10 ms·

This sounds too ridiculous to be true. I'd be more inclined to believe that it's a gambit to flush out an intelligence leak rather than an inability to find th

This sounds too ridiculous to be true. I'd be more inclined to believe that it's a gambit to flush out an intelligence leak rather than an inability to find their own $160M plane.

delfinom 3y ago
[flagged]
- NavinF 3y ago
  We don't have children starving in schools
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    As of 2021, roughly 1 in 8 children in the US experience food insecurity[1]. [1]: https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/child-hunger-facts https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/child-hunge...
    - ensignavenger 3y ago
      "food insecurity" is not the same as starving.
      - kkielhofner 3y ago
        You would probably have a different perspective if you were in that situation, especially as a child. EDIT: Downvotes for compassion, HN is rough today!
        ensignavenger 3y ago
        I grew up in a household that would qualify. I know exactly how I feel about it having experienced it as a child.
      - anon____ 3y ago
        If 1 in 8 kids experiences food insecurity, then it's likely that there are at least some, maybe 1 in 100, who are starving, however you define it. Also, there are two kinds of starvation: in one case the quantity of food is insufficient, in the other its quality is. Eating fries with soda in great quantity every day could still starve a growing kid.
      - safety1st 3y ago
        I was wondering how 1 in 8 children could be experiencing food insecurity in a nation with a 40% obesity rate, and what food insecurity was exactly, so I poked around in their methodology a little. https://www.feedingamerica.org/sites/default/files/2022-08/Map%20the%20Meal%20Gap%202022%20Technical%20Brief.pdf https://www.feedingamerica.org/sites/default/files/2022-08/M... Happy to be corrected if I'm misreading this. But if I understand correctly, they go into it on page 8, and there are basically two ways they calculate food insecurity. The first is a weighted average of variables that are unrelated or indirectly related to food - including income, race and disability rate. The second is self-reporting (basically asking households if they need more money for food). Hmm.
        Workaccount2 3y ago
        I've seen this before, you end up with a bunch of overweight households reporting that it's too expensive to maintain a 4500 calorie a day diet.
        kkielhofner 3y ago
        It's paradoxical. Historically wealthy and high status people were "fatter" and had pale skin. It signaled that you had ready access to food and didn't work outside. Now high status people are thin/muscular and have tanner skin - cheap and quick food is terrible for you and it signals you have the time to workout, pay for a trainer/gym membership, go on vacation to sunny destinations, aren't chained to a desk/working retail, can pay for and have access to high quality and fresh foods, etc. More and more high quality and healthy food is expensive and/or requires more time to prepare and plan. If you're shuffling between multiple minimum wage jobs you're often eating fast food all day because you either can't afford or don't have time for anything better. Then start looking at food deserts[0]. Stop at a bodega in a poor neighborhood that serves as the only food source around and prepare to be shocked at the absolute garbage they have available that's still covered by SNAP. [0] - https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts
        larkost 3y ago
        My kids go to a school where the majority of the kids are somewhere around poverty level (easy to be under there in Silicon Valley if you are not an engineer in tech). I absolutely believe the administrators when they say that the meals some of the kids get in school might be the only ones they get for the day (by far not the majority: those are hard working parents, dedicated to their kids). And watching how much hand-holding is needed for some of the families on the pre-school-year paperwork day (back to school night) I am fully convinced that the worst-off kids are likely to wind up without food if their receiving it depends on their parents filling out forms. And I want to be clear that the kids I think might be on the edge are not (in most cases) there because of neglect. They are there because living here is more expensive than their parents can afford completely, despite working long hours. That is a condemnation of a society that mis-appropriates the wealth (like on Engineers like me). Yes, it is a waste of money that my kids (kids of a Silicon Valley Engineer) get their food for free, but looking at the alternative (kids going hungry), is it really that much of a waste?
      - woodruffw 3y ago
        I’ll be sure to let the kids know!
  - macintux 3y ago
    It's not pretty right now. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/05/03/1173535647/schools-ended-universal-free-lunch-now-meal-debt-is-soaring https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/05/03/1173535...
    - 1234letshaveatw 3y ago
      blanket free lunch is disgustingly wasteful and a terrible solution for needy children. It is like buying a new car whenever you have a flat tire. I can feed my own kids, I don't need them picking up an extra slice of pizza every day for fun and throwing milk and plates and disposable utensils in the garbage. Ask any lunch worker about the additional garbage and waste it generates. The correct solution is to remove the barriers stopping children from getting free lunch- stop requiring parents to sign up for it. If a lunch aide feels like a kid needs food, they should be able to sign them up without anyone having to know about it or consent to it. Let the schools give kids in need double lunches if they want them and/or something to take home with them. Double down on the kids in need, don't force it on everyone.
