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What's with military pilots? (Read 738 times)
Nov 10th, 2004 at 7:33pm

Wing Nut   Offline
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Is it just me or have there been a lot of fighter planes crashing this year?  I can count five or six, not counting in Iraq.  Did they lower the training standards or something?  This may be my chance...  Wink
 

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Reply #1 - Nov 10th, 2004 at 9:14pm

Felix/FFDS   Offline
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More flying = more things that can go wrong, both with the pilot and with the airplane.
 

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Reply #2 - Nov 11th, 2004 at 7:45am

C   Offline
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Its just one of those things. Most military accidents involved perfectly servicable aeroplanes - it involves some degree of human error to cause the accident. It just happens randomly, so sometimes you'll have a bad year and sometimes you can have a year where you have very few incidents. In the UK (Army Air Corps, Fleet Air Arm and Royal Air Force) lost only 3 aircraft in 2003, but in 1999 we lost 18 and '96 we lost 21...

Charlie
 
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Reply #3 - Nov 23rd, 2004 at 9:52am

edzmen   Offline
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Quote:
In the UK (Army Air Corps, Fleet Air Arm and Royal Air Force) lost only 3 aircraft in 2003...


Yeah, thats because we train the best pilots though!! 8)
 
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Reply #4 - Nov 23rd, 2004 at 11:00am

Craig.   Offline
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More like 90% of our planes are in no state to fly, and with the amount of time it takes to discuss fixing them, most of the years gone anyway Grin And i can get away with saying that as my dad was among other things an engineer for REME. LOL
 
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Reply #5 - Nov 23rd, 2004 at 4:12pm

C   Offline
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Quote:
More like 90% of our planes are in no state to fly, and with the amount of time it takes to discuss fixing them, most of the years gone anyway Grin And i can get away with saying that as my dad was among other things an engineer for REME. LOL


Where I work servicability is generally very good. The real reason is that we are flying a lot less (cos Gordon Brown can't give us the money, because he accidently spent it on something else) and flight safety is constantly improving (we are learning our lessons), and we a doing a little less low flying. The other side is luck, and sometimes it runs out, for example the Tornado in TELIC (a combination of a £25 battery and the Patriot automated FCS), and the recent Canberra incident at Marham, where the crew would have almost certainly survived had they not ejected...

Quote:
Yeah, thats because we train the best pilots though!!


Indeed, and on the point of training, considering how much flying is done, the RAF's safety record in the past few years is impeccable...

Charlie
 
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Reply #6 - Nov 30th, 2004 at 8:59pm

beefhole   Offline
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Quote:
Yeah, thats because we train the best pilots though!! 8)


Oh no he DI-IN'T!  Pfft, you can keep your stupid pilots (who needs them?).  Us yanks got the best planes.  Common, there is nothing on earth that can compete with the F/A-18.  And if you disagree with that, there's no arguing the apache-longbow.  It IS the greatest attack chopper, there is no opinion here, it's all fact.  And when the F-22 comes out, it's gonne be like OHH SNAP!

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Reply #7 - Dec 1st, 2004 at 10:15am

C   Offline
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Oh no he DI-IN'T!  Pfft, you can keep your stupid pilots (who needs them?).  Us yanks got the best planes.  Common, there is nothing on earth that can compete with the F/A-18.


Er, yep, most varieties of the F-15 would, not to mention (Eurofighter) Typhoon. Also (sorry for being British...) you have to take into account the people flying - the RAF guys flying the Typhoon have been used to holding their own with inferior equipment, ie the Tornado F3. Ask USAF pilots and they have A LOT of respect for the F3 guys. So give them a semi decent (ok, and late Grin ) piece of kit and they should be capable of a pretty good job. Bring F-22 into the equation and it changes completely. I saw some figures of the kill analysis of various fighters. With the F-22 I think they stated around a 90% chance of a kill on first pass against generic opposition (probably a bog standard F-15/16/18). Typhoon was second behind that somewhere around 80ish %...

