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F-35 Ejection Seat Fears Ground Lightweight Pilots
An anonymous reader writes: Writing for Defense News, Lara Seligman and Aaron Mehta report that "[c]oncerns about increased risk of injury to F-35 pilots during low-speed ejections have prompted the US military services to temporarily restrict pilots who weigh less than 136 pounds from flying the aircraft. During August tests of the ejection seat, built by Martin-Baker, testers discovered an increased risk of neck injury when a lightweight pilot is flying at slower speeds. Until the problem is fixed, the services decided to restrict pilots weighing under 136 pounds from operating the plane, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, F-35 integration office director, told Defense News in a Tuesday interview."
And yet another bug in the slow-motion uber-expensive train-wreck that is the F-35 program.
I'm sure they are crushed not being able to fly the boondoggle.
Uh, how about you tie a block of lead weighting 136 lbs - {weight of pilot} under the seat?
Um, if it's just a matter of weight or mass, just ask the pilots to sew weights into their flight jackets to make up the difference, or wrap lead weights around their bodies.
There has to be more to it than this.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Well, that cut off is approximately your average seven year old American, so we should be good to go.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I was going to ask how many pilots in the whole US Air force weigh less than 135 lbs, and then it occurred to me that this was just a way of keeping women out of their "no girls allowed" fighter jock club.
To ban female pilots. He has never supported equal rights for women.
Should not be flying planes!
The average American woman weighs 166.
The average American man weighs 196.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/body-measurements.htm
Don't grind up the pilots, and then the seat won't fear them.
We actually have pilots that only weigh 136 pounds? When I was in the Navy a ton of years ago on a carrier there were NO pilots that was that small. True that was only around 100 or so dudes [there were no women on combat vessels back then] but still. Looking at an average dude of say 5' 10" [which was pretty common] which is has an average weight of 150-169 pounds I would think that there are not that many "grounded pilots"
136 pounds are about 62 kilograms.
Add weight, or move weight, to get the CG to the proper location during ejection.
This NOT a failing of the jet, but rather one of those things you find in testing. Which is what "testing" is for.
Having said that, the F-35 is a bit of a boondoggle.
It's just meant to ground Cindy and Samantha, because those two are the only ones with that weight.
Why would the F-35 ejection seat be afraid of ground lightweight pilots? If they are already ground, there is little they can do to the AI module that controls the F-35 ejection seat afraid.
Overpriced, over-due and underperforming turkey has one more bug. Moped Jesus spotted on freeway. News at eleven.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
And why do especially ejection seats in F-35s fear them?
an ejection seat fear ground, lightweight pilots?
The F-35 is supposed to sit on the ground and look pretty. It's a work of art. Of course it will be dangerous if you actually fly it.
Though they could probably make one that could actually fly for ten times the cost...
If I were a 138lb pilot I wouldn't find this news troubling at all.
Quite a few high visibility western world projects are starting to embarrass me.
You guys have your F35 train wreck, here in Germany our capital city can't manage to build an airport. Sure an airport is a complex project, but come on, it's not rocket surgery. Just some complex civil engineering. How hard can it be?
Then Volkswagen with their bit of "ingenious problem solving". Did they really think it would never be noticed?
What on earth is going on? Sure in the past there were always projects that didn't pan out. But I've got the feeling we are becoming close to incompetent.
If this turns out to be just some corporate welfare with purposeful incompetence to string out endless payment streams, maybe some stringing out of another kind might be in order.
This is becoming truly embarrassing to witness.
"The F35 seats make a bad squishing noise if you're under 200lbs and above 130lbs which maye distract the pilot and lead them to miss targets"
The whole thing is just a soap opera.
WARTHOG.
Dear commander, here is the anti-eject command:
eject -t /dev/cdrom
And this works perfectly without touching the DVD-burner button.
Even many female pilots wouldn't weigh that little? I would suspect that as a pilot went below 136 that they would also be too short to fly the plane.
