Slashdot Mirror
Fatal Problems Continue To Plague F-22 Raptor
Hugh Pickens writes "The LA Times reports that even though the Air Force has used its F-22 Raptor planes only in test missions, pilots have experienced seven major crashes with two deaths, a grim reminder that the U.S. military's most expensive fighter jet, never called into combat despite conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, continues to experience equipment problems — notably with its oxygen systems. New details from an Air Force report last week drew attention to a crash in November 2010 that left Capt. Jeff Haney dead and raised debate over whether the Air Force turned Haney into a scapegoat to escape more criticism of the F-22. Haney 'most likely experienced a sense similar to suffocation,' the report said. 'This was likely [Haney's] first experience under such physiological duress.' According to the Air Force Accident Report, Haney should have leaned over and with a gloved hand pulled a silver-dollar-size green ring that was under his seat by his left thigh to engage the emergency system (PDF). It takes 40 pounds of pull to engage the emergency system. That's a tall order for a man who has gone nearly a minute without a breath of air, speeding faster than sound, while wearing bulky weather gear, says Michael Barr, a former Air Force fighter pilot and former accident investigation officer. 'It would've taken superhuman efforts on the pilot's behalf to save that aircraft,' says Barr. 'The initial cause of this accident was a malfunction with the aircraft — not the pilot.'"
In every case where aviation has been stretching the envelope, there have been accidents and fatalities. The GB Racer is a classic case of this. Many of the renown WWII aircraft had A versions that were anything but safe to fly.
The venerated F-16 wasn't much to write home about either when it was first released. The engineers will learn and get experience. It will come at a horrible price. But if you wanted to live a safe life, you shouldn't be in the military in the first place.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
Yeah, it sounds like whoever made these things and charged the government billions had really screwed up. Luckily, they are never going to get another multibillion dollar contract from the government, right? I mean, if they did, that could screw that one up just as badly, and then where would we be? We're lucky that we don't live in some communist country where arms manufacturers just get fat from the handouts of the government without any real accountability.
In mock combat the F-22 has had something like 1-100 kill ratios, so what air force could?
That only lasted a few days though. Then the next version of PunkBuster was released, and all those guys got banned.
Deja Vu. F16 pilots were also falsely blamed when the true fault was a hardware failure in instrumentation. Wiring rubbing against a rivet eventually shorted out IIRC and pilots were given erroneous info regarding which way is up or down, critical when flying on instruments (zero visibility) where a pilots ignores his senses and puts full faith in instruments.
The new systems are smaller and lighter. Also, at least from the original crash report, the oxygen system wasn't at fault. It shut down like it was supposed to (it was operated by bleed air from the engine, the ECS detected a hot bleed air leak and shut off the bleed air valves. If you don't check a hot bleed air leak, you can set the plane on fire or melt parts of it), but the pilot struggled to activate the emergency oxygen system and had significant difficulty with this due to the bulky gear he was wearing.
While struggling with activation of the EOS, he lost track of time and became disoriented, failed to notice that his aircraft attitude had changed, and attempted a dive recovery far too late to save himself.
It seems like this should have been automatically switched on.
It hasn't been called into combat because it is a trump card.
That and because it's too expensive to lose. In real terms, a single F-22 probably costs about the same as a dozen squadrons of Spitfires did in WWII.
Actually its almost exactly like taking the water pump out of a 1960 ford falcon and being surprised you can't use it on a 2011 ford F-150.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
40 lb resistance is not a lot of weight but putting all that pressure onto a coin-sized ring that could only be pulled with one gloved finger? That seems really odd to me.
Think of the last time you carried groceries nowhere near 40 lb and the bags cut into your hand, even though you were using all four fingers. Increase the weight to 40lb, then quadruple it by putting it on one finger. That's a lot of force required.
Oh for fuck's sake.
Pilots work out...a lot. A hell of a lot. They do a lot of strength exercises, including push-presses and other exercises that work the back, because in the course of these exercises they ALSO end up building up their legs. As a method of fighting black-out, they tense their legs to tighten the muscles and help push air up into their upper body (away from where it tends to go during positive high-g manuvers). Yes, there is the flight suit that squeezes them as well, but every bit counts. And since the ring that starts the emergency system is forward and beneath the pilot, that means that they would be using their back to pull against that 40-lb resistance...
Actually no, they're expected to twist and turn to reach the ring while held in place by an insanely tight harness. This ain't no Cessna. Further, they're then expected to pull the ring in a direction away from their body - it's stupidly designed in the most un-ergonomic way possible.
