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.'"
Blamed F16 Pilots Too (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
OBOGS isn't bleeding edge even F16s used them http://www.cobham.com/media/75388/SYSTEM%20F-16%20OBOGS%20ADV10556.pdf
This is just a case of poor design, the Eurofighter has Oxygen level warning system, the F22 doesn't. If you put the emergency O2 actuator in an ergonomically challenging position, what do you expect?
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:3, Interesting)
The crashes of the early F-16 that they couldn't figure out were related to a similar situation but it was blood deprivation of the brain in High G Turns. They didn't actually figure out what the problem was until a pilot woke up from the blackout and bailed out before his plane crashed. It's because of those crashes that pilots today where flight suits that constrict the legs to keep blood in the upper body and there's now a significant warning system when the pilot pulls turns that exceed the G-rating of the human body.
The F-16 was the first US aircraft that could easily make turns the human body couldn't and I wouldn't be surprised if they've discovered another area where pilots are incapable of doing what the aircraft can with the F-22. The end result will likely be automated systems that kick in when these situations are within the parameters of occurring according to the instruments or a specialized computer will be installed and blood oxygen monitors will be added to the flight suits.
It's just a simple reality that as we push the aircraft engineering to the edge of our capabilities that they will find areas where the body can't keep up, just like with the F-16.
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:5, Interesting)
When Rolls Royce had to make their Merlin engine reliable enough fr long range bombing missions, they took every 10th engine off the production line and ran it constantly until it broke, took it apart and made whatever piece that failed stronger.
By the end of the war they had one of the most reliable piston engines the world has ever seen.
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:5, Interesting)
Pardon me but I won't believe the government report out of the gate, the DOD has a tendency to blame personal off the cuff before the real facts are in.
They made similar bullshit claims about pilot error on the F-16 until the guy survived the crash and reported blacking out and then they put cameras in the cockpit and recorded the pilots blacking out. I'm old enough to remember those crashes (half of them were in my state) and all the blame they heaped on the pilots until the real facts came out and AFAIK they never retracted the allegations of pilot misconduct.
So I'm going to wait a while and see what really develops before I believe a report whose purpose appears to be to blame the pilot.
Re:meanwhile, somewhere deep in the engineering de (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a system that, based on sensor input, shuts the OBOGS oxygen system down automatically. Why design it so that it then requires the pilot to manually activate the other system?
If you can cut off the pilot's oxygen based on a sensor reading, why not also activate the backup system automatically at the same time?
Seems like a poor design, to me.
Re:meanwhile, somewhere deep in the engineering de (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem here with the Raptor is that they replaced the bottled oxygen system, used for decades in dozens of other aircraft, with a complex compressor system that's hooked to the engines. In this particular accident, the plane shut the compressor system down and hence the oxygen. You had a new dependency that, on the surface, seems nuts.
The resolution of the fault required the pilot to manually start the back up system. For whatever reason, the pilot was unable to do so.
Yeah, bleeding edge is bleeding edge but the real problem is that the military has bypassed the prototype system. You build a demonstrator on paper that requires several new technologies. You get the contract and of course once your are building the aircraft, THEN you find big issues. By then you're pretty much committed to either leaving the problem alone, doing some sort of kludge that makes the aircraft more expensive / less dependable and / or delaying the program.
This has been seen in pretty much every high tech military hardware purchase in the last two decades. And it keeps happening.
Re:Welp (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Test missions? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Trump Card (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:5, Interesting)
From the plane's trajectory, it seems his first action upon comprehending the failure was to put the plane into a dive to get it into thicker, breathable air. Unfortunately it sounds like he lost consciousness during this maneuver, before he could turn on the emergency oxygen generator, and only regained consciousness a few seconds before impact.
Re:Why is the emergency oxygen manually triggered? (Score:4, Interesting)
I am a pilot all be it not an F-22 pilot, the unfortunate thing is you have to plan for total system failure. I would prefer to have a full manual O2 bottle than an electronically activated backup system which can itself fail. The 40 lb pull seems a bit high, there should be plenty of opportunity to get a mechanical advantage on the valve.
In this case an autopilot preset for 10k feet and wings level is what he needed. There are implementations that have automatic terrain avoidance in the event the pilot becomes a greater than usual liability for the aircraft
Re:Blamed F16 Pilots Too (Score:5, Interesting)
Side point....If you have zero visibility, you need a gyroscope to tell up from down because of centripetal forces, your other senses can't help you whether you're ignoring them or not.
I don't know if you have any piloting experience or not, so I don't know if you are speaking from experience or not. However, I have been a pilot for a little over twenty years (albeit in much more mundane aircraft than F-16s or F-22s). In point of fact, not only can your other senses not help you, they will actively lead you astray. The stories about pilots flying by the seat of their pants are pure mythology.
:)
If you ever get a chance to try flying on instruments, give it a try*. You wouldn't believe how quickly your sense of "up" and "down" get mixed up...or how difficult it is to ignore your kinesthetic senses and trust your instruments. There's a reason your average non-instrument rated pilot has a life expectancy of about 2-3 minutes, tops, when encountering instrument conditions.
*Alternatively, if you have a bar stool that can spin in circles, you can replicate the experience at home. Sit in the bar stool, close your eyes, and lean forward so that your forehead is touching your knees. Have a friend spin you a couple of times, then rapidly sit up. Oh, yeah...you might want some padding on the floor, because I guarantee you won't be able to stay seated
Re:Things that make you go "Huh?" (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation (Score:5, Interesting)
Getting the blueprints is not the hard part, they are easy enough to find. There are multiple Merlin engines in museums and there are current working Merlin's for sale. Getting one of these beasts made as a one off would cost you huge. Bringing up a production line would cost a small fortune.
There is a guy in Northern California who actually purchased the type certificates for the airplane and will build, from scratch, from factory plans and brand new P-51D. You have to find a registration plate for it though. People comb Europe to find them off of wrecked ones since there is a loophole in the FAA regs that allows him to put the placard on the new airframe.
You can't do just one thing (Score:5, Interesting)
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.