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?

[MouseR]

Because drone latency makes it impossible for them to replace eyes in the field.

Re:The F-35 is having problems?

[rahvin112]

This is no bug. This is airforce discovering the best way to keep a woman out of the cockpit, you kill them with the ejection system.

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

And because a technologically advanced industrial enemy would easily take down all those drones by simply jamming communications or, more radically, shooting down the communication satellites. Why, IRAN managed to hijack a US drone. Of course they're not camel humpers but they're not Russia, China or India. Why, using drones against Russia would mean eliciting an armed response against the US satellite fleet. And you can bet they're not restricting themselves, either. Fancy living without GPS?

Re:The F-35 is having problems?

[JumboMessiah]

Agreed, when it comes to the F-35, slashdot gets bombarded with the uninformed and the Anonymous Cowards. Short memory is an unfortunate human trait. As ejecitons from contemporary aircraft have never been problematic or ever killed pilots? Or is it simply that further testing of the Martin-Baker designed seat produced questionable result when constraining lightweight pilots? But I know it's more fun to simply trash talk the F-35 instead of preventing further deaths.

Re:The F-35 is having problems?

[AJWM]

Because it's so difficult to add a couple of 20lb weights to the seat if there's a lightweight pilot in it.

(To the seat because you don't actually want to be wearing a weight belt if you have to eject over water.)

Re:The F-35 is having problems?

[fahrbot-bot]

Google could have a fully tested, state-of-the-art control system ready in 6 months ...

Well... beta-tested anyway.

Re:The F-35 is having problems?

[peragrin]

Exactly you need air to air combat with bvr and stealth. F-22

You need some air to air and some air to ground stealth is useful. F-35

You need ground CAS you need low slow and built like a tank carting weapons and fuel to loiter for hours. A-10

You need pictures and comm relays in the various zones that is what drones are for.

Re:The F-35 is having problems?

[Frosty Piss]

Are you aware that the US Air Force has had female combat pilots for a number of years? Did you know that these female pilots have participated in many real world missions? Did you know that at McChord AFO (JBLM-Lewis McChord Field) that we have quite a few female C17 pilots (yes, I know, not a fighter, I work here)? Gender is no longer a bar to pilot status in ANY US Air Force air frame.

Re:The F-35 is having problems?

[davester666]

No, it's way too big to get off the ground.

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.

136 lbs?

[germansausage]

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.

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.

Re:136 lbs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly... I mean, Tom Cruise is a pretty small guy, so that makes sense.

Re:136 lbs?

[SeaFox]

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.

Isn't your comment sexist in itself because you're making assumption about the weight of someone based on their gender? It's like assuming a woman is weaker physically than a man just because she is a woman, even if statistically men develop more muscle mass that does not mean a man automatically has more physical strength.

Re:Add weights?

[wonkey_monkey]

The problem is that the seat over-rotates when it's underloaded. That's about where the center of gravity is, so it's not as simple as just making up the missing weight.

The F-35 seat fears ground??

[rduke15]

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.

Complete Crap

[Frosty Piss]

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.

Re:Non-Issue

[Falconhell]

A lead filled cushion is not that large at 20 pounds, we use them in gliders often for low weight pilots.