3 ms·

Several light aircraft can land autonomously at the closest safe airport. Would be useful for fighter jets, where there is a much higher risk of pilot incapacit

by Stevvo 2y ago

Several light aircraft can land autonomously at the closest safe airport. Would be useful for fighter jets, where there is a much higher risk of pilot incapacitation.

jerlam 2y ago
Not sure you want the stealthy $80 million dollar plane packed full of restricted electronics and bombs to land at an insecure airport full of civilians. Also: in air refueling and carriers mean the plane may not be anywhere near a safe airport.
- Stevvo 2y ago
  Mostly these jets fly above NATO countries where nobody is going to fuck with it. I guess such a system would get turned off when flying somewhere unfriendly.
- wrs 2y ago
  Better to have it shred itself in some random cornfield or big box mall parking lot? I guess that is a sort of built-in self-destruct mechanism…
  - jjk166 2y ago
    Generally, yes. Better to destroy dozens of aircraft than let an adversary discover a vulnerability that compromises all of them. Of course the ideal would be to not have a problem in the first place, but by the point you're considering having a pilot eject that's out the window.
burnt-resistor 2y ago
Bullshit. If you lose the engine at low altitude on climb out, there is no hope of banking much less returning. At that point, it's all about looking for a straight road or level field without power lines +- 30 to 45 degrees of runway heading. For other light aircraft that get themselves into unrecoverable situations like deep stalls where there is sufficient energy, Cirrus SR series have parachutes (CAPS) that reduce the horizontal vector to almost 0 and the vertical component to about 17 mph / 25 ft/s / 7.6 m/s. CAPS isn't deployable < 500' AGL, so if the terrain is unforgiving on a failure on takeoff, there's no safe recovery option except a rough "landing".
- Stevvo 2y ago
  The context is losing a pilot, not an engine on climb out.

3 ms·

Several light aircraft can land autonomously at the closest safe airport. Would be useful for fighter jets, where there is a much higher risk of pilot incapacit

by Stevvo 2y ago

Several light aircraft can land autonomously at the closest safe airport. Would be useful for fighter jets, where there is a much higher risk of pilot incapacitation.

jerlam 2y ago
Not sure you want the stealthy $80 million dollar plane packed full of restricted electronics and bombs to land at an insecure airport full of civilians. Also: in air refueling and carriers mean the plane may not be anywhere near a safe airport.
- Stevvo 2y ago
  Mostly these jets fly above NATO countries where nobody is going to fuck with it. I guess such a system would get turned off when flying somewhere unfriendly.
- wrs 2y ago
  Better to have it shred itself in some random cornfield or big box mall parking lot? I guess that is a sort of built-in self-destruct mechanism…
  - jjk166 2y ago
    Generally, yes. Better to destroy dozens of aircraft than let an adversary discover a vulnerability that compromises all of them. Of course the ideal would be to not have a problem in the first place, but by the point you're considering having a pilot eject that's out the window.
burnt-resistor 2y ago
Bullshit. If you lose the engine at low altitude on climb out, there is no hope of banking much less returning. At that point, it's all about looking for a straight road or level field without power lines +- 30 to 45 degrees of runway heading. For other light aircraft that get themselves into unrecoverable situations like deep stalls where there is sufficient energy, Cirrus SR series have parachutes (CAPS) that reduce the horizontal vector to almost 0 and the vertical component to about 17 mph / 25 ft/s / 7.6 m/s. CAPS isn't deployable < 500' AGL, so if the terrain is unforgiving on a failure on takeoff, there's no safe recovery option except a rough "landing".
- Stevvo 2y ago
  The context is losing a pilot, not an engine on climb out.