Another F-22 down

Even though the F-119 needed a re-design to match thrust of the F-120. Even though the F-120 had tremendous growth potential, while the F-119 had none. Even though FSD lasted went on for 10 yrs wherein all the bugs could have been worked out, and whats a little extra money given what Lockheed overspent developing the airframe.

 

Being in the turbine design business for almost 40 years makes you look at things very differently. You have to asses the risk. Growing an engine isn't a total redesign, it's done with scaling and design modifications. Just because the parts aren't interchangeable, it isn't at all like going back to square one. The pieces are very similar, just modified to increase the airflow. In the case of the 119, they grew the fan with slightly longer blading and the rest of the engine was unchanged (according to Jane's). In the grand scheme of things, that wasn't a big tear up of the design at all. With today's tools, the risk of growing a design that works is even lower, since you know where you are and can usually improve the performance when you get a chance to tweak the design. Bottom line is that Pratt showed a path to grow their engine to where they needed to be and the AF selection team rated it as credible.

Yes, there were issues, but there hasn't been an engine, or airframe for that matter, that didn't, and that goes for every manufacturer. You can't say the GE engine would or would not have been less expensive to fully develop, they didn't do it. We will never know if it was or wasn't.

When you identify problems and there isn't a path as to how to fix them, that's when the costs can spiral out of control.

Remember neither of these engines, nor the airframes were supposed to be fully developed at the time of downselect, they were developmental items that were taken to a specific level and at that point a team in the AF made a selection based on the performance, life, cost to complete the program and the perceived risk. Those folks had all the information in front of them, and made a decision with more and better information than you and I will ever see or know. I trust that they weighed all the considerations and made the right decision.

 

Yeah, that's not true at all. I'll give you odds that we don't see an unmanned fighter in our lifetime. Maybe optionally manned, but not fully unmanned. In air combat, an unmanned fighter won't stand a chance against a manned fighter...there is no comparison in situational awareness as well as ability to react with a several second delay in satellite communications. I can't even imagine the amount of data that a plane like the F-35 is processing with sensor fusion technology to give a pilot in the cockpit that situational awareness...the amount of bandwidth you'd need to transmit that all to a remote cockpit, and the latency required to make it useful in a fight were decisions need to be made in milliseconds..ha. And if you lose that sat comm link during an air war? Wow..talk about being screwed. No, we will not see an unmanned fighter in our lifetimes. Bombers and CAS aircraft, yes. Air superiority fighters, no.

 

I sure hope you're wrong, I head to UPT at the end of the summer. I'd better get to fly SOMETHING before they sack me

 

Depends on how old you are! It's coming and there's nothing that's going to change that. There are no decisions that need to be made in milliseconds when you're sitting in a comfy chair back at Creech and have perfect SA synthesized from a myriad of assets to generate the air to air picture. You will always have assets "hot" in the CAP and access to as many mach 3 "skinny wingmen" as you need to take out any offensive threat. PRC can land as many planes on carriers as they want, our experience with RPAs is second to none and that translates into a huge advantage in any battlespace, even the one of the future.

Blue Skies!

Hannibal

 

There are other factors at play in all this.... fighter pilot manning levels are in a very bad place and not projected to improve anytime soon.

What I expect we will see will not be "pilots" in the traditional sense so much as systems monitors/operators in much the same way that satellites have. There won't be a dog fight where a manned aircraft will be fighting an unmanned aircraft being directly controlled by a human on the ground. The unmanned aircraft will be sent into their particular operating area (known as a killbox) and will autonomously attack anything which isn't one of their own.... kinda like terminators of the sky.

 

Or...

Boeing has successfully tested a missile capable of knocking out electronic systems without blowing anything up or injuring anyone.

I can imagine using this against aerial targets as well.

 

Sort of a miniturized EMP. The part about not injuring anyone is an odd statement.

 

Fighter pilot manning levels shouldn't be a justification for moving to unmanned fighters. I don't see how that's a problem that cannot fixed if they want to fix it.

Autonomous killing is going to be a tough sell to anyone, even if it's just air combat. What happens when one of these robots autonomously shoots down a civilian airliner? Even in modern AA combat where BVR is the new rage with stealth and fancy radars yada yada, it's my understanding that in many scenarios rules of engagement will limit the ability to engage BVR anyways. Once that happens, you become dependent on a pilots situational awareness.

But if the scenario you mention does play out, I like the idea of an unmanned, semi-stealthy missile truck that can be sent into enemy airspace loaded with long range missiles and getting cues from AWACS..something like a B-1 but stealthier and with AA missiles. With a larger AA platform, you could build longer range AA missiles too. Some unmanned figher that could pull 100gs would be pointless, because if it ever had to do that it's probably become effectively useless in the fight anyways.

 

Still doesn't match the SA of a pilot in the cockpit. If we become totally reliant on electronics and radars, we can easily become screwed when we can't use those like we want to use them (jamming, whatever). At the end of the day, to have the upper hand, you need eyes in that cockpit. A camera on the nose doesn't give you the same SA that a pilot who can see basically 360 degrees can. And in close in fighting, milliseconds WILL matter even with perfect SA. If all your data is on a three second delay, and all your inputs are on a three second delay, it becomes difficult to do anything except shoot at targets straight ahead. Forget about dodging anti-aircraft fire, and radar might be able to help with anti-aircraft missiles but not as much as an eyeball that sees the smoke trail and can make the correct maneuver immediatly. I just don't see it ever happening. I'm sure someday there will be an unmanned fighter, but it will be to supplement manned fighters..they will never completely be replaced, at least not in our lifetimes. Maybe some day there will be some kind of VR helmet that unmanned figterpilots can wear to cue a really fancy camera system in a fake cockpit on the planet, giving them the same visibility as a real pilot. But that will always be at a disadvantage, because if you lose the communication link between the plane and the fighter, it's over. I suppose if you can build them cheaply in large numbers and don't care if you lose them, maybe it works better

 

Maybe I should have started a new thread, but:

It sounds to me that Haney lost oxygen, put plane into a dive (sounds as though that's the correct thing to do), lost conciousness, but then regained conciousness too late to pull out. Crashed trying to pull up at supersonic speed.

