A decision to eject from a failing F-35B fighter and the betrayal in its wake

If you hate the long form filler and know what a fighter jet is, start (with the knowledge that the pilot is landing in poor weather) at "Suddenly, at 1:32:05 p.m", read until the first two sentences in section 2, then skip to section 5.

Edit: That said, there are no answers. It's just the long known story: A pilot ejects from a malfunctioning (but likely flyable) jet, gets cleared in the first two investigations because most other pilots would have interpreted the situation similarly, promoted, and then fired less than 4 months after moving with his family to the location of his new role. It remains unclear why but scapegoating to distract from the plane's issues is commonly seen as the most likely explanation, with all the risks it entails (pilots becoming more hesitant to eject or openly admit mistakes so safety can be improved).

I came here to say exactly the same

I feel like in previous reporting I'd seen suggestions that the other pilots had lost confidence in him, and that you couldn't be the leader of a squadron if any of the pilots had any doubts.

This story seems to completely discount any "lost confidence" as a made up story.

To me that smells like a plane that is too expensive to lose and someone higher up was looking for an excuse.

Sure the pilot with his life on the line could have risked the investment into his education on top of the investment into the aircraft to figure out whether an ill-prepared procedure was really ill-prepared — but should that really be the expectation?

If you rely on your pilot having to interpret written procedure in a very specific way by mind magic, that is on those who wrote the procedure. I am not sure if "ignores the procedure of a aircraft that expensive" is the skill you are looking for, even if it safes the aircraft for the moment.

The soviet russians nuked Chernobyl with this attitude, it must be good

> This story seems to completely discount any "lost confidence" as a made up story.

The "lost confidence" angle would be discarded if it was just made-up nonsense. It is also a convenient angle to pin the blame on a scapegoat who was proven to have zero blame or responsibility.

One can only imagine what would have been written on the guy if he crashed and went down with the plane. Certainly we would be reading about human errors and failures in judgement and lack of training and reckless behavior.

This is what mid/upper management types do in large organizations to cover their ass.

I recall a story about a high-speed train accident in Spain where the conductor was found to be the sole responsible due to speeding, and it took an investigator from the European Union to call out the company's managers for unexplainably failing to implement and run a pretty standard traffic control system on that track section whose basic features include automatically enforcing speed limits. The system would render impossible that sort of failure and, in spite of having been installed, it was unexplainably disconnected. But it was human error, of course.

Your comment reminded me, an excellent showcase of institutional shenanigans is the Chernobyl miniseries on Netflix. Denial, blame, coverups, accountability. It's a very well made series in a grim Soviet setting.

> It remains unclear why but scapegoating to distract from the plane's issues is commonly seen

Only because people aren't willing to accept the fact that this is just rank, base, bog standard, internal military politics. The pilot was probably fine until he got a new, important posting that displaced someone else and that someone else was willing to throw some elbows to get it overturned.

As for fault, the reality of the military command chain is that you are responsible for shit that goes wrong on your watch even if it isn't necessarily your fault. You can lose the ability to get important postings if something bad goes wrong even once. Generally, those people run their time out as quietly as possible and leave. It is not smart of the military, but the military isn't noted for smart.

Don’t you mean HBO?

As I have said before: the pilot is alive instead of deceased so it was a good decision.

> human error, of course

Well management is only human...

I hate the long form so much. I come for the information about the plane crash details, and I get the wall of verbal diarrhea about pilot's upbringing.

At least put all that extra nonsense at the end.

Just please don't take it as a documentary. It's a disservice to the people that actually worked at the plant that day and portrays them as arrogant fools, which none of them actually were.

That Chernobyl Guy on YouTube did great breakdowns.

I feel like in the miniseries, only a handful of apparatchiks and Anatoly Dyatlov are really singled out for being stubborn and stupid?

The actual guy in charge was actually not qualified and a fool tho. Afaik, arrogant too. So, "none of them actually were" is not true.

The rest of them are shown as afraid, questioning until they feel like they cant, then understanding what is happening but being helpless.

I do hate the long form filler. Are there a lot of people that will only consume information if there is a huge article around it? I'm not saying I like tldr either, but there's an optimal middle ground somewhere.

It seemed only to be one commandant that said he was “at fault” (in complete disregard to the other two investigations and stellar reviews to his two bosses).

Simplest reason: that commandant had a vendetta against him

Meh, the only thing you need to know about Chernobyl is

* The soviets designed a nuclear reactor and engineering plan/blueprint to making power plants

* That engineering plan required certain safety tests to be preformed before actually operating the plant

* Chernyobl did not pass those safety tests before plant operation

* Chernyobl then tried to run those safety tests after the plant was in operation (for some time).

* Chernyobl then catastrophically failed the safety tests due at least to the test setup being incorrect (you aren't supposed to be operating the plant before hand).

Ah you're right, too late to edit.

I disagree, this is true, but the failure was complex and worth understanding some extra nuances:

* The design of the reactors made them unsafe in a scenario where you needed to quickly insert the control rods. Doing so should reduce power output, but due to their graphite tips, it led to a sudden surge of power output.

* Leadership repeatedly didn't listen to or believe what they were hearing from boots on the ground.

* Leadership took a "it can't be that bad, let's wait and see" approach instead of a cautious approach.

* Add to this that boots on the ground were afraid to stand up to leadership.

* This repeatedly led to delayed reactions to the problems, and an increase in the severity of the outcomes.

* All of this combined with cooling failures, led to disaster.

(Heat and pressure accumulated, the reactor didn't have enough water, and then when control rods were finally reinserted, they sped up the reaction instead of slowing it down... boom.)

I mean it's a cool sequence of events and definitely if engineering interests you it's worth studying. Although I ultimately find the question of if the USSR knew about the graphite tip problem beforehand the most interesting part of the story (the HBO series taking the side of they knew). With the scandal not being the explosion but that the state was blind to problems it was causing.

But the common person just really needs to understand "garbage in, garbage out". Operating a nuclear reactor outside of specifications may result in catastrophic failure; which is why the West has so many regulations about them.

I will watch the Youtube guy you're talking about, but I did listen to a many episode podcast with the writer/director discussing the books of direct, personal interviews that were documented after the incident.

Most of the major events depicted in the show are things I recall having been reported previously.

I thought many of the workers in the plant, the first responders, etc were portrayed as heroes and most at least quite sympathetically.

> "garbage in, garbage out"

The HBO series has a beautiful way to phrase it: It's the cost of lies.