      - RankingMember 3y ago
        Are there any stats/citations that back up your assertion that kids who bring their own lunches in universal free lunch states are wasting food en masse? > a terrible solution for needy children The kids who previously weren't getting fed are now getting fed, aren't they?
        1234letshaveatw 3y ago
        The tire got replaced too. Who cares if we are killing the environment because of lazy policymakers right?
        RankingMember 3y ago
        I don't understand what you're saying here.
      - 3y ago
- d1sxeyes 3y ago
  You don't actually have to crash the jet, just tell everyone you did.
  - op00to 3y ago
    It's a ploy to get foreign adversaries to clean up pollution. "We can't find the wreckage ANYWHERE! Maybe if we cleaned up some of this pollution, we would find the plane underneath it? Is there anyone who wants to find F-35 wreckage? Chinaaaaaa?"
- melling 3y ago
  Sort of an absurd thing to say. However, it’s repeated all the time, and in every generation in some form. One really has nothing to do with the other. If we could educate people at a younger age so they understand this, maybe we can make more progress in creating a better society. Start with the fact that military spending has decreased as a percentage of GDP: https://www.statista.com/statistics/217581/outlays-for-defense-and-forecast-in-the-us-as-a-percentage-of-the-gdp/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/217581/outlays-for-defen...
  - the_sleaze9 3y ago
    What an odd form of comparison, Military spending is almost entirely a function of tax, not Gross Domestic Product of a country. But taking just one aspect of that graph – overall military spending - it's true that spending has decreased since we were involved in a full scale occupation of another country, assaulting several others, then whack-a-moling the downstream consequences of those wars. It is also (in my humble opinion) extremely disingenuous to not include the direct financing of another country's war (Ukraine) which at this time is something around 80 billion. - Also something to note is underneath your gdp<>government-spending graph it states spending in 2022 was 746 billion, predicted to increase to 1.1 trillion next year. While spending on education was 42.5 billion in 2022. You are correct in that we need to educate people better, it is not accurate to say we could solve a plethora of societal issues with just a fraction of the financial fuel the military industrial complex requires.
    - areyousure 3y ago
      > While spending on education was 42.5 billion in 2022. In case anyone was curious, https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/ https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/ reports total spending of $1.76 trillion on education in fiscal year 2022. (It also reports defense spending of $1.11 trillion. The subpage https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/defense_spending https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/defense_spending includes the number $765.8 billion as part of a breakdown.)
      - the_sleaze9 3y ago
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  The federal government provides billions of free or reduced price meals to school children every year. American schools do not let you not eat lunch, if you try to skip lunch you will have a lunch forcibly given to you for free for as long as it takes the school administration to figure out what is going on with your parents. Your parents will be billed for the lunches if they can afford it, and if not you will be signed up for the federal free lunch program. But either way this plays out, they will not allow you to not eat a lunch. Even if you plead that you ate a huge breakfast and you aren't hungry, they will put a tray of food in front of you anyway. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/child-nutrition-programs/national-school-lunch-program.aspx https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/ch...
runarberg 3y ago
Incompetence is positively correlated with salary and responsibility. The more money you handle on your job the likelier you are to be incompetent. It comes as no surprise to me that people responsible for these machines of war are more incompetent than you or me.
- IAmGraydon 3y ago
  > The more money you handle on your job the likelier you are to be incompetent. And your source for this data is…?
  - runarberg 3y ago
    Sorry, no, I’m just stating an opinion. And even if I had a source, the definition of incompetence varies so widely, that surely this statement would hold no additional weight.
    - overboard2 3y ago
      Why do you believe it?
      - runarberg 3y ago
        Because of my misbelieve in capitalism and the belief in the corruption of governments. Or as the saying goes: “All power corrupts” and all that. On top of that, I am no believer in meritocracy (that is I don’t believe people advance in position based on merit). Now lets do some thought statistics. I—as a bayesean—assign the uniform distribution as a prior to competence, that is I assume that competence is equally distributed across occupations and positions independent of responsibility. Now, lets allow some movement between positions and assume correlation between responsibility and salaries (that is people being payed more are responsible for a greater proportion of the system). Now assume there is not a 100% correlation between competence and being moved into a greater position with a greater salary (that is we assume some level of corruption; people moved into greater position because of favors, family ties, wealth, gender, etc. Even misattributed skills of those promoted [i.e. incompetence of those responsible promoting and hiring; i.e. suspect positive feedback of incompetence]). Finally we acknowledge the fact that being moved into a position with more responsibility and you don’t gain skills as you are moved, your competence will decrease (that is competence is a function of responsibility and skill). It should be easy to see that your posterior distribution of competence to salaries and the posterior distribution of competence to responsibility should both be skewed towards the right. That is you as you increase responsibility and salaries, you will find relatively fewer people competent at their jobs.
