Fatal Problems Continue To Plague F-22 Raptor 379
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.'"
Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Sure, that sounds pretty bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:3, Insightful)
Hasn't F-22 production been shut down? So 'lessons learned' won't help much.
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:4, Insightful)
There's nothing cutting edge about the inboard oxygen system on the F-22, which is where they have had a lot of problems recently - it *should* be a solved problem, but seems not to be.
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case, though, the "OBOGS" oxygen system had an "air bleed failure" which probably means that it was still generating oxygen, but there was no pressure to deliver the oxygen to the pilot. Sounds like a gasket, seal, or hose failure. Those things are hardly bleeding edge technology. Another possible cause was the overly difficult emergency pull. Again, not exactly hi-tech. These kinds of design problems are often attributable to poor management in the design phase, rushed development, or sweeping known problems under the rug because of budgetary concerns.
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:2, Insightful)
Please. Lockheed will be getting upgrade contracts for years to come.
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:2, Insightful)
"if you wanted to live a safe life, you shouldn't be in the military in the first place."
This is a load of Horse Shit. This is not whats at issue here.
There is a difference between dying in combat or for a cause and dying due to someone's incompetence or unfinished work.
If this was a car then lawyers, consumer prot organizations, and the gov will all be up in arms. Any industry is accountable with dire consequences. What was acceptable 70 yrs ago is no more, and the same applies for all industries; I don't see why the military should be any different.
Why is the emergency oxygen manually triggered? (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems like this should have been automatically switched on.
Re:Trump Card (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
For example, recently the USAF asked for $8billion to upgrade the F-22 fleet to be able to use the much vaunted datalink capability. That's more than 10% of the current program cost.
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:5, Insightful)
They plan to use them for decades, but they haven't used them at all yet. As the summary says, they've only been used for test missions so far.
The article says that there have been many cases of F22 pilots showing signs of hypoxia, and they grounded all craft earlier this year to run a study as to why. They didn't find or fix the problem, but started allowing people to fly them again. Now someone dies and they blame him rather than the faulty air supply. That's pretty damn low. I hope they keep all of these planes grounded now until the issue is resolved.
Re:Things that make you go "Huh?" (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a difference between dying in combat or for a cause and dying due to someone's incompetence or unfinished work.
Test pilot is synonymous with risk, even more so than being a fighter pilot.
If this was a car then lawyers, consumer prot organizations, and the gov will all be up in arms.
But it is not a car is it?
Re:Things that make you go "Huh?" (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
meanwhile, somewhere deep in the engineering dept: (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
Re:Things that make you go "Huh?" (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Priorities. (Score:5, Insightful)
Welp (Score:2, Insightful)
The solution they are looking for is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Drone technology to replace the human who needs oxygen...
Re:Things that make you go "Huh?" (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The F-22 should be decommissioned. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:5, Insightful)
Aren't we usually in the middle of a war or two?
Re:meanwhile, somewhere deep in the engineering de (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
excuses for lazy managers to kill people (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
sigh at his funeral (Score:2, Insightful)
airplane's have been supplying oxygen to pilots for decades without problems, during all sorts of bizarre failures.
whoever was the dipshit who decided to institute this fancy bullshit system instead of the old simple crap is to blame. not the pilot.
that particular risk was in no way necessary (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:5, Insightful)
Under loss of oxygen supply, a pilot has 12 seconds left before he will lose all ability to do anything. Unfortunately, about six seconds are needed to fully comprehend the situation they are in and that leaves six seconds.
Even worse, their heart rate will double and they will likely consume the oxygen remaining in their blood stream in half the time. Assuming they are still not quite in a position of panic.
So once a pilot realises what they have to do, they have just three seconds to do it, without panicking. At best, that is five seconds if they remain absolutely calm in the face of an "Oh Shit" situation.
This is from USAF research into tests that went wrong in which people suffered sudden loss of pressure in test situations.
I've noticed this is not mentioned anyway despite being widely known.
eg,
e. While other significant effects of hypoxia usually do not occur in a healthy pilot in an un-pressurized aircraft below 12,000 feet, there is no assurance that this will always be the case. The onset of hypoxic symptoms may seriously affect the safety of flight and may well occur even in short periods of exposure to altitudes from 12,000 to 15,000 feet. The ability to take corrective measures may be totally lost in 5 minutes at 22,000 feet. However, that time would be reduced to only 7 to 10 seconds at 40,000 feet and the crewmember may suffer total loss of consciousness soon thereafter. A description of the four major hypoxia groups and the recommended methods to combat each follows.
Printed from Summit Aviation's Computerized Aviation Reference Library, 7/15/2005 [faa.gov] .75
Page 1
AC 61-107A - OPERATIONS OF AIRCRAFT AT ALTITUDES ABOVE 25,000 FEET MSL AND/OR MACH NUMBERS (MMO) GREATER THAN
This probably explains why the pilot couldn't get the emergency oxygen going... You try doing something really basic like holding your breath, running 10m, jump into a car and in less than three seconds, do the following... Close the door, put your seatbelt on and then lock the door.
Can you do it? Sure. Try it. But if you knew that if you took longer than 3 seconds knowing you'd be dead? Bet you'd screw it up...
GrpA
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:4, Insightful)
Hypoxia is insidious. Unlike holding your breath, since you are expelling CO2 just fine there is no urge to breath associated with it. You just slowly pass out. By the time he was aware of the problem, he wasn't thinking at all clearly or able to move in a coordinated manner. If the plane really just shuts off oxygen without an impossible to miss warning bell and lights, then it is nothing more or less than a deathtrap. Preferably, it SHOULD at least activate the backup automatically.