Amen to that! 20 years later this was my gateway drug into being addicted to computers and gave me my full stack understanding I still use every day at work. <3 Gentoo and the friendly geek at the coffee place I worked at when I was 14 who gave me my first hit and held my hand through what is effectively mental torture for most people
So a similar thing happened near some friends' in France. A military jet crashed into the forest near their house, but the air force couldn't figure out where it had gone. Eventually a farmer noticed that a new pond had appeared on his land. The jet made enough of a crater when crashing that drained the nearby swamp and created a new pond deep enough to conceal the full fuselage, thus completely hiding the airplane. Once the farmer alerted the air force, they were able to crane the remains out of the newly formed pond and recover the key parts of hardware onboard. Had the farmer not noticed the change in landscape they might have never found it. https://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2011/03/02/97001-20110302...
I wonder if some of the "autopilot" functionality for military aircraft is to swan-dive into water/forest if everyone has already ejected.
If it's going to crash (and can't autoland, which it probably shouldn't attempt even if it could if something ejection-worthy happened), might as well obliterate the thing in a safe place.
The thing you’re thinking of is the pilot. If the plane is capable of control, the pilot will move it on a trajectory away from populated areas if possible. Protecting innocent people on the ground in the case of an emergency was always top of mind, you can see this in the crash reporting for multiple real world incidents (in airframes with, and without ejection seats, where the last actions of the aircrew were steering away from populated areas)
By the time a pilot ejects they’ve exhausted EVERY other option to control the aircraft, no AI is going to regain control at that point.
> By the time a pilot ejects they’ve exhausted EVERY other option to control the aircraft, no AI is going to regain control at that point.
It seems like they probably bail out when they've exhausted every option of being able to land it and survive. There are likely some scenarios where there's limited controls remaining, that wouldn't provide high enough odds of guaranteeing someone's survival, but that could optimize for something when it eventually makes contact with the land. In fact, it seems like there could be quite a bit of capabilities between where someone would want to bail out and where there are zero remaining controls.
I live in the real world, and there are incident reports that go into great detail about every aircraft loss. I’ve read every one since 1999, and I’ve never seen an incident where the pilot ejected over a populated area in an aircraft that was still controlled.
What you all are imagining does not happen, and the odds of it happening are vanishingly small.
“The statement went on to add that the crash was caused by an issue with one of the engines during takeoff, but the jet's two crewmembers are said to have ejected safely and survived. The extent of the injuries to the apartment building's tenants as well as civilians in the surrounding area is unknown at present.”
What I love about HN is that you can get from 'a plane went missing' to a thread that cites every plane loss since 1999 followed by a counterargument citing a downed MIG.
Like, how the heck do you all know so much? The demographics of this site are unreal
You've never been in an internet argument yourself? You don't need to know shit, just google stuff to support your views which you had already formed without evidence and post it to prove whatever you need to support your case.
Nah, I read every incident report for military in the US because it was part of my job. Since we were talking about US military aviation I felt that was the avenue. I have read every incident report for Russia, not that I even could.
You might also consider there is probably some cross-pollination with r/NonCredibleDefense, which has a lot of military intelligence people and analysts (the Yeysk crash got a lot of memes on there)
I think it's worth noting that that the MiG-23 that crashed in Michigan was a privately owned aircraft, flown not by an active service member. I highly doubt the military allows their pilots to eject without absolute certainty that the multimillion/billion dollar aircraft is totally lost.
Additionally, I highly doubt there are many privately owned military jets equipped with ejection seats that are allowed to fly, especially in residential airspace.
Also, as someone who works on FMS's the likelihood that a military program would spend the money required to code an AT/AP to have that capability is just too close to zero.
My outside, civilian impression from lots of aviator interviews is that the military values its expensive hardware very highly and does not like it if you make expensive mistakes. But my impression is also that it does value the life of its aviators highly as well. They do not want you to die in general and they do not want you do die in order to save a plane.
The decision to eject is often a very very split-second decision. When things go wrong in the air they go wrong in a hurry, especially during takeoff/landing when there is very very little distance between you and the ground.