After a minute without air? That's what it feels like to be working out hard...and since he wouldn't have been exercising vigorously during that minute, he'd have had plenty of glucose on hand, so his muscles could easily have worked using anaerobic respiration long enough for one pull of a ring.
A minute without air? I have an idea. We put a stopwatch on you and make you hold your breath while sitting in a chair. I'll put a 40-lb weight with a pop-tab on top under the chair between your legs and we'll see if you can manage to reach down, find it, then lift it a couple inches after you hold your breath an entire minute. If you're even awake still. And that test STILL won't account for the vertigo and g-forces involved in the dive and attempting a dive recovery.
Furthermore, how is this supposed to be harder based on how fast you're moving? I fly in airplanes all the time, and I don't notice that it gets harder to lift things or move around based on how fast or slow the plane flies.
And I doubt that you, Cessna-boy, even get CLOSE to the g-forces involved in the kind of maneuvers done by military pilots, especially those trying to pull out of a dive.
And even if all of this WAS a tall order, that's exactly what fighter pilots are trained for; that's why so few people who apply are accepted, and why so few who are accepted make the grade in training.
Which is why, when they get into the air, they should be confident that someone has fucking sanity-checked the design of the safety features aboard the aircraft. Clearly, in this case, that was NOT done.
A series of engineers argue over who's fault it was.
Was it engineer A, who had to make the emergency system require 40kilos of pull to activate, due to flak that it might engage accidentally if the craft hits stiff turbulence or is kicked while the pilot is entering the cockpit?
Was it engineer B, who designed the oxygen recirculation system, and had to work within the physical space and weight restrictions imposed by engineers C and D, resulting in a suboptimal implementation?
Was it engineer C, who designed the superstructure of the figher's cockpit, for failing to fully appreciate the downstream requirements of his peers?
Was it engineer D, who designed the aesthetic and aerodynamic form of the fighter, imposing limitations on engineers A through C, and many others, for continuing the trend of smaller, faster, sleeker, and more compact designs?
Or was it engineer E, who oversaw ergonomic annd human interaction studies that led to the requirements statements fed to engineers A through D?
Was it the beaurocracies involved in construction, telling the engineers to use cheaper, more easily sourced materials so that the fighter comes out underbudget?
With all these parties in the room, bickering over who's fault it was, is it any wonder that the dead pilot, who can't stand up for himself, is the one that got blamed to save face?
Really. I work in aerospace. Many of the people in the engineering depts of major companies act like their shit doesn't stink, even when it obviously does. I make inspection blueprints, and when the degrees of a circular pattern exceed 360 degrees, or when point to point dimensions exceed total part length, and you inform them of the impossibility of these design specs, more often than not your time would be better spent talking to a brick wall.
It's like trying to have an informed discussion on computing with an ardent member of the cult of mac. All you will get back is snide remarks, or pretentious silence. You can quote rules of geometry until you are blue in the face. Quote directly from the gd&t manual for geometric tolerancing, or even play dumb and ask politely what their intentions were... result is almost always the same.
Don't you know, they have degrees, make big salaries, and are important. They never make mistakes. Just ask them.
I have been surprised a few times by polite aerospace engineers that own up to drafting errors, omissions, and flat out screwups before, and I am always cordial and polite with them. But for the most part, all I get back is silence, and derision.
(Just to clarify what I do: I make manufacturing drawings used for internal QA processes. Often times the customer supplied data is a digital nurbs representation of a part with some datum features called out, hole sizes listed and annotated, an some geometric tolerancing frames tacked on. My job is to take this data and in conjunction with the customer's tolerancing guidelines and practices documentation, create drawings that inspectors can use to validate the part was properly manufactured. This requires that they accurately convey the engineering intent of their geometry and datum choices. This is why I sometimes have to ask seemingly silly questions when they break the rules for gd&t frames, or define impossible (mathematically so) tolerances. You would probably be stunned how often I catch insane engineering mistakes because they pencilwhipped shit, and have to figure out the fit form and function myself, because they won't own up to it.)
"It takes 40 pounds of pull to engage the emergency system. That's a tall order for a man who has gone nearly a minute without a breath of air, speeding faster than sound, while wearing bulky weather gear, says Michael Barr, a former Air Force fighter pilot and former accident investigation officer
Okay, this is total bullshit, I'm sorry. Pilots work out...a lot. A hell of a lot. They do a lot of strength exercises, including push-presses and other exercises that work the back, because in the course of these exercises they ALSO end up building up their legs
Hmm...an airforce pilot who has actually piloted fighter jets (and is an experienced accident investigator and knows the failure modes that get pilots into trouble) says it's hard, and a slashdot commenter says "bullshit, the pilot was just being a pussy". Who to believe!?
