F-35 pilots under 200 pounds 'are at a serious-level risk' of fatal whiplash if they have to eject

[KeepItReal]

Source: Business Insider

Problems with the F-35's ejection seat and helmet could make certain emergency escapes from the plane potentially fatal for pilots weighing less than 200 pounds, Roll Call reports.

Low-speed ejections from the aircraft, which could become necessary in emergencies during take-off or landing, could cause fatal whiplash or extreme injury because of ongoing issues with the ejection seat and the heavy weight of the F-35's helmet.

According to a written statement from an unnamed senior Air Force official cited by Roll Call, “pilots between 136 and 199 are at a serious-level risk” of injury or death when wearing the F-35's new helmet.

...

In addition, the F-35 has encountered issues with its engines, its next-generation helmet, and its onboard software system. The F-35B variety is also not expected to be equipped to carry the plane's most advanced weapons until 2022.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/f-35-pilots-under-200-pounds-are-at-a-serious-level-risk-of-fatal-whiplash-2015-10

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More from Rollcall:

The risk assessment for pilots of average weight is the product of two things, the official said. First, in tests, mannequins weighing 103 and 135 pounds with the heavier new helmet on their heads broke their necks. Second, no testing has yet been done on mannequins between 136 and 244 pounds, the official said.

In other words, 14 years into the F-35 program — the next generation fighter for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps — officials have yet to fully test how the physics of ejection would affect a significant portion of the pilot population.

“When the Air Force found out the F-35 ejector seat could kill pilots under 136 pounds, the first thing it should have done was order tests to find out whether it could also kill pilots in the other weight classes who are flying these aircraft every day,” said Jackie Speier, D-Calif., a member of Armed Services who has become vocal on the F-35 jet.

“It is unbelievable that the F-35 program office would not seek out these tests immediately, in order to find out what kind of risks they continue to run with pilots’ lives," she said. "We need to know what kind of danger these pilots are exposed to and how the Air Force plans to mitigate it — and we need to know now.”

http://www.rollcall.com/news/official_confirms_serious_risk_to_wide_swath_of_f_35_pilots-244330-1.html

[Chakab]

1. This boondoggle keeps getting more and more embarrassing.

[psychopomp]

2. Meanwhile, designs keep getting improved on as each failure becomes apparent

The F-35 will eventually take its place beside the F-22 at the apex of 5th-gen warbirds.

[Chakab]

5. So are F-35 pilots going to suffer from the same mysterious lung disease that

as Raptor pilots?

[frizzled]

8. We heard that about the space shuttle, too

By the time all the bugs are out, the US will be out of money, the world will have moved to a more successful design, or the entire concept of a fighter jet might be obsolete.

Meanwhile the Chinese stole the F-35 plans, fixed the fundamental design flaws caused by US political constraints (such as the one engine and VTOL), and are flying it as the J-31.

[pasto76]

22. LOL! how many missions has the F22 done? like 3!!

they arent combat operational. Anywhere. They fly in the persian gulf, and I guess there was a encounter with Iranian jets like 2 years ago - where they flew right up besides the Iranians, who had no clue they were out there.

wow. Apex, indeed. When they start being the lynch pin in our air campaigns, we'll let you know.

and "eventually"...Hah.


yeah like when they scrap BOTH planes and skip "5th gen" and go right into a more practical 6th gen design.

[tammywammy]

28. The F-22 is being used in Syria operations. It is now considered combat tested. n/t

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

3. When I was in the Air Force, 205 lbs. was the maximum weight you could be

if you were six feet tall. If you were over the max weight for your height you would be given a certain amount of time to get in shape. If you failed to do so you could be kicked out of the service.

That's a pretty small window (200-205 pounds) for F35 drivers to squeeze through if they want to be safe.

[BlueJazz]

4. So after 14 years of develoment the plane can't carry the updated weapons until 2022, sounds...

...like the pilot will wind up as a vegetable or dead, plus the costs could pay for free heath care...
The program should be called the F-35 Yugo.

[MowCowWhoHow III]

6. At this rate just make them drones

The limiting G-force factor will then be the airframe.

[frizzled]

10. You've got to wonder why fighter drones aren't more prominent

I suppose electronic countermeasures could be devastating, but AI's now at a point where they could be somewhat autonomous and given very simple missions to complete even with jamming going on.

That's the least cynical possible explanation, I'm aware there is a great deal of prestige and capital invested in manned fighters, and military bureaucracy tends to advance only when their dreadnoughts are lying at the bottom of the seabed.

[EX500rider]

12. 'Cause the fighter pilot mafia that runs the AirForce don't want 'em.

[frizzled]

13. I'm a little torn on that one - as a good liberal, I'm not a fan of warfare

But the challenge of programming an autonomous fighter drone swarm sounds goddamned awesome.

[tabasco]

18. Same assholes that took the Warthog out of the regular Air Force

over the protests of the Army and Marines.

[sulphurdunn]

23. Gawd, doing that was stupid.

[duhneece]

26. Sadly untrue at Holloman AFB it appears

I have a retired Air Force pilot, retrained to be drone pilot, retrained to train others ...now as an extremely highly paid 'contractor' ...we train them with public money, then the big money is exchanged via 'contractors'...as a neighbor, in La Luz, New Mexico, Holloman AFB is our neighbor. Stealths used to be stationed here.

Just today, at our state NAACP conference, I met a drone pilot, still in AF...how many innocents have we killed with bombs dropped by unmanned aircraft (or whatever they prefer they be called) by folks trained at Holloman? I ask myself often...and wonder what to do with that info.

[frizzled]

7. They could just wear a vest lined with enough lead shot to make up the difference.

That would be the Russian solution to this problem, anyway.

[OakCliffDem]

9. Unfortunately

Most potential women pilots for the F-35 weigh less than 199 pounds.

Sorry gals, you have just been excluded from fighter pilot duty by back door means. The Air Force will get on this problem right away, and we can expect results any decade now.

[EL34x4]

14. Per the Air Force's weight standards

All pilots under 72 inches tall would be excluded. Pilots over 200 pounds and within height/weight standards are probably too tall to comfortably sit in the cockpit.

[OakCliffDem]

25. What if they gave a war and nobody came?

The first thing I thought of was the Air Force, Navy, and Marines with rows of these planes on the tarmac, and they can't let anybody fly them.

[FLPanhandle]

11. Hardly a breaking news story

First ejecting is dangerous PERIOD. It's a last resort to avoid death. There are usually some injuries from ejection.

Second, fighter pilots usually are under 200lbs. Big 250lb-300lb pilots can't really operate in the small confines of a fighter cockpit.

This is a non-story.

[DirkGently]

16. Isn't that kind of backwards?

It's apparently the pilots under 200 lbs who are danger of being killed on ejection. If most pilots are under 200 lbs, that just means this defect applies to most pilots.

Which is probably the point?

[sulphurdunn]

24. I though the idea of ejecting

was to replace certain death with a fighting chance for survival. I doubt parachuting to the ground with an already broken neck improves the odds much more than the certain death of going down with the plane.

[NickB79]

15. Deploy, soldier!

Your time has come!

[tabasco]

19. That's not a soldier. n/t

[Fiendish Thingy]

17. So glad that Prime Minister Trudeau

Will kill the purchase of this albatross for the Canadian forces.

[TipTok]

20. Time to eat more protein it seems...

[BainsBane]

21. Perhaps folks should ask Bernie why he continues to support the F-35?

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/24583-bernie-sanders-doubles-down-on-f-35-support-days-after-runway-explosion

[KeepItReal]

30. So does Sec. Hillary Clinton. And your point is?

In addition, Clinton pledged to sell Israel sophisticated F-35 pilot aircrafts and to invite the Israeli Prime Minister to the White House during her first month as president.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-hesitate-military-action-iran-attempts-nuclear/story?id=33630243

At least Sen. Sanders admits to the massive waste on this procurement boondoggle.

[BainsBane]

33. She tried to unload them on India when she was Secretary of State too

but she didn't vote to fund them. That is what the congress does. It is they who chose to funnel $800 billion to Lockheed Martin.
You see, mentioning she would sell them to the Israelis is not exactly the same thing as voting to make sure Lockheed-Martin received hundreds of billions in corporate welfare from US taxpayers.

At least Sanders admits he insisted on voting to make sure taxpayers funded hundreds of billions in massive waste.
As long as he admits he's wasting taxpayer money, it's okay. Yeah! MIC corporations! Whew. At least it's not Wall Street. Like the gun corporations Sanders voted to insure have immunity, the MIC makes profits from killing people, which for some reason-- no one has explained to me why--is so much better than Wall Street's usury.

[JunkYardDogg]

27. Solution: The Hans Device used in racing

The Hans device was designed to prevent the violent Head whiplash movements in car racing crashes. That is what killed Dale Earnhardt.

[jmowreader]

29. What killed Earnhardt was his helmet

Earnhardt wore an open-faced helmet so he could feel the wind against his face. When Ken Schrader hit him, the helmet spun around on his head; when Earnhardt hit the wall, the rim of the helmet broke his neck.

The problem in a nutshell: the helmet you need to wear to fly the abomination called the F-35 probably weighs 25 pounds. It is a true technological marvel: the visor is actually a video screen. It contains the head-up display, plus the feeds for the six video cameras on the plane's fuselage. (When the Powers that Be found out you can't see out the back of this piece of shit, they covered it in video cameras - forward, aft, port and starboard, and up and down all have cameras.) The helmet can figure out which way you're looking and choose the camera to show you based on your head position. It can protect the pilot from laser beams pointed at his eyes, it has several computers, and I believe the device also has integrated night vision. There are only three little issues with it: you can buy two entire Cessna 173 prop planes for the cost of one of these helmets, it weighs more than an entire litter of Maine Coon Kittens plus the mama cat, and they can't get the damn thing to work. Other than that, it's fucking awesome.

I find the "200 pounds" comment really, really strange; fighter pilots are small people because fighter cockpits have almost no room in them. The Air Force is loving the female drivers they're getting now because a greater percentage of women are small enough to do this job than are men.

The HANS would work as a stopgap measure; the fix is to sell the piece-of-shit airplanes to a country we don't like very much, tell the Marines the Battle of Tarawa was 72 years ago* and design an airplane that will actually work without having to throw five more computers at it every time they find a problem.

* The lion's share of the F-35's problems are traceable directly to the Marines' insistence this plane be able to take off in 500 feet and land vertically.

[librechik]

31. and they refuse to find out if pilots over 130 lbs are also at risk

our efficient Pentagon at work.

[Enrique]

32. what do you expect for $1.3 trillion?