Just like any job, a mishap that is your fault might be a negative for your aviation career. But one that is the result of equipment failure or something else outside of your control isn't going to be a black mark. My impression is that the military generally tries to get these things right, because it is generally in the military's best interest to perform at a high level and because big expensive mishaps (particularly aviation-related ones) generate a lot of bad press.
> highly doubt the military allows their pilots to eject without absolute certainty that the multimillion/billion dollar aircraft is totally lost.
The amount of time it takes to train up a replacement pilot vastly outweighs a new airframe acquisition. Furthermore, ejection is still an incredibly dangerous activity with plenty of chances for things to fail or go sideways, and a near 100% chance of injury. Like, canopy seperation failing, but seat rockets fire due to safety failure...
Suffice it to say, no, there is absolutely no pressure on pilots to not avail themselves of ejecting over and above the fact that controlled demolition of people tank at appreciable fractions of Mach, under fire, or in any of a myriad of inconvenient orientations relative to airstream and/or lithosphete and/or material formerly contributing to the ongoing flight of a perfectly good airplane is exactly nobody's definition of a good day except measured relative to the alternative of being the first to the site of the crash.
In flight school lore, during a training exercise, a plane righted itself from "uncontrollable flat spin" after ejection. Basically, pilot input can fight against the natural stability of the plane's design.
Also:
> During a training mission from Malmstrom Air Force Base, on Feb. 2, 1970, his F-106 entered an uncontrollable flat spin forcing him to eject. Unexpectedly, the aircraft recovered on its own and made a gentle belly landing and skidding for a few hundred yards on a field near Big Sandy, Montana, covered by some inches of snow.
Worth noting that spin recovery is highly CG (center of gravity) dependent. Ejecting from an aircraft would significantly alter the CG. It's far more likely that the CG change broke the spin than the pilot was doing something unhelpful.
Additionally there would be a nose down moment from the seat firing (newtons third law) and that may well have broken the stall.
Visually the cockpit of a fighter plane is located forward, thus very likely ahead of the plane's CG. Ejecting the pilot would thus move the CG towards the back of the plane, which is a less stable configuration making it more difficult to recover from a stall.
A developed spin is an equilibrium of forces. Anything that disrupts that equilibrium has a decent chance of disrupting the spin, and that would include moving the CG aft.
However, see my other note as well, there would be a nose down moment when the seat fires. There would also be a massive drag profile change. Any of these things have good potential to disrupt a stabilized spin.
My main point is that it's almost certainly not the case that the pilot was actively making incorrect inputs before ejecting. The ejection itself is the variable that likely would disrupt a spin in such a situation, not the pilot no longer making inputs.
>Notably, the F-15, (with a crew of two), managed to land safely at a nearby airbase, despite having its right wing almost completely sheared off in the collision. The lifting body properties of the F-15, together with its overabundant engine thrust, allowed the pilot to achieve this unique feat.
At first I thought you were referring to this case where a crew landed an A300 with a large part of a wing missing and no hydraulic controls, using only differential engine thrust to control pitch, roll, yaw and speed.
Near the Weizmann Institute, there is a monument for a pilot who refused to eject over the populated area, and rather kept control over his plane for long enough to divert it away. He died in the crash, as he no doubt would have anticipated.
I doubt an autopilot would have regained control in a flat spin without an ejection to drastically change the dynamics of the aircraft. I also made the point later that a sufficiently capable AI that could would essentially be able to replace the pilot, rending them moot.
Look, the OP clarified that he meant he wanted an autopilot that tries to lawn dart the plane in an incident of ejection, the purpose of which was to save sensitive technology from the enemy. I still maintain that is silly and if we funded such a program it would be a waste of money.
> By the time a pilot ejects they’ve exhausted EVERY other option to control the aircraft, no AI is going to regain control at that point.
Every other option with the pilot on board. The plane _may_ be easier to fly without it.
FTA: “The loss of the weight of the crew, seats, and canopy, as well as the shift in the center of gravity, have seen aircraft pull out of an imminent crash with nobody left onboard.”