IAmGraydon 3y ago
It’s definitely BS. Transponders aside, the US has radar and near real-time satellite imagery of every square inch of American territory. There is a zero percent chance they don’t know where this plane is.
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  Isn't the whole point of an F-35 that it is really hard to track with radar?
  - SkyPuncher 3y ago
    It can be. I believe for “routine” training they’ll keep a radar reflector in them. Very little need to have stealth when bouncing around the US.
    - AustinDev 3y ago
      I was in a stealth fighter squadron. It really depends on the mission profile as to determine if the reflectors will be on the plane during CONUS training. If we're doing BVR 'tag' drills, they won't have them installed. If we're just putting butts in seats to keep certs current or maybe some air to ground training, then the reflectors will be installed. Caveat, I was in the Air Force and I'm not too familiar with NATOPS which is what I believe the Marines would be operating under to determine SOP. I was not a pilot, but I was in operations and received the same briefings. My training was also from when we first got real stealth fighters and SOP has probably evolved a lot in the last decade. What's most interesting about this story to me is... What sort of mishap would lead to an ejection with autopilot left functioning? That all seems very peculiar. Weird way to join the Caterpillar Club.
      - robarr 3y ago
        “The Caterpillar Club is an informal association of people who have successfully used a parachute to bail out of a disabled aircraft. After authentication by the parachute maker, applicants receive a membership certificate and a distinctive lapel pin. The nationality of the person whose life was saved by parachute and ownership of the aircraft are not factors in determining qualification for membership; anybody whose life was saved by using a parachute after bailing out of a disabled aircraft is eligible. The requirement that the aircraft is disabled naturally excludes parachuting enthusiasts in the normal course of a recreational jump, or those involved in military training jumps.“ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_Club https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_Club
HlessClaudesman 3y ago
My jet-plane brings all the spys to the yard.
_a_a_a_ 3y ago
Entirely credible. Right at the top it says it's a stealth aircraft. It's just doing what it does best.
jsbisviewtiful 3y ago
You'd be surprised to learn then that the United States has lost several (6, last I knew) nuclear weapons over the decades. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220804-the-lost-nuclear-bombs-that-no-one-can-find https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220804-the-lost-nuclear...
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_incident_terminology#Broken_Arrow_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear... > The US Department of Defense has officially recognized at least 32 "Broken Arrow" incidents from 1950 to 1980. https://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/media/filer_public/24/db/24dbd8c1-c74a-4841-ab63-c3258a14ceb4/_cc_afswp_technical_incidents_reduced1.pdf https://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/media/filer_p... > Unofficially, the Defense Atomic Support Agency (now known as the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)) has detailed hundreds of "Broken Arrow" incidents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_incident_terminology#Broken_Arrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear... ("Broken Arrow refers to an accidental event that involves nuclear weapons, warheads or components that does not create a risk of nuclear war.")
ggambetta 3y ago
I guess I don't watch enough spy movies, but... how do you use a not-really-missing jet to flush out an intelligence leak?
- Fluorescence 3y ago
  I'm delighted you ask because I watch too many. You crash an end-of-life trainer dressed up as an F35 in a carefully chosen site with no natural foot traffic. The FBI then sits in a bush and arrests everyone that turns up. The F35 is the prime intelligence target for Russia before it gets in Ukrainian hands so they might risk some of their most valuable "illegals" i.e. the long-term embedded agents with flawless identities. For a big target, you gotta go big. Hang out the biggest prize in the most embarrassing way you can. This is a typical type of plot from The Americans TV show. That or it's testing the adversarial satellite or balloon surveillance tech for how long it takes to find the craft. Maybe it's a test of Open Source Intelligence networks. Maybe it had genuine stealth tech and they are monitoring channels to find out if it was being successfully tracked. A top of the line stealth craft is hell of a honeypot so there are endless things that might get revealed - I imagine all hostile intelligence networks are lit up like christmas trees - it's like a barium meal. Do I believe any of these? Nah. Reality is more ridiculous than fiction so no doubt it really is the case that they have just lost a prize intelligence asset.
  - GhostWhisperer 3y ago
    don't let a crisis go to waste
  - 2-718-281-828 3y ago
    let's be realistic. even their highly prized illegals can't collect much intel about an f35 on us territory.
anigbrowl 3y ago
Or a new marketing campaign from Lockheed Martin - 'stealth technology so good, even we can't find it'. Meanwhile the loony tune demographic has decided that it flew to China on Biden's orders.