I can believe it's hard - trying to pick up a 40 pound box from beneath my chair seems like it would be quite challenging. And I'm under no stress, wearing non-bulky street clothes, and have plenty of oxygen.
Furthermore, how is this supposed to be harder based on how fast you're moving? I fly in airplanes all the time, and I don't notice that it gets harder to lift things or move around based on how fast or slow the plane flies.
You fly *in* airplanes, but do you pilot fighter jets? Or do you sit back in coach on an airline and play on your iPhone? In straight and level flight at 800mph, movement is not restricted and you're not feeling any high G-forces.... but if you deviate from straight and level, start struggling from oxygen deprivation while you try to pilot the plane, then things can get much harder -- worse, you can get into trouble much faster.
The F22 program has cost around 66 billion dollars. That's about equivalent to a mission to Mars and two copies of the Superconducting Supercollider. That's equivalent to about 130 rovers of the same type as Opportunity and Spirit (ignoring the economies of scale that would substantially reduce the cost of having a lot of them). Etc. Etc. Instead we get unworking jet fighters that are supposed to be better than our previous jet fighters which are already estimated to be better than any other anyone else has in the world. Great priorities.
Drone technology to replace the human who needs oxygen...
Easy. With bottled air, you've got to cart around what you can breathe. You're limited by that, and it takes up space and weight.
The early F-16s didn't have OBOGS. When they got an engine upgrade (block 50, I think) they recieved OBOGS. From the company that builds the OBOGS, here's the advantages:
http://www.cobham.com/media/75388/SYSTEM%20F-16%20OBOGS%20ADV10556.pdf
The problem is that if something goes wrong, you have to shut the system down. In this case a sensor detected hot air entering the system, which is a sign of a fire, or a potential cause of one. So the system shuts down, and the pilot needs to go to his emergency O2 supply. But this guy struggled trying to activate it. Possibly an ergonomic problem that needs to be addressed.
Generally speaking though, OBOGS is a sound, logical way to go.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Space nutters often cite fantasy stories as proof that their crackpot ideas will work.
Aerospace engineers simply refuse to admit that the real world can limit what they do, and that some things simply cannot be done. They refuse to accept the possibility that they could be wrong. (Not that they are wrong, just the mere possibility of it.)
More often than not, you get stonewalled rather than have your questions answered, of they direct you to a secretary that doesn't know her clevage from a hole in the ground (as far as reading and interpreting blueprints are concerned.)
As I said, occasionally I get a bite, and the guy on the other end is polite and helpful. "Oh, we did that because of FOO", etc. I always return the favor and thank him for his time. Most of the time though? "Not me!" And finger pointing.
Dear Hoser,
The Canadian Air Force is the first line of defense in keeping that mad bitch Sarah Palin bottled up in Alaska until the Ruskis invade and do her in. Second, you don't get much sandier and oilier than the Athabascan tar sands. I'm sure you need to protect them from the Inuit Air Force or hordes of Laplanders coming over the pole or something. Anyway, hold them off long enough for us to steal all the oil, pump it south, and leave Alberta a stinking mudhole. Really, aside from Lake Louise, it kind of is anyway. Third, all those de Havilland Beavers are going to quit flying someday. You need a replacement. Fourth, the Canadian Dollar is still worth almost as much as a US Dollar. Buying a bunch of these jets will help return the CAD to its more natural $0.74 USD level.
Sincerely yours,
A. Murican
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
First thing:
"'This was likely [Haney's] first experience under such physiological duress.'"
Okay, that makes no sense to me. My understanding is that both USN and USAF pilots undergo extreme physiological and psychological duress in the course of their training, for just this reason. They expose you to hypoxia, to decompression, to high-g forces, even to having to survive and avoid capture (with most trainees end up getting caught) and resist interrogation techniques (see under 'most trainees end up getting caught').