It was also interesting to see the results when the US F-15s first entered mock air to air combat with the Sea Harrier (Frs. 1), a year or two before the Falklands War. I think they found the results somewhat surprising...

Quote:
 And if you disagree with that, there's no arguing the apache-longbow.  It IS the greatest attack chopper, there is no opinion here, it's all fact.


That why the (British) Army bought them... Grin

Charlie

Oh yeah,

Quote:
Pfft, you can keep your stupid pilots (who needs them?)


Because we can be so selective, most of them are quite clever really (we recruit less than 100/year nowadays)... Grin
 
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Reply #8 - Dec 1st, 2004 at 10:28am

Craig.   Offline
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just a few pointers not to get into it too much. The Eurofighter as late and problematic as it has been, has actually in various unplanned situations whooped every aircraft its encountered, the two yes i repeat two F-15's that jumped one on a training mission were both taken out in very quick time. There have been rumors a couple of tornados also tried to play games with a typhoon, they didnt fair to well either but Charlie might have something more conclusive on that as its only rumor. The number charlie gave were pretty much accurate, the way i saw them, were as such. the F-22 would shoot down 10 for every f22 lost. the typhoon 8 for every typhoon lost, then the rest were down in the 4 and below catagory. However these are all paper stats and never been fully tested in mock combat. Take out the stealth element of the F-22 and just have it participate in a mock dog fight and it would soon struggle with the typhoon. As much of a waste of money that its been, if you have ever seen this thing at an airshow your only seeing 70% of its ability, the agility on it is still not fully known but its beyond almost every other jet fighter in existance
 
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Reply #9 - Dec 1st, 2004 at 12:33pm

Hagar   Offline
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This thread seems to have wandered slightly off-topic. Britain is a much smaller country & has far fewer military aircraft in service than the US.  Due to recently announced defence cutbacks the total will be reduced, not increased, over the next few years. RAF pilot training was always regarded as second to none but leaving all national pride aside I would say that the only way to compare the number of military accidents is on a percentage basis. Wink
 

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Reply #10 - Dec 1st, 2004 at 2:39pm

Felix/FFDS   Offline
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and, no matter what the defense cust are, ozzy, NO, the UK will NOT bring back the Spitfire to service, so get that out of your head!  (OTOH, there are credible rumors saying that the MoD will bring back the Swordfish as its premiere maritime attack plane, and all SAR helicopters are to be replaced by Walrii...)
 

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Reply #11 - Dec 1st, 2004 at 3:02pm

ozzy72   Offline
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From what I hear the MOD are issuing cardboard wings!
 

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Reply #12 - Dec 1st, 2004 at 3:06pm

C   Offline
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From what I hear the MOD are issuing cardboard wings!


...which don't work in the desert, snow, rain or any slightly unfavourable weather condition... Smiley Wink Grin

Charlie

PS. Hopefully the F-22 v Typhoon situation will never arise. If it does, I'm off... To somewhere nice... Christmas Island perhaps, or the Falklands... Wink
 
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Reply #13 - Dec 1st, 2004 at 3:08pm

C   Offline
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Quote:
and, no matter what the defense cust are, ozzy, NO, the UK will NOT bring back the Spitfire to service, so get that out of your head!  (OTOH, there are credible rumors saying that the MoD will bring back the Swordfish as its premiere maritime attack plane, and all SAR helicopters are to be replaced by Walrii...)


And the Sopwith Pup as the fleet defense aircraft (to replace the Sea Harrier  Cry )  Smiley Wink Grin

Charlie
 
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Reply #14 - Dec 1st, 2004 at 3:38pm

Hagar   Offline
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Quote:
...which don't work in the desert, snow, rain or any slightly unfavourable weather condition... Smiley Wink Grin

Hmmm, nothing new there then. LOL Cheesy
 

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