The AF has been blaming the pilot, Haney...

Article here:


"The Pentagon's Inspector General said today that the Air Force didn't have the evidence to blame an F-22 Raptor pilot for the crash that took his life after his plane malfunctioned -- a finding that comes months after the pilot's sister said she believed that the Air Force was more interested in protecting a $79 billion program than the lives of its airmen.

The report, published today on the Inspector General's website, was the culmination of a year-long review of the Air Force's investigation into the crash that killed Capt. Jeff Haney while he was on a training mission in Alaska in 2010. The controversial crash, in which Haney's oxygen was cut off completely just prior to impact, was the subject of an ABC News' "Nightline" investigation last May.

After investigating the incident for more than a year, the Air Force released its crash report in December 2011 that said that while Haney likely suffered a "sense similar to suffocation" right before he died, he was still to blame for the crash for being too distracted to fly the plane properly.

The new IG report, the result of the first major crash investigation review undertaken by the Inspector General since the mid-1990s, says that the Air Force's conclusions are at times contradictory, incomplete or "not supported by the facts." In response, the Air Force said it convened its own special task force to review its investigation, and the task force found the original conclusions were adequately supported.

The F-22 Raptor is America's single most expensive fighter jet at an estimated $420 million each -- in all a $79 billion-and-counting program that represents part of the Air Force's costly foray into fifth-generation stealth fighters. The jets, which have yet to be sent on a combat mission, for years were plagued with a mysterious oxygen-related problem in which on rare occasions its pilots would report experiencing the symptoms of oxygen deprivation in mid-flight. The Air Force believes it has solved that problem.

'To Them, Jeff Was a Number... But Those Jets Are Worth a Lot of Money'

On Nov. 16, 2010 Haney had just completed a routine training exercise when a malfunction in the plane cut off his oxygen completely. Capt. Haney never made a distress call but took his plane into a dive and, a little over a minute later, crashed into the winter wilderness at faster than the speed of sound.

The Air Force never found the original cause of the malfunction, but in a Statement of Opinion concluded "by clear and convincing evidence, the cause of the mishap was the MP's [mishap pilot's] failure to recognize and initiate a timely dive recovery due to channelized attention, breakdown of visual scan, and unrecognized spatial disorientation."

In an exclusive interview with ABC News in May 2012, Haney's sister Jennifer said she immediately called the Air Force's conclusion into question and believed that, in addition to the original unknown malfunction's role, it seemed obvious her brother had blacked out while trying to save himself. Therefore, she said, he could not have been responsible for the crash.

"I don't agree with [the Air Force]. I think there was a lot more going on inside that cockpit," Jennifer said. "A cover-up? I don't know. But there's something... I'd like to think it's easier to blame Jeff. He's not here to defend himself."

"To them, Jeff was a number, it feels like sometimes. But those jets are worth a lot of money," she said.

Pierre Sprey, an early fighter jet designer and vocal critic of the F-22, said the Air Force's original report on Haney's crash was twisted to shield the aircraft from blame.

"From front to back, they're warping every fact you see in that thing, to make sure they will call it pilot error and not to blame [F-22 manufacturer] Lockheed [Martin] or not to blame the Air Force or the airplane," Sprey told ABC News in May. "Here you have a superb pilot and an airplane that wasn't designed to take care of him. And now they're blaming it on him and he shouldn't have died in the first place… The priorities are hardware first, people second."

In the course of its investigation, ABC News obtained an Air Force-made computer simulation of Haney's crash that shows that in the middle of Haney's oxygen-deprived dive, he doesn't appear to move the controls for approximately 15 seconds. Jennifer said that mysterious long pause in the middle of an emergency, along with the lack of a radio call, is evidence that her brother wasn't awake for at least part of the dive. Steve Ganyard, an ABC News consultant and former U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot, said that after watching the computer simulation, he too believes Haney was unconscious at least part of the time.

The Pentagon Inspector General appears to agree it's a possibility.

"It is unclear how sudden incapacitation or unconsciousness was determined to be a non-contributory factor by the AIB [Air Force Accident Investigation Board], or why levels of partial incapacitation or impairment were not considered," the report says.

Haney did appear to try to pull out of his dive three seconds before impact -- one second too late to save himself. The Air Force has said that was evidence he was not incapacitated and only disoriented before his death.

The question of Haney's consciousness is listed by the IG as one of five "deficiencies" in the AIB report, others including the uncertainty over the status of Haney's oxygen mask and his possible attempt to turn on an emergency oxygen system.

"The AIB report lacked detailed analysis of several areas," the IG report said.

After the Air Force was informed of the Inspector General's conclusions, the service said it convened a separate task force to review the AIB report. The task force found that while some portions of the AIB could have been written more clearly, the service stands by its original accounting of the cause of the crash.

"That group of experts validated the AIB's conclusions," an Air Force spokesperson told ABC News.

The spokesperson said the service is currently rewriting its crash report to clarify certain points raised by the Inspector General's report.

Last August the plane's primary manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, along with other defense contractors involved in the plane's production, settled a wrongful death lawsuit with Haney's widow, Anna. The suit had contended that the companies knowingly provided the Air Force with a "defective" aircraft and that Capt. Jeff Haney was a casualty of that decision. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed."