Harrier At RIAT 2019

[Trevatanus]

dr_gn said:

Equus said:

Tony1963 said:

The trouble with simpler aircraft, say a Hunter or Jag, when attacking people who you think are armed with AK47s is that you either accept that one day you'll start losing aircraft to the occasional sophisticated SAM, or you add very expensive sensor suites etc.

But when you look at how many (for example) Folland Gnats you could buy for the price of an F35B, you could afford quite a lot of occasional losses without worrying overly much.

...whereas the F35B is so sophisticated that you have to accept that you'll lose them occasionally simply because their computers trip them out of the sky.

That’s an F-15. And it didn’t crash due to computer failure.

That's a Lakenheath bird?

[aeropilot]

Trevatanus said:

dr_gn said:

Equus said:

Tony1963 said:

The trouble with simpler aircraft, say a Hunter or Jag, when attacking people who you think are armed with AK47s is that you either accept that one day you'll start losing aircraft to the occasional sophisticated SAM, or you add very expensive sensor suites etc.

But when you look at how many (for example) Folland Gnats you could buy for the price of an F35B, you could afford quite a lot of occasional losses without worrying overly much.

...whereas the F35B is so sophisticated that you have to accept that you'll lose them occasionally simply because their computers trip them out of the sky.

That’s an F-15. And it didn’t crash due to computer failure.

That's a Lakenheath bird?

Yes, its the F-15D that crashed into a field in Lincolnshire in 2015 after entering a flat spin.

[Tony1963]

Equus said:

.whereas the F35B is so sophisticated that you have to accept that you'll lose them occasionally simply because their computers trip them out of the sky.
]

On what do you base this statement? Believe me, since aircraft have become more inherently unstable and more dependant on computers, they've had this base covered. In fact, since I started on Tornado in 1982, I don't recall any computer failures. Not to say they haven't happened, but I don't recall them. And that might well be due to well thought out redundancy.

Here's an interesting one. What's the rate of loss of military aircraft due to systems/control problems now compared to say 1969? I know where I'd be putting my money on the lower rate being.

[IanH755]

The average now tends to be a minimum of triple redundancy or greater for any Flight Control Computer system just because we know how "glitchy" computers can be, so it is incredibly rare for an FCC to cause a loss of control, leading to the loss of an aircraft.