This sounds too ridiculous to be true. I'd be more inclined to believe that it's a gambit to flush out an intelligence leak rather than an inability to find their own $160M plane.

delfinom 3y ago

[flagged]

NavinF 3y ago
We don't have children starving in schools
- woodruffw 3y ago
  As of 2021, roughly 1 in 8 children in the US experience food insecurity[1]. [1]: https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/child-hunger-facts https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/child-hunge...
  - ensignavenger 3y ago
    "food insecurity" is not the same as starving.
    - kkielhofner 3y ago
      You would probably have a different perspective if you were in that situation, especially as a child. EDIT: Downvotes for compassion, HN is rough today!
      - ensignavenger 3y ago
        I grew up in a household that would qualify. I know exactly how I feel about it having experienced it as a child.
    - anon____ 3y ago
      If 1 in 8 kids experiences food insecurity, then it's likely that there are at least some, maybe 1 in 100, who are starving, however you define it. Also, there are two kinds of starvation: in one case the quantity of food is insufficient, in the other its quality is. Eating fries with soda in great quantity every day could still starve a growing kid.
    - safety1st 3y ago
      I was wondering how 1 in 8 children could be experiencing food insecurity in a nation with a 40% obesity rate, and what food insecurity was exactly, so I poked around in their methodology a little. https://www.feedingamerica.org/sites/default/files/2022-08/Map%20the%20Meal%20Gap%202022%20Technical%20Brief.pdf https://www.feedingamerica.org/sites/default/files/2022-08/M... Happy to be corrected if I'm misreading this. But if I understand correctly, they go into it on page 8, and there are basically two ways they calculate food insecurity. The first is a weighted average of variables that are unrelated or indirectly related to food - including income, race and disability rate. The second is self-reporting (basically asking households if they need more money for food). Hmm.
      - Workaccount2 3y ago
        I've seen this before, you end up with a bunch of overweight households reporting that it's too expensive to maintain a 4500 calorie a day diet.
      - kkielhofner 3y ago
        It's paradoxical. Historically wealthy and high status people were "fatter" and had pale skin. It signaled that you had ready access to food and didn't work outside. Now high status people are thin/muscular and have tanner skin - cheap and quick food is terrible for you and it signals you have the time to workout, pay for a trainer/gym membership, go on vacation to sunny destinations, aren't chained to a desk/working retail, can pay for and have access to high quality and fresh foods, etc. More and more high quality and healthy food is expensive and/or requires more time to prepare and plan. If you're shuffling between multiple minimum wage jobs you're often eating fast food all day because you either can't afford or don't have time for anything better. Then start looking at food deserts[0]. Stop at a bodega in a poor neighborhood that serves as the only food source around and prepare to be shocked at the absolute garbage they have available that's still covered by SNAP. [0] - https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts
      - larkost 3y ago
        My kids go to a school where the majority of the kids are somewhere around poverty level (easy to be under there in Silicon Valley if you are not an engineer in tech). I absolutely believe the administrators when they say that the meals some of the kids get in school might be the only ones they get for the day (by far not the majority: those are hard working parents, dedicated to their kids). And watching how much hand-holding is needed for some of the families on the pre-school-year paperwork day (back to school night) I am fully convinced that the worst-off kids are likely to wind up without food if their receiving it depends on their parents filling out forms. And I want to be clear that the kids I think might be on the edge are not (in most cases) there because of neglect. They are there because living here is more expensive than their parents can afford completely, despite working long hours. That is a condemnation of a society that mis-appropriates the wealth (like on Engineers like me). Yes, it is a waste of money that my kids (kids of a Silicon Valley Engineer) get their food for free, but looking at the alternative (kids going hungry), is it really that much of a waste?
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      I’ll be sure to let the kids know!
- macintux 3y ago
  It's not pretty right now. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/05/03/1173535647/schools-ended-universal-free-lunch-now-meal-debt-is-soaring https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/05/03/1173535...