What Scoundreller meant is that if most of the controls are lost, then the few controls remaining could still be used to intentionally destroy the plane as much as possible. For example, the elevator (to control the pitch) might be the last working control, and it could be used to intentionally nosedive the plane after ejection.
I got that and I was trying to answer in the least sarcastic way I could. I’ll try again.
Autopilot isn’t an all knowing AI that is better at dealing with emergency than a pilot. In the region of flight that involves a pilot ejection, especially in a plane like the F-35, the “autopilot” that would be created that could successfully scout a target area that was safe to crash in, eject the pilot, then somehow move the plane to that area with the canopy off the plane and the degradation of control that would involve, plus the million issues that could have caused the ejection in the first place… it’s not plausible to create this and still have a pilot. You’re talking about a system that is a better aviator, with more SA and more detail about aircraft systems than the human at the stick.
So, first, I don’t think we’re there with AI that is better than the pilot in this region of flight, second, to make that would be so expensive as to be ridiculous, for the incredibly rare event that a military plane needs to eject over a populated area yet also has a safe area like a body of water to crash into. Third, making that system would negate the need for a pilot in the first place so again, what’s the point?
I was not thinking of some highly advanced AI, just something ultra simple like: after ejection, attempt to pitch the plane to nosedive as vertically as possible. The intent being to to crash the airplane as badly as possible to prevent the enemy from recovering anything useful from the crash site.
Modern ejection systems are zero-zero systems designed to allow ejection at zero speed and zero altitude which means that the aircraft may not have enough energy to successfuly destroy sensitive components across the full ejection envelope.
Why not rig it with explosives around the sensitive components and avoid the messy endeavor of trying to orient the plane for maximum destruction after ejection when that is likely to be unreliable at best?
4 - if you had control with some badass AI why not land the plane safely for a recovery... the example in both the OP and the GP are planes lost in the country they are from not in enemy territory. The planes are not cheap... why would you purposefully wreck it in in a safe location.
Actually my example assumed being in enemy territory. Nosedive the airplane for maximum destruction, to prevent the enemy from recovering anything useful from the crash site.
I don't think that solves anything. With critical secret pieces of hardware you will still want confirmation that they were destroyed or recover them. So even if the plane can attempt to self-destruct as much as possible, the military is still going to want to confirm the result.
The skin and coatings of these planes is secret. How do you self destruct the skin?
Anyway, it’s moot. The people with the resources to actually make this stuff already hacked in and stole it. They compromised a whole CA just to get the F-35 design docs.
> If the plane is capable of control, the pilot will move it on a trajectory away from populated areas if possible. Protecting innocent people on the ground in the case of an emergency was always top of mind, you can see this in the crash reporting for multiple real world incidents
One of the things I remember from Chuck Yeager's autobiography (his first one - I think he eventually had several) is that he called bullshit on this. His view was that the pilot was putting all his attention and focus into saving the aircraft, and stories about how the pilot steered a failing aircraft away from something important on the ground were not true.
Of course, after the fact a pilot is going to say he tried to save people on the ground...
(his view might have been cynical, but I expect it often holds true)
There’s many voice recordings, instrument logs, and even ATC conversations of people aiming doomed aircraft away from populated areas. Military pilots may have different priorities as they can eject, but many civilian pilots have spent their final moments trying to minimize casualties.
Exceptions defiantly exist, but it’s a very common reaction.
Yeah these are by far the most harrowing ones to listen to. You can hear the resignation in their voices before they steel themselves to try anything left to avoid loss of life on the ground.
I do expect having an ejection seat might alter behavior, as well as the encouragement of an ATC. And Yeager was a test pilot who was part of a community of test pilots...
In my memory, my impression of Yeager's brief anecdote was that "the pilot heroically sacrificed himself to save the lives of innocents on the ground" was a common enough bullshit news story that he wanted to debunk it. A pilot would be focused on saving himself and his aircraft to the fullest extent possible.
Test pilots are also generally avoiding populated areas where civilian airports are often very close or even inside them. The trope of military jets crashing into a desert, ocean, or farmers field represents the most likely outcomes.
Chuck Yeager emphatically was a selfish asshole, but...
