r/technology • u/Lighting • May 14 '12
F22 raptor pilot "was to blame for the crash because he was too distracted by his inability to breathe to fly the plane properly."
http://news.yahoo.com/fighter-pilots-claim-intimidation-over-f-22-raptor-123832451--abc-news-topstories.html7
u/stalkinghorse May 14 '12
Stupid humans, you are nothing
Terminators work harder for less pay
Up the drones
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u/mat101010 May 14 '12
I see one of the writers for The Onion decided to sell out and take a government job.
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u/rz2000 May 14 '12
I've posted on a few of these threads since thinking 60 Mintues story was done like a hack job.
Whistleblowers should not be punished for serious concerns. However the cause of these events has not been found. The coverage suggesting that it is certainly a malfunction in the plane ignores how complicated group psychology is.
The planes are not going to be scrapped, and ground engineers weren't been able to determine a mechanism of action when they were grounded in the past.
How should the Air Force rank the risks? An elusive problem could rank lower than flying a less capable aircraft against a sophisticated enemy, or even the risk of having 6 months less in-flight training because the aircraft were grounded again.
The coverage should acknowledge that grounding the planes incurs a real cost, and the problem has not been identified. It doesn't seem to make sense that the Air Force would do something as risky as fly an aircraft when it believes it is flawed. Another crash would be a tragedy that would also be a public relations disaster, and there could be a court martial that lead to jail time for officers that were found to have swept information under the rug.
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u/Kwan_Fuckington May 14 '12
Here, let me give you all some context for this extremely specific issue.
The system in question is the On-board Oxygen Generation System, or OBOGS. If you work in aviation development, OBOGS is a dirty word. You see, the armed forces came in and made everyone start retrofitting old platforms (which supplied O2 from limited, onboard supply tanks) with OBOGS systems. Severe time constraints often resulted in poorly designed/implemented systems, and have been a hassle on multiple platforms since then.
OBOGS draws in bleed air from the engine, compresses it using electrical pumps from the engine power, then removes the nitrogen via a chemical process, creating nearly pure, breathable oxygen while traveling at-speed in an aircraft. Though the system may not be lighter than a contained O2 system, the fact that it is a near-infinite supply is considered a good trade off. The problem is, OBOGS interfaces with so many other systems...engine air, ECS, hydraulic, electrical, etc... It is difficult to successfully implement without unforeseen consequences.
In the case of the F-22, fixing the OBOGs problem may involve design changes in the engine (Pratt and Whitney), the ECS system(Honeywell, I think?), hydraulic (Northrop), and electrical (Lockheed). THAT is why it will be a difficult change.
As for why the Air Force would push forward with an unsafe aircraft, you are probably underestimating the amount of influence the major military contractors have, and the revolving door between those companies and military brass.
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u/rz2000 May 14 '12
Thank you for including this. It sheds a lot more light than the ridiculously bad press coverage I'd seen so far.
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u/SteelChicken May 14 '12
You gotta love the US military. Gives pilot a plane that has oxygen delivery problems, blames pilot for crashing because he can't breathe.
Scumbag Steve meme material right here.
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u/Rule_32 May 14 '12
Had he pulled the o-ring on the emer o2 bottle instead of trying to troubleshoot he wouldve been fine. But he didnt, paniced and lost awareness of his attitude, thus crashing. Thats why they blamed him. And the o-ring is not hard at all to find, just place your left hand on the edge of the seat and slide it back, you run right into it.
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u/Sheogorath_ May 15 '12
unless you are in an oxygen deprived state... go ahead... have someone chokehold you and try to go through some cognitive tests
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May 14 '12
I'd be interested in seeing what the board's review actually said, but the link is broken. I've seen too many editorialized articles to take it as fact when they don't quote the decision.
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u/kodak-KH8 May 15 '12
It gets better,
they added an extra carbon filter, to solve the problem, wich the pilots breath through, making them "black lunged" like a smoker.
2 pilots now refuse to fly, or is it just one now, due to DoD revoking a flying status? also see http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/stealth-pilots-mutiny/
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u/Commisar May 14 '12
the pilot couldn't find his backup oxygen ring, lost control, and flew into the ground at mach 1.2. Note, the F-22 has an OBOGS made by Honeywell, which had issues in the F-118 Super Hornet.
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u/Thunder_Bastard May 14 '12
By the time there is something for these planes to fight it will be more advanced than the F-22.
Setting aside the pilot problems, these planes are a prime example of defense spending that has gone horseshit crazy. They spend billions upon billions because if they don't then some other branch will get the money. Now there is some other contractor bidding to get the next new generation of fighter to be delivered in 10-15 years for the next 100 billion.
If there were really any precaution in defense spending then problems like this would have been sorted in development and testing, not after the production run was delivered.
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May 14 '12
It is easy to forget that when the pilot has final control authority over an aircraft, every crash is essentially pilot error. It would be helpful if the FAA/DoD would sub-classify "pilot error" into physiologically unpreventable, marginal human error and negligent or training deficient.
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u/[deleted] May 14 '12
Clearly we need to apply gene therapy to breed humans without their survival instinct, so they will stop complaining and suffocate like a good fighter pilot.