  - 1234letshaveatw 3y ago
    blanket free lunch is disgustingly wasteful and a terrible solution for needy children. It is like buying a new car whenever you have a flat tire. I can feed my own kids, I don't need them picking up an extra slice of pizza every day for fun and throwing milk and plates and disposable utensils in the garbage. Ask any lunch worker about the additional garbage and waste it generates. The correct solution is to remove the barriers stopping children from getting free lunch- stop requiring parents to sign up for it. If a lunch aide feels like a kid needs food, they should be able to sign them up without anyone having to know about it or consent to it. Let the schools give kids in need double lunches if they want them and/or something to take home with them. Double down on the kids in need, don't force it on everyone.
    - RankingMember 3y ago
      Are there any stats/citations that back up your assertion that kids who bring their own lunches in universal free lunch states are wasting food en masse? > a terrible solution for needy children The kids who previously weren't getting fed are now getting fed, aren't they?
      - 1234letshaveatw 3y ago
        The tire got replaced too. Who cares if we are killing the environment because of lazy policymakers right?
        RankingMember 3y ago
        I don't understand what you're saying here.
    - 3y ago
d1sxeyes 3y ago
You don't actually have to crash the jet, just tell everyone you did.
- op00to 3y ago
  It's a ploy to get foreign adversaries to clean up pollution. "We can't find the wreckage ANYWHERE! Maybe if we cleaned up some of this pollution, we would find the plane underneath it? Is there anyone who wants to find F-35 wreckage? Chinaaaaaa?"
melling 3y ago
Sort of an absurd thing to say. However, it’s repeated all the time, and in every generation in some form. One really has nothing to do with the other. If we could educate people at a younger age so they understand this, maybe we can make more progress in creating a better society. Start with the fact that military spending has decreased as a percentage of GDP: https://www.statista.com/statistics/217581/outlays-for-defense-and-forecast-in-the-us-as-a-percentage-of-the-gdp/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/217581/outlays-for-defen...
- the_sleaze9 3y ago
  What an odd form of comparison, Military spending is almost entirely a function of tax, not Gross Domestic Product of a country. But taking just one aspect of that graph – overall military spending - it's true that spending has decreased since we were involved in a full scale occupation of another country, assaulting several others, then whack-a-moling the downstream consequences of those wars. It is also (in my humble opinion) extremely disingenuous to not include the direct financing of another country's war (Ukraine) which at this time is something around 80 billion. - Also something to note is underneath your gdp<>government-spending graph it states spending in 2022 was 746 billion, predicted to increase to 1.1 trillion next year. While spending on education was 42.5 billion in 2022. You are correct in that we need to educate people better, it is not accurate to say we could solve a plethora of societal issues with just a fraction of the financial fuel the military industrial complex requires.
  - areyousure 3y ago
    > While spending on education was 42.5 billion in 2022. In case anyone was curious, https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/ https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/ reports total spending of $1.76 trillion on education in fiscal year 2022. (It also reports defense spending of $1.11 trillion. The subpage https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/defense_spending https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/defense_spending includes the number $765.8 billion as part of a breakdown.)
    - the_sleaze9 3y ago
mcpackieh 3y ago
The federal government provides billions of free or reduced price meals to school children every year. American schools do not let you not eat lunch, if you try to skip lunch you will have a lunch forcibly given to you for free for as long as it takes the school administration to figure out what is going on with your parents. Your parents will be billed for the lunches if they can afford it, and if not you will be signed up for the federal free lunch program. But either way this plays out, they will not allow you to not eat a lunch. Even if you plead that you ate a huge breakfast and you aren't hungry, they will put a tray of food in front of you anyway. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/child-nutrition-programs/national-school-lunch-program.aspx https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/ch...

