I’m in the upper left of South Carolina and out of the running. It has been 80 years since the last military aircraft crashed near my yard.
If the aircraft were destroyed at the end of its unattended flight, any active telemetry systems would be offline.
Don’t forget, this is an operational airframe. The type is in fleet service. It’s no longer experimental or testing, so it wouldn’t be broadcasting any kind of developmental telemetry. That’s a bad idea for an aircraft designed to operate in stealth.
Since is was operating out of US airspace, it might have been participating in ACARS, but I would expect it could also have not been.
It would have been militarily appropriate for the aircraft to have been operating “radio silent”. So expecting some kind of traceable transmission footprint may be mistaken.
Sure, I believe a guy ejected from a working stealth fighter and coincidentally the transponder stopped working at the same time and there’s no trace of the plane, and the Air Force thinks the public can help find it. Yeah, I believe that. I just told my wife Morgan Fairchild about this.
Not to mention that they are searching “around Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion”. Which means it might be at the bottom of Lake Moultrie or Lake Marion.
I am sure the enemy trying to shoot them down would appreciate such a device.
Yes, a transponder would do fine too.
Does it have a chip? When found, they’ll need to make sure it’s not some other stray F-35.
Here’s a circle of where the aircraft might be, based on its range. It could potentially have been been guided to Cuba in a James Bond-style plot, or even made it to the Bermuda Triangle, in which case it will likely never be found.
Anybody close enough to a crashed jet to have their IPhone pick up the air tag would likely be able to see the wreckage.
Most military aircraft are broadcasting their location most of the time. It’s kind of a safety thing. Some legislators want to limit that:
The Payne Stewart crash was an example of that. Took off from Florida, everyone died from hypoxia, kept going on autopilot until fuel ran out and it crashed in South Dakota.
Golf clap
And if it turns out they lost it because the transponder failed, there will be hell to pay.
Too bad the pilot didn’t leave his phone in the jet. Find-a-phone is an amazing thing.
And now, a serious question:
The original article states that the pilot’s “wingman safely landed in a separate aircraft”.
my question is:
What is a wingman*, and why did he land instead of following the abandoned plane?
*(I only know the term from bad movies about fraternity guys in bars
Sure. But even location data from a few seconds before could be helpful.
I absolutely understand why a fighter jet on any kind of active mission or even forward deployed training would be ‘radio silent’. I am modestly surprised that a training flight in US airspace would be so tightly locked down. It’s not uncommon for me to see military aircraft of many kinds on my ADS-B receiver. I thought the military might also be keeping tabs on aircraft location via one kind of technology or another.
Seems like a good time to remind people that the United States has lost six nuclear weapons that remain unrecovered.
Fighter aircraft usually deploy at minimum in pairs - one is the lead and the other is the wingman. The wingman’s job is to watch the lead’s “6” (backside) during a mission.
I love the wikipedia disambiguation page for “Broken Arrow”:
- Places
- Films
- Music
- Songs
- Other arts and entertainment
- Lost nuclear weapons
It all seems so bland and ordinary.
Do DO do do do do do do do, do do do do do do do do DO do.
The wingman’s responsibility is to check for a good parachute deployment, observe the landing position, and direct SAR* assets for recovery of the pilot.
- Search and Rescue.