It's pretty hard to simulate a life-threatening situation without actually putting someone's life at risk. Some people focus in those situations. I don't know what that's like. Some people, like me, fall apart. I know exactly what that's like. Everything you do is wrong and stupid. Every new piece of information is overwhelming and terrifying. Sometimes you just blank out, and the next thing you know, three seconds are gone. Then you go, "OH FUCK! THREE SECONDS! I FUCKED EVERYTHING UP AND NOW I'M DEAD!" and another three seconds are wasted. Now six seconds are gone, and you only had 18 to begin with. What are you going to do, now that almost half your time is gone? You'd better do something extraordinary, because 18 seconds is barely enough time so pull super hard OH FUCK I JUST RIPPED THE HANDLE OFF
Then I'm thinking about how bad I screwed up pulling the handle off, instead of pulling the backup handle.
The thing is, the smarter someone is, the more controlled, the harder it is to get them to panic until something really, actually scares them, and the harder it is too fool them into thinking it's time to be scared. If you didn't know me very, very well, you might think I was good at stressful situations. Nope. I just don't get stressed quite as easily, but when I do, watch out, because I'm about to completely lose it. I'm guessing this guy was similar.
Go ahead. Put me through some oxygen-deprivation training. The whole time, I'll be thinking to myself, "hey, worst case, they have medical staff to revive you. They wouldn't get away with actually threatening people's lives." Even if they would get away with it, I probably wouldn't believe it. I would have to literally see multiple people die in training to actually get scared there, and until I'm actually scared, you don't know how I'll act.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
The designing and production of the F-22 started about 20 years ago. The pilots who would be flying this aircraft were not even born yet. "By the time China becomes a real threat, the F-22 will be an old outdated piece of crap" The F-22 uses the most advanced aviation technology on the planet. The F-15 was built and deployed in 1972 and is still considered one of the most deadliest combat jets in the world. They have been constantly been updated for over 30 years so claiming the F-22 is going to be obsolete in the near future are totally false. As it stands there is not one military jet that even comes close to the F-22. During testing they used attack scenarios that pitted 1 F-22 against multiple F-15's just to try and make it a fair fight and even that didn't work.
As a MechE who is currently working in Aerospace doing design, let me tell you that those of us who know how to properly CAD stuff up and indicate the important dimensions on a drawing hate the other guys as much as you do. I can't say how many times I've opened up a part file, gone to the sketch, and found that none of the lines were fully constrained, or the constraints were arbitrary and were only tangentially related to the driving dimensions. I used to go back to the original author and ask what was going on in their head, but found it to be easier to just silently redo constraints on the features that needed it, hopefully without moving any lines. The place I'm in now is full of people who have been using NX since it was new, and yet the "guru"s in house all say that sketches are bad and want us to use solid features instead - completely ignoring that it's so much harder to change parameters when a design needs to change, all because sketches used to suck (or so I hear) and they can't be arsed to learn how to use constraints correctly now.
The fun part comes when you have to mix units - two weeks ago I had to draft up a simple adapter plate that had 4 force transducers on it, which all happened to have metric bolt patterns. Trying to indicate that the distance to the center of each group of holes was the driving dimension is fun when you don't have a feature at the actual center, but at least you can dual dimension with the nice even number in mm under the ugly inch one. (disclaimer: I hate the english system. I have to use it because that's the policy when you're .gov).
Then there's the "here's a vaguely circular bolt pattern with 28 thru holes, and the only important thing is that they're symmetric about a center point, have a minimum radius, and line up so the bolts go into a 1" grid on some table somewhere", but that ends up needing 20 dimensions and all sorts of center lines. These are times when GD&T is just annoying and it would be a whole lot easier for me to put a note on there with the intention (though that's probably because I don't know enough yet to do it cleanly and correctly).
I like it when the machinists or someone else checking the drawing tells me what I did wrong so I can fix it and not have them need to yell at me again - I just wish more people I worked with had that attitude.
Opponents of the F-22 keep screaming about how it has never been used in combat, despite three conflicts having occurred since they entered active service. Problem is, neither Iraq nor Libya had a functional air force that actually tried to fight AND posed a serious threat to our aircraft. The Taliban doesn't have an air force, and at the start of the war in Afganistan (prior to the F-22 achieving active status) Afganistan's air force was basically rusting hulks. This is an air superiority fighter. It isn't meant to bomb things. It is a predator, built to hunt and kill fighter aircraft, nothing more. That role justifies a lower overall number of aircraft, but the aircraft still needs to exist. In a conflict with a country with a formidable air force, such as China or Russia, or at least a functional one like North Korea or Iran, this aircraft would be invaluable. It could mean the difference between victory and defeat. I for one am glad it hasn't seen combat yet. That said, it looks like they need to fix the emergency O2 system. Might not be a bad idea to find a way to provide a graceful failure of the primary system, too, or automatically activate the backup. Either way...fix the damned thing.
