loaded with things that go boom.
Wardonk3y
That's kind of like when the pitot tubes freeze over on a Blackhawk and the stabilator slews full down ( because it thinks it's on the ground, or at least 0 knots airspeed) that's what crashed a lot of them in the 80s.
Evadare
Ah yes, the true question of aviation. Who will win? Complex, sophisticated, expensive machines flown by trained personnel, or a clogged lil metal pore?
SocoFox
Yeah if the computer was no longer assisting stability, it would be unflyable.
Tjitso
If the plane thought it was on the ground, why didn't he just take off? (/s)
manystripes
The computers rebooting in flight isn't accounted for in the design? Even with the landing gear down, that seems like a scenario it should be able to figure out
BarryTheCyborg
I believe they tried a touch and go to knock it loose, which caused it to switch to ground mode while still airborne
keillrandor
Was it low on Cyan?
WeAllLiveInAUserSubmarine
Fuck you, go on flyin'
JinButOnHisPhone
PC LOAD LETTER what the fuck does that mean?
t9dawg
They really should have put some blame on LM too, not only on the ground crew. When the pilot went back to afterburner and pulled on stick the aircraft should have switched to flight mode. It didn't. And that's bad coding.
ReturnWinchester
A clarification: the gear didn't properly retract initially, it extended normally except the nose wheel wasn't straight/centered. This was the _probably_ safe landing configuration. The gear not fully decompressing after a touch-and-go caused the aircraft to revert to ground mode and that is a 100% unlandable aircraft.
todaytomorrowwillbeyesterday
Skynet has arrived
Crozekiel
My very limited understanding is that the f35 is basically unflyable without the computer assistance, so if it thinks its on the ground, I'd assume it is unflyable. I dunno though, its classified. We need to ask the war thunder community for guidance.
todaytomorrowwillbeyesterday
Vapor lock
todaytomorrowwillbeyesterday
Never said anything about steam...
SithElephant
Ice is not steam.
Mongicane
Thank you for the breakdown. I wouldn’t have read/understood most of that, I’m glad pilot survived. I still reserve the right to be pissed off that my taxes paid for this overly complicated mess. More so that this mess had nothing to do with the over priced, overly complicated jet doing its job, instead just acting out a big ol fucked up publicity stunt. If I missed something or you can justify any of it I’d honestly listen to your opinion, but it seems fucked up to me.
bridgebrain
The only bit you missed is that tech support was 1000% on trying to solve the problem, instead of make the jet recoverable. There were some options there, but instead they tried to solve the problem until the last second, so he had to eject and ditch the plane in an unrecoverable fashion. Otherwise, the real takeaway is "everything should have a manual override"
SithElephant
Manual override is problematic. If you need manual overrides for 'never' occurances, you end up with pilot errors shooting up. A related example is the very far from unique 'shut down working engine, not broken one', 'try to troubleshoot failing plane and end up failing to fly the plane'.
bridgebrain
Sure, overengineering your manual overrides can be problematic, but at some level there needs to be a way to tell the computer its malfunctioning and needs to be bypassed. Maybe thats a combination of command codes from ground and a flight sequence which gets input to prevent bad actors, but the computer can glitching and no one can do anything about it is a design flaw.
SithElephant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuMDwMxzNkU is related. This is an occasion when the pilot failed to consider what would happen if his diagnostics failed to fix the plane immediately - flying in a MIG23. He _barely_ survived when his passenger pulled the ejection handle for both of them. POssible failure of flight controller unit and he was attempting to revert to manual mode.
SithElephant
If his troubleshooting hypothesis was correct, he had a several second margin - perhaps - in which he could save the jet. However, if he was wrong, he was 1s from killing both himself and the passenger as the seats barely worked due to the attitude and sink rate.
Mongicane
I suppose I didn’t outright say that but meant to imply it with “overly complicated” etc. well done by tech and pilot, but as you said, why no manual/analog backup in the first place? Seems like getting in the plane without a parachute, or a car without seatbelts.
Mongicane
And before anyone gets pedantic, yes I’ve flown on planes, driven cars before but my point is there are safety/backup measures in place that don’t equate to “call tech support”.
ForlornHopeful
Not a pilot but adding manual options takes space and adds weight and looking at the cockpit of an F35, where do you put the manual controls? You'd want them to be unobtrusive so they don't get actuated accidentally yet easy to get to when you do need them
bridgebrain
In this case, "manual" is a system to override the computer, not a physical stick which bypasses the wire controls. Even something like a fuse box which prevents certain info from passing in, so you can yank the whole malfunctioning section and it hands control back
Corrodias
It ought to have a joystick and a throttle at least, right? "the jet assuming it was on the ground and becoming unflyable" is the kind of situation that doesn't seem like it should be possible. My car may believe the parking brake to be engaged but does not refuse to drive in that case.
