Fighter pilot ejects in bizarre runway crash, video shows

A U.S. pilot ejected from a fighter jet after a bizarre slow-moving crash in Texas on Thursday, video shows.

The aircraft, an F-35B, descended toward the ground at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth. The landing gear touched the ground, then bounced back into the air before the aircraft crashed nose-first and entered a spin, which appeared driven by the system that provides its vertical thrust.

The pilot, who officials have not publicly identified, then ejected into the air for a seven-second descent to the ground. The pilot was taken to a hospital as a precaution, with no initial reports of serious injuries, said Matthew Montgomery, a spokesperson for the Defense Department’s Contract Management Agency said late Thursday.

Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said the jet is owned by Lockheed Martin but flown by a “U.S. government pilot,” without specifying whether the individual is military or civilian personnel.

Lockheed Martin said in a statement that the company is aware of the crash and that the pilot “ejected successfully.”

“Safety is our priority, and we will follow appropriate investigation protocol,” Lockheed Martin said.

It is also unclear how the crash occurred. Other videos of similar aircraft show small bounces that occur once their landing gear hits the ground, though those are absorbed by shock struts. In the incident Thursday, the aircraft bounced as if it were landing on the moon.

The F-35B is the Marine Corps variant of the advanced fighter jet capable of short takeoff and vertical landing. That capability helps aircraft fly in and out of places where space is limited, such as assault ships.

Candateshia Pafford, a spokesperson for the naval air station, said Lockheed is a tenant there and shares a runway. The company builds the jet in a neighboring facility, according to NBC DFW.

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arcive

I always thought runway ejections were going to be really bad news for the pilot but the article says no report of serious injuries.

 

[Super-Chevy454]

That pilot was lucky to survive and was more lucky than the ones in the plane crash in Dallas. Who knows if that plane could have exploded?

 

[OutInTheRain]

Well, it looked like they had a hard landing and they bounced. It could have fucked up the flight controls or the pilot could have panicked and yanked something. That ejection was probably very painful though. Most of the time there is some kind of spinal injury afterwards and or broken legs.

 

[spinal gas chamber]

Lots of people doing fighter plane tech sperging ITT, but I’ll say I was impressed at seeing the parachute actually work at 30 or 50 feet or whatever it was. That was cool.

 

[Snekposter]

That was Lockheed marketing pitch in the 90ies in conjunction with F-22. Before Lockheed and F-35 fanbois memory hole that in the early 00ies and done the bait and switch claiming the F-35 is the best thing ever to fly.

Edit: Lockheed hated the F-22 from the beginning as the only customer it can be sold to is Uncle Sam as legally and enforced by arms decree by the U.S. government.

Yeeeep. Fun fact: the per-unit costs for the F-22 are only so high because we built so few. Like all the other super-high-tech shit, a massive chunk of initial budget is for R&D and design, not production.

F-35 to get more expensive in next deal, program exec says - Breaking Defense

“I think it's likely that we'll see costs rise on a tail by tail basis. I think it's early to say where I think that they'll end up,” said Lt. Gen. Eric Fick, who manages the F-35 program on behalf of the Pentagon.

breakingdefense.com

So the Marines get the most expensive version, at 100ish million. But yeah, for an actual 5th generation aircraft, the F-35 is inexpensive, especially the F-35As the Air Force gets.

People really need to start factoring in inflation when it comes to cost. The three billion bucks Uncle Sam dumped into design and production of the B-29 over its lifetime comes to an astounding forty-three billion in 2020 dollars. That's a lot of money for a bunch of four-engine bombers, wouldn't you agree? Hell, the famously cost-effective Sherman could run the 2020 equivalent of just under a cool million for the high-end models. The M1A2 in 1999 was 6.21 million, which in 2020 bucks is just under 10 million. Considering 10 Shermans would need to be blessed by God himself to even be able to scratch the paint of the M1A2... hell of a fucking bargain.

 

[Manul Otocolobus]

Huh, as soon as it bounces something is going on with the main exhaust on the back. I wonder if after the bounce they tried something and it went to shit?

 

[God's drunkest driver]

To me it looks like the lift fan cut off immediately after the bounce for some reason and that's why the nose landing gear collapsed. The lift fan is clutched so it can cut off abruptly and will spool down very quickly when it does so. The engine obviously stayed at a high power setting for several seconds though, causing all of that pivoting and sliding across the ground. I'm curious about the plume of smoke, it could be part of the lift fain failure since there is hydraulic involvement, the engine could have ingested the hydraulic fluid or lubricant if there was damage that caused it to leak into the intake area, I'm not aware of what the shaft routing into the inlet looks like, but I know it is not just a big hole with the lift fan and gearbox up front and the engine behind. The smoke could also be a result of the engine ingesting FOD, distrupting combustion. Why the pilot ejected instead of just hitting the fuel cutoff as soon as the NLG collapsed who knows, there was a big cloud of smoke visible to him at one point and speculating further is kind of pointless since there were other things going on the pilot could see and feel but we can't.

Lots of people doing fighter plane tech sperging ITT, but I’ll say I was impressed at seeing the parachute actually work at 30 or 50 feet or whatever it was. That was cool.

It's visually impressive, but zero-zero ejection seats have been around since the mid 60s.

 

[BelUwUga]

Huh, as soon as it bounces something is going on with the main exhaust on the back. I wonder if after the bounce they tried something and it went to shit?