Its never about who has the better plane but who has more money to pay off the military.
Or, here in Non-Conspiracy Theory World, it's about real life factors. Such as: in the case of the YF-22 vs YF-23 flyoff, USAF chose the 22 because it was deemed to be more maneuverable in combat above supersonic speeds... a prime goal of the ATF (Advanced Tactical Fighter) program. The 23 was deemed to be faster and stealthier, but significantly less maneuverable in high speed operating envelopes. Additionally, USAF's relationship with Northrop had soured on the B-2 project. Northrop had, fair or unfair, gained a reputation for being behind schedule and over budget. Lockheed had turned out the F-117 ahead of time and under budget. At the time, considering that USAF was going into a post-Cold War budget era, the ability to deliver hardware on time and on price was considered important.
Look into the upgrades and fixes grumman was going to make to the f-14d's . THe f-14d's were better then the super hornets that replaced them . Nevermind the upgrades that would have cut maintenance in HALF , which is the excuse given for retiring the planes in the first place.
Grumman also showed plans for a new version of the f-14 that had much of the features of the raptor (besides the stealth portion). Yet they went with the super hornets.
Again, let's look at real world reasons. Cheney canceled the Super Tomcat because even with the upgrades you mentioned, maintenance costs would far and away still have been greater than any other current or projected platform. The doomed A-12 project was ongoing at the time, and it was thought that the "flying dorito" might be able to do both fleet air defense and strike, all in a stealthy platform. The Tomcat wasn't considered because, as Dick Cheney put it when he canceled the program, "Underneath, it's still 1960's technology". I loved the Tomcat and worked with them in the Navy, but I cannot emphasize enough how many man hours and dollars it took to keep it up in the air. Yeah, the Super Tom would in some ways have been more capable than the Super Hornet, but the later is far more economical. And those costs add up.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Uhh....bullshit. They haven't flown in combat yet (because there has been no need for strict air-to-air combat since they came in service), but they are a part of the air defense system and have intercepted russian bombers near the arctic.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
But you'd lose the entire war if you fielded Spitfires instead of F-22s.
A bit of googling gives 12,604 pounds as the unit cost for the Spitfire vs. $150 million for the F-22. Depending on which inflation and conversion calculators you believe, this might range between $300k and $950k per Spitfire today.
That gives you somewhere between 150 and 500 Spitfires per F-22.
Let's give the F-22 side enough resources to keep one plane on patrol at all times, and they can lose 10 F-22s before they lose the air war.
Then the Spitfire side can keep 150 planes in the air at all times, and they can lose 1500 planes before they lose the air war.
The two sides meet in the air. The Spitfires can't touch the F-22 because it's cruising nearly twice as high as the Spitfires can even fly. Furthermore, it can launch missiles to destroy the Spitfires from outside visual range. OTOH, that will only kill a dozen Spitfires, assuming perfect missile performance. At this point the F-22 has 480 rounds to shoot from its Vulcan cannon. Unfortunately, the F-22 is SO much faster than the Spitfires that it will tend to overtake them before it can do much aiming, so I'm going to say it's not a complete turkey shoot. Maybe another 2-3 dozen Spitfires go down. That leaves around 100 Spitfires left. They should be able to overwhelm the F-22 when it tries to land.
Unfortunately for the Spitfires, the F-22 can land outside of their range. Even if the F-22 airfields are in range, the Spitfires will have to split up into groups to cover them -- but that risks having an entire wing destroyed if they split into more than three groups.
That gets us to bombing. The Spitfires will take heavy losses, but they'll trash pretty much any airfield they attack. The F-22 can bomb the Spitfire airbases with impunity -- but its attacks will be like mosquito bites against the Spitfire's hundred airbases.
Taking all that into account, I'd say the Spitfires would lose a slow battle of attrition, unless ground forces could bring all the F-22 airbases into their range. Then the F-22s would be overwhelmed before they could kill enough Spitfires.
All this ignores SAM sites...and the missiles for those would be running cheaper than the unit cost of the Spitfires. That turns into another battle of attrition; I doubt one SAM site has more than a couple dozen missiles on hand at a time!
Sounds like you and I would get along great.
I am a stickler for model quality. I've been called on to design tooling and fixturing for manufacturing purposes, and really, not constraining your sketches, or using sane build parameters is writing a recipie for disaster later on when you need to make a revision. Cad software these days can let you make some truly beautiful design models that are built to resist breaking in amazing ways. (Catia's knowledgeware comes instantly to mind. You can do some really crazy stuff with the knowledge workbenches.)