> There are many incidents that prove this wrong.
No, there aren't, and your saying so is just a failure in logic. Literally every instance of a crash would have to play out the way you insist it should, with a pilot taking into account the presence of population centers before ejecting, in order to "prove this wrong."
The tag team duo of MiG pilots who crashed in Michigan a couple of weeks ago didn't even agree on whether it was time to eject. They certainly hadn't placed the plane on some kind of safe trajectory (it landed literally right next to an apartment building). For that matter, maybe that incident is somehow an argument for selfishness: if they hadn't punched out right when they did, they would have been outside the envelope for a safe ejection, and that would be two dead people for sure.
All that said, I don't think you and I would disagree on how pilots should handle the situation. I just don't think it plays out as well as we'd like every time.
So you posit that the ejection seat adds some selfishness to the pilots? Because I’m not kidding there are a lot of incidents where we have inflight recordings of pilots without ejection seats steering away from populated areas in their last action, as well as the incident where an Israeli pilot with an ejection seat choose not to eject (and died) moving his plane off line.
Then, I’ll just tell you in my personal experience in the airplane, I’ve seen 2 pilots risk their lives moving away from a town and not die (luckily) but crash and destroy their airframe. The other pilots I flew with, I’d say 95 out of 100 would do the same.
lol. The first incident I’ve ever seen where this happens. Just perfect that I pop off with absolute statements and then am proven wrong by the incident I was responding to.
Will this always be true though? Not even thinking about advancements in AI, but from a human body g-force standpoint, surely those jets can already pull way more Gs than the pilots can handle.
I doubt the software is doing that today but why couldn't there be maneuvers the plane could do at 15 Gs that would help it survive?
I’m sure there is somewhere at the extreme edge of the bell curve that this might be true for, but in general, no.
For one, the jets are engineered around the limits of the pilots. These are high performance military aircraft where every ounce of weight matters, the airframe isn’t over engineered to support 15g maneuvers. Ripping the wings off wouldn’t help in an emergency.
I made the point later that by the time the AI is a more capable aviator, with the SA to do what OP was suggesting, the pilot is redundant. Take them out, engineer the plane to make those 15g turns with the extra weight you save not having life support, seats, canopy, etc.
Right -- I had the same thought coming back to this. We know planes aren't capable of this because as soon as they are you wouldn't have pilots. Maybe 'planes' is too strong since there are a bunch of people playing video game drones in the middle east from Alabama or whatever.
Actually, no. A pilot might punch from a perfectly flyable aircraft that ran out of fuel and can't be glided in due to terrain. Or a plane that has no propulsion for other reasons. They might even punch from a plane with some fuel but damage that precludes landing--if they're over civilization they might point it into nowhere and punch so they come down over civilization.
Ok, and here we go with the armchair aviators. Time in a Microsoft flight simulator doesn’t give you expertise.
I’ll just reiterate, by the time a pilot is ejecting from the aircraft, everything has been done. Read through the incident reports and find me an incident where this wasn’t done, cite it please. I can’t find one.
I'm not saying they would punch if there was something to be done--the pilot could have found the problem was one that couldn't be dealt with. I'm saying that the control surfaces might be operational on a plane the pilot was punching from. Desert Storm an Iraqi pilot punched from an intact plane--he beat the Phoenix (long range shot) but ran out of fuel doing it.
I mean, are there detailed accident reports for the sort of military plane with “keep it away from the enemy” type equipment onboard? Seems like you wouldn’t want to give away information about crash behavior since that could help the enemy recover the equipment.
Not saying it is plausible or not in the first place, I have no idea, but I don’t see how a lack of published reports of this happening in the real world proves anything.
The key point is that the plane does not crash in a populated area (and secondarily that a military plane is destroyed if crashing in an area not controlled by the owner); in both of your examples, the pilot routinely does the first if not necessarily the second.
Well usually it is pilots responsibility to try to aim it in safe direction as much as possible and only then eject. Basically like captain on the ship you don't eject but you are last one to leave the ship after you made what is possible to save others from harm (unless they are of course hostile forces).
I think quite some pilots died this way because they were trying to the last second to save other lives.