runarberg 3y ago

Incompetence is positively correlated with salary and responsibility. The more money you handle on your job the likelier you are to be incompetent. It comes as no surprise to me that people responsible for these machines of war are more incompetent than you or me.

IAmGraydon 3y ago
> The more money you handle on your job the likelier you are to be incompetent. And your source for this data is…?
- runarberg 3y ago
  Sorry, no, I’m just stating an opinion. And even if I had a source, the definition of incompetence varies so widely, that surely this statement would hold no additional weight.
  - overboard2 3y ago
    Why do you believe it?
    - runarberg 3y ago
      Because of my misbelieve in capitalism and the belief in the corruption of governments. Or as the saying goes: “All power corrupts” and all that. On top of that, I am no believer in meritocracy (that is I don’t believe people advance in position based on merit). Now lets do some thought statistics. I—as a bayesean—assign the uniform distribution as a prior to competence, that is I assume that competence is equally distributed across occupations and positions independent of responsibility. Now, lets allow some movement between positions and assume correlation between responsibility and salaries (that is people being payed more are responsible for a greater proportion of the system). Now assume there is not a 100% correlation between competence and being moved into a greater position with a greater salary (that is we assume some level of corruption; people moved into greater position because of favors, family ties, wealth, gender, etc. Even misattributed skills of those promoted [i.e. incompetence of those responsible promoting and hiring; i.e. suspect positive feedback of incompetence]). Finally we acknowledge the fact that being moved into a position with more responsibility and you don’t gain skills as you are moved, your competence will decrease (that is competence is a function of responsibility and skill). It should be easy to see that your posterior distribution of competence to salaries and the posterior distribution of competence to responsibility should both be skewed towards the right. That is you as you increase responsibility and salaries, you will find relatively fewer people competent at their jobs.