Does this title use a convoluted syntax, or it it just me? (English is not my first language)
I had to read the summary to finally understand what was meant by "F-35 Ejection Seat Fears Ground Lightweight Pilots". Before that, I was stuck with a seat fearing the ground, and some lightweight pilots whom I couldn't quite fit into that fearful seat.
The military is full of people who volunteered to kill others for the benefit of a corporate oligarchy.
Yes, the military is full of evil people, although a good number are simply stupid, ignorant, deluded or brainwashed.
In case of the swedish JAS-39 Gripen jetfghter, the situation is quite the opposite. Because of the small dimensions and light weight of SAAB's aircraft (about 2/3rd of the F-16) only the "Lite" version of Martin Baker's ejection seat could be fitted in the cockpit. This means Gripen pilots must weight less than 75 kilos body weight, so them + uniform & garments + survival kit will not exceed the seat's launching capacity.
> Having high maintenance requirements works to our advantage as well. A few months after the coup, our newfound adversaries will have nothing but a fleet of hangar queens, waiting for spare parts.
Iran is still happily flying the insanely complicated F-14 Tomcat, despite 35 years of sanctions which USA forced on 95% of the world. The ayatollahs are not buying Tomcat spares from Russia or the USA, since Pentagon had all Tomcats gutted and crushed as soon as they retired from the Navy. Iran learned to make the parts of invent a replacement, for example their Tomcats now carry MIM Hawk surface-to-air missiles that have been significantly modified for air combat use. (They ran out of the Phoenix and Sparrow stockpiles during their 7 year long war against invading Iraq and couldn't buy any due to sanctions.)
Similarly, Japan and Italy will be able to keep their JSF fleets in the air even if Uncle Sam decides to pull the plug on them. Both countries have significant aviation history and an excellent high-tech industrial base. In fact they build 1/3rd - 1/3rd of the JSF planes respectively, as well as the B-787, e.g. carbon fiber jobs.
It's not about USA. The JSF is meant for export with a total production run of almost 4000 enisioned. Japan shall be a big customer, but the 136lbs (61.6 kilos) minimum requirement means 14 y.o. schoolgirls won't be able to pilot the F-35. That's a big no-no in Japan, where anime / manga is sacred! (*) Luckily there is no minimum crew weight restriction for the Panzerkampfwagen Ausg. IV or the Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Super Macross Mk. VI transforming giant space combat robot...
(*) About a quarter of Japan's combat helicopters carry "itasha" decor, mainly anime girls themed. They have a pure white demo F-15 whose top is entirely painted with effigies of Fuji-sama, cherry blossoms and Hatsune Miku riding a penny-farthing. Their airbase support vehicles look like Thomas the Tank Engine. Their entire society, including the "self defence forces" (military) is massively infantilized.
Women generally weigh less.
It's really not that easy. The combination of space constraints and aerodynamic engineering makes it a little more complicated than bolting a weight on. This is simply a routine engineering issue that will be solved the same way as all issues found in testing. Nothing to see, please move along.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Why, IRAN managed to hijack a US drone...
No, that's not what happened, and you know it. The drone in question had a software failure and landed in Iranian territory. Automatic systems on the drone destroyed all of the software, and some of the hardware.
Iranian chest thumping about this incident is NOT born out by these things called facts. You will also note that the Iranian claim to have reverse engineered this drone has not resulted in a similar Iranian drone.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
A pilot weighing less than 136 pounds will already need to sit on a phone book to see out of the front of the canopy. Just use phone books soaked in jet fuel. NOW there is NO ISSUE.
We shouldn't have stopped at 3
So the ones with the least mass, who logically should be most G tolerant, can't ride the plane....gg
As Tropic Thunder said "Never go full retard!".
Bulk up a little??
Master of many, expert of none.
I think it's just another example of the military trying to keep women out.
Poe's Law disclaimer: I'm not serious.
-Styopa
On the plus side, all that money spent in those congressional districts won't be refunded.
Mission accomplished.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.