If plane is that much out of control that you cannot do much, adding some code to try to do something might make things actually worse from my perspective.
Yup, plenty of stories of pilots going in with the plane because they were guiding it away from people on the ground. That's why modern ejection seats can save you even if you're at ground level (although you do have to be upright in that case.) It lets the pilot ride it as long as possible and yet escape.
I doubt it. You do not want an uncommanded activation of that system for any reason. You may actually _want_ your disabled plane to continue in a specific direction for tactical reasons. You generally do not allow auto pilot to make large deflections in control surfaces, as you always want a pilot on the stick to be able to overcome any uncommanded autopilot actions.
> I wonder if some of the "autopilot" functionality for military aircraft is to swan-dive into water/forest if everyone has already ejected.
Not quite the same you are thinking about but something similar is documented behaviour of the Global Hawk. Obviously since that is a remotely piloted aircraft “everyone has ejected safely” is not the trigger for it.
The way it works at the flight planning stage the operators define pre-determined points, and if the system detects certain faults it cannot recover from it tries to fly to these points and crash land into them. They call these point “termination point” on land and “ditching point” over water.
In this document[1] you can read more about the selection criteria of such points.
This document[2] details for air traffic control under which conditions flight termination points are used. In short (page 22) when the aircraft is uncontrolable for landing or landing at a suitable airfield cannot be achieved safely.
Some Hollywood points in this direction. E.g. the Behind Enemy Lines ejection scene.
Seems like a pretty good idea to self-destruct the most sensitive hardware (computers/chips/storage modules/etc) if recovery of the aircraft is no longer feasible.
Pay close attention to the word "temporary." In normal flight, it's not that unusual for flight instruments to have to be rebooted because of unexpected glitches.
It's relevant to note that the aircraft disappeared from radar in the evening while doing "low altitude exercises" and was discovered the next morning (bad weather preventing the rescue teams from finding it earlier).
The linked article mentions that the pilot and navigator were considered missing. Other news reported also the presence of human remains near the crash site.
From the satellite images of the area, you have several urban areas with large swaths of farmland and some forest around them. One of the lakes is a dammed river. The flood plains downriver from the dam are quite lush. It’s in a field, under a tree, or in a pond it dug itself if the water table is high right now.
They have transponders. But military airplanes can and sometimes do turn them off. When airplanes broadcast signals they can be detected. The military sometimes wishes to avoid this.
One of the article updates quotes from a Washington Post story:
> "The jet’s transponder, which usually helps locate the aircraft, was not working “for some reason that we haven’t yet determined,” said Jeremy Huggins, a spokesman at Joint Base Charleston. “So that’s why we put out the public request for help.”
It could activate after ejection, certain acceleration pattern (i.e. crash) or could start broadcasting only after receiving very specific signal (one-time code) on a specific frequency. There are probably plenty more options, it doesn't seem like a hard problem from engineering standpoint.
Civilian aircraft, even 2 seaters, have had ELTs for decades. They are being replaced with better systems, but they were designed to do just that: broadcast a signal on a specific frequency after a crash.
Doubtful you want to broadcast the position of the latest generation stealth fighter, however.
As mentioned, it can be silent until receiving specific signal. It can be single frequency it can be multiple, but if it's specific string of bytes or specific timing it's practically impossible to brute force when it's long enough, and when looking for the plane you can broadcast it with high intensity because it is only single use.
I don't think stealth aircrafts normally have trackers or anything broadcasting a signal. Kind of defeats the purpose...
I did read that stealth aircraft have transponders installed when operating in US airspace, so commercial radar can see them better. But it was not installed on this flight.
The article mentions that they have transponders that can be used but apparently in this case it was off or not working. They can also attach a radar reflectors when they want to be more visible to radar, and apparently the weapons configuration plays a role too:
> "Also, the jet's configuration and its avionics' operability are an issue. The F-35s wear radar reflectors when on transit flights, as well as on many training missions and some operational ones. The Marine jets often wear missile rails for AIM-9Xs, as well. But if the aircraft was in its full stealthy configuration and had avionics issues, tracking it may have been troublesome."