SithElephant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlVm85ELenI
Sixsystems
+1 for Mover and Gonky (with special guest Mace)
PolitiCat
If I would have been the pilot, "probably" landable wouldn't have convinced me and I would have taken the ejector seat nevertheless.
Squossifrage
Ejecting is a last resort. It's better than crashing, but only barely.
PolitiCat
Yes, but crashing in such a machine is almost guaranteed death. And why risk your life just to maybe save the machine?
Squossifrage
You seem to suffer from the misapprehension that ejecting is safe. It isn't. It's just marginally better than the alternative.
PolitiCat
Under non-combat conditions and with a limited scope of the defects it is significantly safer than crashing.
cousteau
Not in my case. In such a situation, I'm positive I would have thoroughly assessed the facts I had at hand, panicked, fucked up, and died a horrible death. I'm glad I'm not a pilot.
Wrinkle666
How much is that in Tax Dollars ?
todaytomorrowwillbeyesterday
$350,000.00 million per plane
CardeasIV
Definitely more than 12
LDRcycles
Specific number from the DOD (reported on "The War Zone" website) is $194.5 million
SithElephant
The number $135M popped into my head. I would have to verify this, but it's about this
SeniorCheesecake
Apparently they're cheaper now. Only around 100M. That's still more than I'll make in my lifetime.
unluckyandbored
About $82 million each.
PolitiCat
This doesn't factor in the tariffs anymore, add 30% on top of that and it would be more accurate.
Wrinkle666
Didn't one roll off a carrier a few weeks ago ?
cousteau
*ploup* "Oops!"
Ikwilstroopwaffels
This thing is the BIGGEST PIECE OF SHIT. My god.
SecondSince
It's really not. You should stop regurgitating old bullshit and read ACTUAL reports on the thing. My god.
TorrentialUpPour
You're buying in to literal Russian propaganda; they're the ones who have been selling you the idea that the F35 is problematic from the start. Every early complaint about the plane has been directly linked back to Russian money/influence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH8o9DIIXqI
dohcohv
It has a better safety record per flight hour than the F-15 or the F-16.
However, when an F-16 crashes today due to poor maintenance it doesn't make a headline, the F-35 does. Then that crash gets waved around for weeks and investigated while 2 more F-16s crash.
The11thPlague
It requires a LOT more hours of servicing for each hour of flight. I would hope it is safer, it's not much of a brag.
dohcohv
It requires a lot less hours, the hell are you talking about? The F-16 is sitting north of 10hours per flight hour while the F-35a is less than 5. Counterpoint is that it does cost more to operate than an F-16, the US wanted higher sortie rates so the F-35 has faster turnarounds and less man hours at the cost of more expensive parts. Upside is you need fewer of them to do the same missions because they can be ready to go much quicker.
dohcohv
And there is something to throw in as well, the F-35 costs more to operate but it's going to survive, which means you don't have to replace the airframe and the pilot.
Ikwilstroopwaffels
It's 40 years newer. It should be safer. "A car from 2020 is safer than one from 1980" isnt the flex you think it is.
S33KER
The F35 is safer now than the F16 was when it was brand new.
dohcohv
Then what is your problem with it? It's not safety record, as it has half the accidents per flight hour which is great because it doesn't have 50 years of development time like the f-15/16 to work out bugs so it's only going to get better.
Ikwilstroopwaffels
Because it represents an expenditure of trillions stolen from the poor and hungry?
dohcohv
Ah, so it's just the military in general then, not a specific plane?
Tarmaccian
Not really. That money didn’t just disappear. The vast majority of it went to buying labor and parts (produced with more labor), which meant it’s ultimately paid to people.
That includes me. I spent a few years of my life working on the F-35 program, which is how I avoided being poor and hungry.
canadianreserve
The more recently made jets are more reliable. Just because you read a few articles talking about accidents, it does not give you an overall view of the safety record. https://aerospaceglobalnews.com/news/f35-crash-safety-record/
Ikwilstroopwaffels
Yes.... I said that. That doesn't mean it isn't a massive waste of cash.
dohcohv
The cost per airframe is only a little more than an F-16(80M vs 70m), while having better avionics and having stealth.
spiritplumber
"A car from 2020 is safer than one from 1980" is the bare minimum. Looking at you, Cyberstuck.
canadianreserve
He said it's a piece of shit, but was offered evidence it isn't, and you ignore it. Learn to change opinion based on evidence and you will be smarter than most people in the world
Ikwilstroopwaffels
She fwiw.
JustAnotherRandomCommenter
but that's not evidence of that. it's like going "oh who cares that your brand new car set itself on fire when it was a week old, 40 year old cars break down loads! the news just doesn't bother reporting on it!".
it's ok for a 40 years old car/plane to have problems. and it was ok for a new car/plane to have problems 40 years ago. it's not ok for a new car/plane to have problems this severe now.