That said.....
I have seen some of the worst models in the history of aviation come out of gulfstream. For confidentiality reasons, I won't name my employer, or the part series, but the models for a series of wing support bulkheads they sent us for manufacture had the following things wrong with them:
They pencil whipped the floor fillet information into the parts list. They did not model the floor fillets into the digital models. The filletless models were used for the stress and weight metrics in other engineering depts.
The geometry that was supposed to be filleted would result in impossible geometric configurations with the fillets in place.
Full radius fillets in slots that have non-normal walls were done in such a way that the models had a jagged edge where two discrete fillets failed to propery merge.
Location authority for holes was not given to the solid model, but to a pencil whipped cad drawing going to two decimal places (inch), with tight tolerances beyond two places.
Geometry was "boolean split disco fever" in nature; featues that should be nominally parallel were angled by .000000X degrees instead, poor surface tangencies were extant everywhere, and surfaces did not align cleanly.
Long story short, I had to spend an entire month cleaning up and interpreting the data they sent us, just so I could ultimately rebuild their models in a sanitized and useful format for our CNC programmers.
Seeing shit like that makes me hope to god that I never have to fly in one of their planes.
Let me take a wild guess...You haven't spent much time at high altitude, have you?
I used to scoff at the charts that show what the FAA euphemistically calls "useful time of consciousness" at varying altitudes. I mean, c'mon...if I try, I can hold my breath for 2 minutes or more, and I'm not nearly in as good shape as I should be. How can a pilot at high altitude have a useful time of consciousness of 30 seconds or less? It's trivial to hold my breath that long, even if I don't prepare for it beforehand.
Then one day, I got a revelation: It's trivial for me to hold my breath for 30-60 seconds and possible to break 120 seconds because the air in my lungs is under full atmospheric pressure. However, if I am at 25,000 feet of altitude, and my cockpit explosively decompresses (or, as in the case of a fighter pilot, if I am at lower atmospheric pressure and my pure oxygen supply is suddenly removed), I no longer have near as much oxygen in my lungs, and consequently, my body will go hypoxic much more quickly. You might think losing his oxygen supply for a full minute would be "like...working out hard", but you'd be wrong. I haven't read TFA, but if he was above about 15,000 feet MSL (and especially if he was above 25,000 MSL) it was much, much worse than that. His muscles might have been functional without oxygen, but I guarantee his brain functions were degrading rapidly.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
if troops were treated with as much respect as 'the customer', they would get experimental shit rammed down their throats, and then told its their duty to die for the glory of some corporation.
dying in the f22 crash did not 'keep america safe'. it did not protect freedom. it did not have to happen.
this is the same fucked up attitude by the managers who think that somehow because of the two shuttle crew losses, it means space is 'inherently dangerous'. well if you ignore your engineers and only care about bullshit like politics and money, yeah, space is incredibly dangerous... its so dangerous that you can continue making exactly the same fuckups for years, without getting punished, even though your decisions cost the lives of people.
if someone is willing to die for their country, it takes a really low bellied sack of shit to believe to take that willingness for granted, and chalk up their death to inevitable accidents, which, upon further investigation, typically prove to have been completely avoidable, if it wasnt for some fucked up shitbag pencil pushing ass lick managment douchebag who will never get any punishment or reprimand for his negligence and stupidity.
it was, in fact, entirely preventable, by proper management and engineering, both of which failed on an epic scale. how do you make a 145 million dollar aircraft that does not do basic life support functions to the same quality of an aircraft built in the 1970s?
its unbelieveably fucking ridiculous. military men are not willing to die, that doesnt mean you can waste their lives with stupid decisions and cost-cutting back room political bullshit and get away with it.
ultimately, the taxpayers are the customer here. and i doubt many of them, in a jury, would find the managers and air force innocent here.
Guess again, support and upgrade contracts can surpass construction contracts significantly - it's where most companies look to make the bulk of their profits in this arena.
My employer makes parts for the F-22. (This isn't *that* special. Like most big government programs, the F-22 is carefully designed to spread the work across as many different Congressional funding districts as possible. But I digress.) When the program was cut, the people in that division started to really worry. A year later, it turns out we're actually getting almost as much business as originally planned. Since they didn't buy as many planes, they're having to fly the planes they do have more, which means they're burning through spare parts faster.
The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.