They have transponders that transmit their identity and location on the most modern, but those depend on being active (for some reason the one in the F-35 was not) and on there being receivers nearby to pick them up. At lower altitudes in remote locations coverage is spotty.
First, yes it would be a security risk.
Second, AirTags depend on there being a set number of iOS devices nearby to provide location data and an internet connection. You're not going to get that in a rural area.
GPS is not reliable underwater, I'd expect it to have an ELT/EPIRB but those don't work with GPS as far as I know, and the crash could have been hard enough to render it inoperable.
Jesus, imagine the thrill, that you have a full blown airplane in your backyard. Going out during the nights and sleep next to it, sit in the cockpit, whatever.
Typhoid Mary did not have many symptoms and did not die of typhoid. This woman might be ignoring her condition but it is obvious to others. There's definitely room for comparison, and also contrast.
Ah the good old "it's not me it's the test" argument. These systems are not just next token predictors, they learn complex algorithms and can perform general computation, its just so happens that by asking them to next-token predict the internet they learn a bunch of smart ways to compress everything, potentially in a way similar to how we might use a general concept to avoid memorizing a lookup table. Please have a look at https://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.15661 and https://mobile.twitter.com/DimitrisPapail/status/16208344092.... We don't understand everything that's going on yet but it would be foolish to discount anything at this stage, or to state much of anything with any degree of confidence (and that stands for both sides of the opinion spectrum). Also these systems aren't exposed to the real world today, but this will be untrue very soon https://ai.googleblog.com/2023/03/palm-e-embodied-multimodal...
Now imagine the other side of this equation, where pandas seems too clunky, behold YOLOPandas https://pypi.org/project/yolopandas/ i.e. `df.llm.query("What item is the least expensive?")`
This is what pains me the most about the US. Out of sight and out of mind but these poorer parts of society represent xx millions of fellow humans. If you could have similar standard of living in Australia where the poorer parts of society perhaps have more accessible healthcare and better social safety nets, then why the hell can't we do that in the US!? (I know the answers to that question, but it just makes me sad and angry).
Source? My anecdotal experience is that in the US people without much income will simply avoid seeing a doctor until things get Serious because of cost, which makes the quality of care somewhat irrelevant (and my other anecdotal experience was that Uk hospital quality was quite good, and as you mentioned, free).
My understanding of bigger salaries outside the UK is that they are based on longer working hours, with very little focus on quality of life outside work. This may only apply to the US, but in any case I’ll always personally consider off-work time a very precious requirement.
probably almost four to eight weeks more per year than the average British or European programmer. In the EU and UK most countries have about six weeks of mandatory paid time off per year, and strict limits on overtime work.
Anecdotally from my own experience in the US I'd say Americans work probably about 20% more hours annually. Even people who had comparable vacation would often only take two weeks, and weekly hours seemed to be closer to 40-45 than the 35-38 that's common in Europe.
Around the 2000 years and the dot com boom, When I worked at a very large and well-known US software company, on-site for an external (German company) partner, their campus parking lots filled up around 9-10 am and emptied at 4 pm. Long midday breaks in the (several) restaurants on campus, or the sports building, many driving off-site for eating in some nearby city (many to choose from on the SF Bay Area peninsula).
True, the Americans didn't get much vacation, when I and some German colleagues went skiing over that long fall weekend (forgot what holiday it was) the resort was suddenly empty exactly at the end of the holiday, while we Germans stayed a day longer.
However, during regular hours it's pretty casual. My job involved traveling to many IT companies all over the country, I don't think the insane hours are anywhere near normal apart from some very few companies and not for long. The best you will get is people pretending to work - often enough I saw lots of "office golf" and web browsing or being out for coffee breaks, lots more than people actually working. That was before the wave of remote work so I think I saw the "real work". I'm fine with it, I think that's sane and reasonable for these kinds of jobs.
On the other hand, what I saw from low-level service jobs was really bad. It seemed to me that those employees do have it hard and are under constant supervision with little authority to do anything or to use their brain, just follow the script and call a supervisor if any actual decisions have to be made, and they really have to work those hours.