IAmGraydon 3y ago

It’s definitely BS. Transponders aside, the US has radar and near real-time satellite imagery of every square inch of American territory. There is a zero percent chance they don’t know where this plane is.

sebzim4500 3y ago
Isn't the whole point of an F-35 that it is really hard to track with radar?
- SkyPuncher 3y ago
  It can be. I believe for “routine” training they’ll keep a radar reflector in them. Very little need to have stealth when bouncing around the US.
  - AustinDev 3y ago
    I was in a stealth fighter squadron. It really depends on the mission profile as to determine if the reflectors will be on the plane during CONUS training. If we're doing BVR 'tag' drills, they won't have them installed. If we're just putting butts in seats to keep certs current or maybe some air to ground training, then the reflectors will be installed. Caveat, I was in the Air Force and I'm not too familiar with NATOPS which is what I believe the Marines would be operating under to determine SOP. I was not a pilot, but I was in operations and received the same briefings. My training was also from when we first got real stealth fighters and SOP has probably evolved a lot in the last decade. What's most interesting about this story to me is... What sort of mishap would lead to an ejection with autopilot left functioning? That all seems very peculiar. Weird way to join the Caterpillar Club.
    - robarr 3y ago
      “The Caterpillar Club is an informal association of people who have successfully used a parachute to bail out of a disabled aircraft. After authentication by the parachute maker, applicants receive a membership certificate and a distinctive lapel pin. The nationality of the person whose life was saved by parachute and ownership of the aircraft are not factors in determining qualification for membership; anybody whose life was saved by using a parachute after bailing out of a disabled aircraft is eligible. The requirement that the aircraft is disabled naturally excludes parachuting enthusiasts in the normal course of a recreational jump, or those involved in military training jumps.“ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_Club https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_Club

HlessClaudesman 3y ago

My jet-plane brings all the spys to the yard.

_a_a_a_ 3y ago

Entirely credible. Right at the top it says it's a stealth aircraft. It's just doing what it does best.

jsbisviewtiful 3y ago

You'd be surprised to learn then that the United States has lost several (6, last I knew) nuclear weapons over the decades. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220804-the-lost-nuclear-bombs-that-no-one-can-find https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220804-the-lost-nuclear...

toomuchtodo 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_incident_terminology#Broken_Arrow_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear... > The US Department of Defense has officially recognized at least 32 "Broken Arrow" incidents from 1950 to 1980. https://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/media/filer_public/24/db/24dbd8c1-c74a-4841-ab63-c3258a14ceb4/_cc_afswp_technical_incidents_reduced1.pdf https://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/media/filer_p... > Unofficially, the Defense Atomic Support Agency (now known as the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)) has detailed hundreds of "Broken Arrow" incidents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_incident_terminology#Broken_Arrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear... ("Broken Arrow refers to an accidental event that involves nuclear weapons, warheads or components that does not create a risk of nuclear war.")

ggambetta 3y ago

I guess I don't watch enough spy movies, but... how do you use a not-really-missing jet to flush out an intelligence leak?

Fluorescence 3y ago
I'm delighted you ask because I watch too many. You crash an end-of-life trainer dressed up as an F35 in a carefully chosen site with no natural foot traffic. The FBI then sits in a bush and arrests everyone that turns up. The F35 is the prime intelligence target for Russia before it gets in Ukrainian hands so they might risk some of their most valuable "illegals" i.e. the long-term embedded agents with flawless identities. For a big target, you gotta go big. Hang out the biggest prize in the most embarrassing way you can. This is a typical type of plot from The Americans TV show. That or it's testing the adversarial satellite or balloon surveillance tech for how long it takes to find the craft. Maybe it's a test of Open Source Intelligence networks. Maybe it had genuine stealth tech and they are monitoring channels to find out if it was being successfully tracked. A top of the line stealth craft is hell of a honeypot so there are endless things that might get revealed - I imagine all hostile intelligence networks are lit up like christmas trees - it's like a barium meal. Do I believe any of these? Nah. Reality is more ridiculous than fiction so no doubt it really is the case that they have just lost a prize intelligence asset.
- GhostWhisperer 3y ago
  don't let a crisis go to waste
- 2-718-281-828 3y ago
  let's be realistic. even their highly prized illegals can't collect much intel about an f35 on us territory.

anigbrowl 3y ago

Or a new marketing campaign from Lockheed Martin - 'stealth technology so good, even we can't find it'. Meanwhile the loony tune demographic has decided that it flew to China on Biden's orders.