[jr2]

Battuta's post stated the pilot was performing a maneuver when the problem occurred:

Haney was attempting a maneuver called a "rejoin" and made a fairly aggressive turn during the procedure, the pilot source said.

And according to the video, he got a four-second warning while performing the maneuver that he was going to be doing the fish out of water routine... so he had to

1) control the craft mid-maneuver,

2) (quote)"The green ring [emergency oxygen bottle] in the Raptor is a tough pull, and it was altered to give the pilot some pressure."

Activating the emergency oxygen system is tricky in the Raptor, the source continued.

"It is a double pull that has to be practiced and experienced a few times before you end up in that bad situation, or you will panic," he said.(/quote)

3) Put the plane in a dive for 10,000 feet

Now, couple that with the fact that apparently, pilots aren't getting enough flight time with the birds because they are down for maintenance pretty often... (source: video)

[Dragon]

I guess it was it then. It's no secret that flying Raptors is expensive, their maintenance takes long and pilots don't get nearly as much flight time as they should. Activating this system at high G wouldn't be easy, I guess he panicked and passed out before being able to engage it. Since the whole problem with such G forces is blood flowing away from the brain (thus already decreasing the amount of oxygen delivered to it), the maneuver would have amplified the effects of hypoxia, and made him pass out unusually quickly. He did manage to put the plane into dive, but he fell unconscious before being able to pull out of it.

[General Battuta]

Maybe instead of playing armchair accident board we could wait for the real accident board's report - is it out yet? it's 8 AM and i'm too lazy to look 

[Dragon]

We could just wait, or we could continue playing to kill time while waiting for the real report.

[Dilmah G]

Maybe instead of playing armchair accident board we could wait for the real accident board's report - is it out yet? it's 8 AM and i'm too lazy to look 

I don't believe so. I read the initial report that blamed the pilot and followed a discussion made by some serving knuckleheads about the hard-to-reach switch in le cockpit a few months ago. Was interesting stuff and I'm interested in seeing how this goes. Agree with all sentiments re: the USAF behaving in a rather appalling manner about this.

But hey, isn't it easier to blame someone other than yourself when your 1503498024 million dollar bird turns to dust?  Reminds me of when the first stories came out about the the USAF giving their pilots some go-juice, very much a 'do you want to fly or not?' affair, as I recall. But good on these two pilots!

[Dragon]

That too. Maybe the cause was poor maintenance, and USAF is trying to cover up the embarrassment. It seems that they don't want to admit that the project that they spend so much money on (and who did they got the money from? American taxpayers...) might not have been such a good idea. "Distracted by the lack of oxygen"? They'll have to try harder than that, pretending the problem doesn't exist isn't going to fix it.

[Nuke]

i dont know if thats the case either. one of the sources stated that these birds spend more time in the shop than in the air. but that could just mean its a maintenance hog. but id hate to see them in the shop when we need them.

[TwentyPercentCooler]

The Raptor does have a very high ratio of maintenance time:flight time, and now it has the highest accident rate in our arsenal, possibly the highest since the much-maligned and extremely tricky F-104 Starfighter.

Advanced or not, I don't know if I've ever really agreed with our policies regarding aircraft design. Even the Eagle and Falcon were primadonnas compared to Soviet/Russian jets. Some of the first targets of any competent enemy is going to be our airfields, and if we lose those, we'll be in pretty deep trouble. The Raptor especially needs a nicely maintained runway; craters and debris won't do it any favours. Despite the high-tech sweetness of the Raptor and the Lightning II, I'm a bit worried about a non-nuclear engagement with an enemy that isn't hiding in the mountains with 40-year-old AK's and IED's.

[General Battuta]

I've been a big critic of the Raptor, but I've heard some sources say that criticisms are overblown, that the F-16 (for example) had enormous teething problems yet turned out to be an incredibly prolific and popular fighter.

At the same time, the F-16 had things to shoot at (soviets), export customers, and a production run that hadn't already ended. 

[Dragon]

The biggest problem with the Raptor is that it's overengineered. It's a flying electronics store, filled to brim with delicate (and expensive) systems, failure of which may leave the pilot relying on a dinky, hard to reach backup instruments panel, cut off flight controls or even completely destabilize the plane. It has no normal airbrakes, relying on "speedbrake configuration" of it's control surfaces, and it's a maintenance nightmare due to all those electronics. And to add insult to injury, it can't even stand in the rain because it's stealth coating would peel off. F-16 had it's problems, but they weren't as bad as on the Raptor.
When everything's going right, the Raptor is a dream to fly and easily dominates the sky. But when something goes wrong, I think I'd rather be in an F-16 than in the Raptor.