If you think of flight characteristics as a line, away from ground-effect it would be a relatively gentle slope with altitude. Closer to the ground and suddenly there's something much harder than air to "push" off from. The closer they get to the ground, the more pronounced this effect becomes. Compared to the gradual line we get more like a J-shaped curve. An unexpected drop, even one that small, can have profound effects because of this. Potential example:
1. Unexpected descent means our current inputs are suddenly wildly inappropriate.
2. Correcting this error requires hitting a very fast moving target for the right inputs at the right time.
3. Making any further mistakes magnifies this problem.

 

[Spicey McHaggis]

I wonder if this is caused by human error or technical issue with the plane.

This is 250 million dollars plane we're talking about.

VTOL in general is just risky business. It's a very useful capability, but it has its downsides. They don't really handle like anything else and need specially trained pilots. To fly the harrier for example you needed to have prior helicopter and fighter experience before you could even train on it. Even with those pilots, it still had a pretty high accident rate.

 

[RodgerDodger]

Huh, as soon as it bounces something is going on with the main exhaust on the back. I wonder if after the bounce they tried something and it went to shit?

I think he throttled back up with the rear exhaust still pointed down, but the center lift fan already disengaged. Thus the asymetrical thrust trying to flip the plane.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

It's pretty amazing that the parachute deployed at a low enough altitude. Usually you would need like a thousand feet's worth of distance from the ground for a chute to deploy fully, otherwise you'd end up as paste.

Nigga. 0-0 ejection has been a thing since the 60s.

A serious ejection seat, like the ones the Russians build, can get a man out and walking away even when the plane's headed straight down and a hundred feet off the ground, sideways. It's a pity that many airshows in Western shithole countries no longer allow close distance work of the kind that only men like Colonel Kvochur can perform safely.

 

[Falcos_Commisar]

It's pretty amazing that the parachute deployed at a low enough altitude. Usually you would need like a thousand feet's worth of distance from the ground for a chute to deploy fully, otherwise you'd end up as paste.

Zero zero aka zero altitude and zero airspeed ejection seats have thankfully been around for decades now. They work Extremely well

Su-30MKI crash at Paris Air Show Le Bourget 1999

In June 1999 the T10PMK-1 arrived at Paris-Le Bourget where it was to participate in the 43rd Paris airshow Le Bourget. Pilot Vyacheslav Aver'yanov and WSO V...

youtu.be

 

[AN/ALR56]

F-35 to get more expensive in next deal, program exec says - Breaking Defense

“I think it's likely that we'll see costs rise on a tail by tail basis. I think it's early to say where I think that they'll end up,” said Lt. Gen. Eric Fick, who manages the F-35 program on behalf of the Pentagon.

breakingdefense.com

So the Marines get the most expensive version, at 100ish million. But yeah, for an actual 5th generation aircraft, the F-35 is inexpensive, especially the F-35As the Air Force gets.

Fly off cost is never the actual cost.
250 million gets you a package of parts, maintenance and training, and i doubt 250 million is enough to handle a stealth aircraft like that for 40+ yrs of service, not including very expensive parts and software upgrades.
What amazes me is that the weapons systems, airframe and engine were mostly ready by 2006-2008, 90% of whatever work done was probably on software.
What a fucking clusterfuck of a project.

 

[More AWS-8Q Than You]

Fly off cost is never the actual cost.
250 million gets you a package of parts, maintenance and training, and i doubt 250 million is enough to handle a stealth aircraft like that for 40+ yrs of service, not including very expensive parts and software upgrades.
What amazes me is that the weapons systems, airframe and engine were mostly ready by 2006-2008, 90% of whatever work done was probably on software.
What a fucking clusterfuck of a project.

Oh, no doubt, but if you want to do legitimate comparisons we'd have to have the similar numbers for everything else. I can believe it on the software, probably offshored it to pajeets and had to spend the better part of a decade bug fixing.

 

[RodgerDodger]

Zero zero aka zero altitude and zero airspeed ejection seats have thankfully been around for decades now. They work Extremely well

Su-30MKI crash at Paris Air Show Le Bourget 1999

In June 1999 the T10PMK-1 arrived at Paris-Le Bourget where it was to participate in the 43rd Paris airshow Le Bourget. Pilot Vyacheslav Aver'yanov and WSO V...

youtu.be

Counterintuitively, a 0-0 ejection is somewhat safer than ejecting at altitude and speed. You don’t get the flail injuries from your limbs being wrenched out of their sockets by the airstream.

 

[Uranus Pink]

What amazes me is that the weapons systems, airframe and engine were mostly ready by 2006-2008, 90% of whatever work done was probably on software.
What a fucking clusterfuck of a project.

It is mostly software that's been the hold up, expense and what got the fanbois all nice and hard over the millions of lines of codes F-35 needed to do anything. Every one from Lockheed, U.S. government and fanbois missed the part of perfect is the enemy of good enough. As a good enough F-35 could've in service years earlier, and gradually have the new stuff incorporated in when they're ready.

 

[AN/ALR56]

It is mostly software that's been the hold up, expense and what got the fanbois all nice and hard over the millions of lines of codes F-35 needed to do anything. Every one from Lockheed, U.S. government and fanbois missed the part of perfect is the enemy of good enough. As a good enough F-35 could've in service years earlier, and gradually have the new stuff incorporated in when they're ready.

That's what the chinks and Russians did, put avionics and engines that were tested and available in the early batches of their stealth shit and gradually switch to new stuff in the mid 2020s.