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."

Comments

The F-35 is having problems?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet another bug in the slow-motion uber-expensive train-wreck that is the F-35 program.

Re:The F-35 is having problems?

[ATMAvatar]

The only flight-worthy component of the F-35 is its price tag.

Re:The F-35 is having problems?

[91degrees]

It's a minor design issue discovered during testing. They happen in engineering. The solution is to fix it.

Not sure why this was a problem and why they couldn't use an existing ejector seat design but perhaps they have to be designed on a per-aircraft basis.

Re:The F-35 is having problems?

[Ol Olsoc]

We can put fuckton of small relays in LEO at negligible cost (relative to the F-35 project). Alternatively, if the opponent does have a ground based laser anti-satellite weapon (the only viable way of dealing with the fuckton of satellites) you could use a drone swarm with a mesh network. Either way you can use highly directional communication, which makes jamming moot.

Jeezuz, man - your scifi scenario has so many holes in it, you probably like hte idea of screendoors on submarines.

You know what happens when you take out 1 or two LEO sats? You take 'em all out. And you don't even need to hit one, just put up more shrapnel to take em out. If someone was foolish enough to try such a scheme, and a nation was desperate enough, just think of a space hand grenade. Rocket designed to fragment after reaching orbit, and no more "fuckton" of sats. You want ot talk about inexpensive? Every new Sat you take out will become more shrapnel to take out others.

There's a reason why there have only been a couple tests of antisatellite weapons.

Our first war in space will be our last war in space. As we filled up desirable orbits with debris, we'd have to wait until it de-orbits to get anything new through.

Non starter idea. And your buzzword salad of mesh networks and highly directional comms is just that - buzzwords.

Remember, you don''t design weapons to be only used against people with mid 20th century tactics. You eventually come up against a technologically savvy opponent.

Re:136 lbs?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Possible.

On the other hand, the ideal fighter pilot isn't actually very big, since cockpits are crowded, and smaller entities can handle g-forces better than large, muscle-bound types.