[General Battuta]

I'm not sure you're describing the issues accurately. Those lines get talked up a lot but from what I've heard some of them may be seriously overblown.

[Dragon]

Of course, I'm not describing them accurately, I'm making a short summary. I don't think I need to post it's complete flight record with more comments than the Kenneth Miur's edition of "Macbeth".
I could elaborate on any of those, but elaborating on them all seems like an overkill to me.

[General Battuta]

I think a good stance to take is that as a bunch of civilian amateurs we really have no good information on this topic.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

i'll just put this here http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/usaf-moves-closer-to-solving-raptor-oxygen-woes-whistle-blower-pilots-wont-be-punished-371588/

Under USAF regulations, the Boeing F-15 Eagles and Lockheed F-16 Fighting Falcons are limited to 50,000 ft-though they rarely operate that high up. The F-22 routinely operates above 50,000 ft up to an operational ceiling of 60,000 ft. Raptor pilots receive a waiver to fly above the 50,000 ft mark-their Combat Edge anti-g ensemble is ostensibly considered to be a partial pressure suit.

60,000 ft is the limit due to the Armstrong Line, which sits at about 62,000 ft to 63,000 ft. At altitudes above the Armstrong Line the atmospheric pressure so low that water will boil at human body temperature--37 °C (98.6 °F).

The USAF has looked at hundreds of potential root causes of the problem, but the two most likely culprits are either some sort of contaminant or a problem with the oxygen flow to the pilot.

[Dragon]

Looks like good news for a change. It does indeed seem that they're onto the problem. I wonder what really caused it.
BTW, now that you mentioned the operational ceiling, I wonder if anybody did the math to check if strapping an SRB to a Raptor could launch it into space. (before anybody says anything, I know that it'd be impractical for a lot of different reasons. I just wonder if it's physically possible, that's all).

[headdie]

Looks like good news for a change. It does indeed seem that they're onto the problem. I wonder what really caused it.
BTW, now that you mentioned the operational ceiling, I wonder if anybody did the math to check if strapping an SRB to a Raptor could launch it into space. (before anybody says anything, I know that it'd be impractical for a lot of different reasons. I just wonder if it's physically possible, that's all).

Like a couple of JATOs?

[Nuke]

i have to agree with battuta here. we dont know the systems at all. we dont have access to flight data, radar data, etc. we cant look at the debris. i may have had a little fun wanking my self learned engineering know how back on page 1, but a hardware hacker is a far stretch from a formally trained aerospace engineer.

[jr2]

I don't think we have enough qualifications to give the -22 a thumbs up or down as a whole (yet anyways), however, I think we posses enough common sense to agree that something is definitely wrong here.  I might expect as much from an F-86 during initial test runs, but I would expect that they would get the problem in hand before attempting to replace the entire line of P-51s with them.

The F-22 is supposed to replace the F-15, although I guess that's not going to happen any time soon...

I guess it's to be expected with new craft that push the envelope, however, kicking the mess under the bed won't clean the room.  What is happening, I believe, is that they don't want McCain & co. to use this as an excuse to can the project (which, guess what, they are now! so how'd that work out for them?).

I tend to disagree a bit with people who think the F-22 is unnecessary.  Sure, it is now, but by the time we realized that we needed one (let's say, the Chinese, however unlikely that might be) and got around to producing a competitor, I think it would be a bit late; you don't want to be on the reaction side of a technology war if it goes to a hot war.  That's a good way to either a) lose or at least b) lose a lot more of your forces and resources than you otherwise would have.

[General Battuta]

I don't think we have enough qualifications to give the -22 a thumbs up or down as a whole (yet anyways), however, I think we posses enough common sense to agree that something is definitely wrong here.

Do we?

I guess it's to be expected with new craft that push the envelope, however, kicking the mess under the bed won't clean the room.  What is happening, I believe, is that they don't want McCain & co. to use this as an excuse to can the project (which, guess what, they are now! so how'd that work out for them?).

The project is already done. The last F-22 was produced last year, and there will be no more orders as far as I know.

[Dragon]

Oh, and Chinese, Russians, Indians, Turkey, Japan and South Korea are all working on their own 5th generation projects, and the Russian one (PAK FA) is nearly ready (there are talks about it entering service in 2015).
F-22 will never replace the F-15, just because Congress decided to stop F-22 production. Considering how expensive the Raptor is (and the fact it can't be exported), this was a reasonable decision.
Let's just hope F-35 turns out better.