The Marine Corps’ variant of the F-35 is different from the Air Force and Navy versions in that it can take off and land like a helicopter — which allows it to operate on amphibious assault ships. But it’s also different in that it’s the only one of the three variants that has an auto-eject function on its ejection seat
On the Air Force and Navy versions, “the pilot has to initiate the ejection,” said Dan Grazier, a former Marine Corps captain and the senior defense policy fellow at the Project on Government Oversight, but the Marine version’s auto-eject is intended to better protect the pilot in case something goes wrong with the aircraft when it’s in hover mode.
Something probably shorted/malfunctioned and just yeeted this asshole out lmao
I would think competent design would mean it probably only auto ejects when it is at low speeds (as the article seems to allude to with the whole ‘auto eject if something goes wrong in hover mode’), but we all know this was not even close to competent design.
Wonder if we’re going to get some headline in a few years about how one of these auto ejected when the pilot was going mach 2
My guess here is that hover-mode for the marines has this added safety feature because the hover mode has a habit of flipping and the marines pilots are not very well trained for dealing with it, so they wanted it to auto-yeet the pilots because they don’t think they’d be fast enough to eject when panic sets in without the added help.
Plane thinks it’s in hover mode and the plane is rolling, so it yeets the pilot out. The only error that has to happen here is for the “hover mode” sensor to be wrong.
Seems probable. I did also find this separate, but hilarious issue for the Air Force version of the F35 when rooting around
In July 2022, the Air Force temporarily grounded its F-35s over ejection seat concerns. While the Air Force F-35A does not have an auto-eject function, some of the cartridges that initiate the ejection in the warplane were found to have issues, leading to the grounding.
The cartridge problem came to light during an F-35 inspection…An ejection cartridge felt suspiciously light and, after a closer look, turned out to be missing its explosive charge that would lift someone to safety.
How many different ways can they screw up one area lmao
I actually went digging a bit, and it’s even fucking dumber lmao
Something probably shorted/malfunctioned and just yeeted this asshole out lmao
I would think competent design would mean it probably only auto ejects when it is at low speeds (as the article seems to allude to with the whole ‘auto eject if something goes wrong in hover mode’), but we all know this was not even close to competent design.
Wonder if we’re going to get some headline in a few years about how one of these auto ejected when the pilot was going mach 2
My guess here is that hover-mode for the marines has this added safety feature because the hover mode has a habit of flipping and the marines pilots are not very well trained for dealing with it, so they wanted it to auto-yeet the pilots because they don’t think they’d be fast enough to eject when panic sets in without the added help.
Plane thinks it’s in hover mode and the plane is rolling, so it yeets the pilot out. The only error that has to happen here is for the “hover mode” sensor to be wrong.
Seems probable. I did also find this separate, but hilarious issue for the Air Force version of the F35 when rooting around
How many different ways can they screw up one area lmao
I wonder how many pilots were doing incredibly dangerous things while having literally no ejection seat lol