F-22 Down

Does anybody have any other info on this crash yet?
cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com...


[edit on 25-3-2009 by SeanU]

Six miles North of the base on Harbor Dry Lake Bed. No word on pilot status yet, rescue teams are responding.

When are official shenanigans going to be called about all these plane crashes?

I remember reading some predictions that mentioned an increased amount of flight crashes for 09. I'm going to try and find that again.

Hope everyone involved is ok though.

There are no "shenanigans" about the plane crashes. Every time there's a crash cluster, people start talking about how many more there are. Well there are a HUGE number of aircraft in the air now that weren't several years ago. Revenue flights alone jumped almost 6 million from 1981-2007. That doesn't cover general aviation, or military flights.

FAIL!

Isn't it easy enough nowadays to convert nearly the entire Air Force to a drone force? Millions per airframe built around a cockpit made for man, eliminate the cockpit, smaller, cheaper plane, rig the drone with sensors to a VR setup, and presto- harder to lie about how much it costs to make a fighter jet.

Stories on the BBC now BBC

A state-of-the-art US air force F-22 fighter has crashed in the desert in southern California, the Pentagon says. The fate of the pilot was not immediately known after the plane, which was on a test mission, came down near Edwards Air Force Base.

reply to post by dashen


No, it's not that easy. UAVs still have problems and are still undergoing testing. There is no Air to Air UCAV in any inventory yet. The US Navy will start testing their X-47B for carrier ops next year and 2011.

reply to post by Zaphod58


What makes you think that there isn't already a functioning AtA drone program that has not yet been declassified. Oh, and I can't prove it either.

reply to post by dashen


The fact that with the exception of a few UAVs the UCAV program has been pretty white. If they were going to keep A2A UCAVs black, why announce that the USN is going to be testing the X-47B for carrier ops and A2A? Why not just come out and say that they have it already? The Predator/Reaper program was almost completely white. Why keep one white and another black? Add to that the fact that so many A2A demonstrators have been publicly released.

And then God said... "All your F-22 are belong to me"

Oh, and repent. The end times are near and yadda yadda yadda.

Planes are way safer than cars have ever been. Of course, that doesn't mean that they don't need to be maintained. Any machine needs maintenance. Eventually all the planes in the world are going to have to be replaced, but that will probably happen very slowly. I guess the difference between cars and planes, however, is that cars are driven by just about everyone. Being an aircraft pilot is very specialized.

What a shame, I think thats such a beautiful plane...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/d9ca92052639.jpg[/atsimg]

Hopefully the pilot is ok...

If memory serves me right I believe one of the F-22's stationed at Edwards as part of the test flight program suffered a flameout a few years back. If any squadron would push the F-22 near breaking parameters it would be 412th FTS at Edwards. I'm assuming the aircraft belong to them given that this was a "test" mission. At such a high price and low production figures the Air Force cannot afford, literally, to lose such aircraft. Joke has it when one pulls the ejection handle on a B-2 or F-22 the Air Force Chief of Staff shows up on the screen, telling you to try harder. All is not lost however, I believe the Pentagon ordered 4 additional Raptors last year for future attrition and wartime loss.

Originally posted by WestPoint23
If memory serves me right I believe one of the F-22's stationed at Edwards as part of the test flight program suffered a flameout a few years back. If any squadron would push the F-22 near breaking parameters it would be 412th FTS at Edwards.

This one was part of the 411th. The 412th is the Wing that the 411th is part of. It's the 412th Flight Test Wing, which includes the 410th, 411th, 412th, 416th, 417th, 418th, 419th, 445th, 452nd, and 461st Flight Test Squadrons. The 412th Flight Test Squadron is Speckled Trout, which is the CSAF aircraft. The 412th Wing also includes the 421st Maintenance Group, and Test Pilot School.

The flameout was October 2007. The pilot didn't realize he had flamed out because the engines reignited immediately. He had the trim set wrong, and attempted a 360 degree negative G roll with 8 SDBs internally loaded.



[edit on 3/25/2009 by Zaphod58]

reply to post by Zaphod58


Thanks for clearing that up. This reminds me of the progress they're making in training fresh pilots with no prior experience on the Raptor. Down at the schoolhouse in Tyndall a Lt. Col. commented that when new pilots go up on their first F-22 flight he's right up there on their side. Saying to himself, "pleas don't crash, please don't crash". That's funny, until something like this happens.

It's not looking good for the pilot. An article posted at 730pm EDT said that the Air Force said they weren't sure of the condition of the pilot, and weren't sure if he had been located. The crash occurred about 10am PDT, which is 12pm EDT. If they haven't found him by now, then the chances are that he went in with the bird.

Lockheed Martin confirmed that pilot David Cooley, 49 was killed when the F-22 he was flying crashed near Edwards AFB. He was a 21 year veteran of the USAF and had been with Lockheed Martin since 2003.

reply to post by ThirdJohnAdams


Another plane has crashed in Ecuador. What's going on? Likely not related to the F-22 crash, but it is strange that more than one plane seems to crash every day.


Ecuadorean military training jet crashes; 2 killed (1 hour ago)

Regarding the crash in Ecuador, the pilot was very unlucky. He survived the crash, but when he was about to be lifted into the rescue helicopter, the wire snapped, killing him and one from the rescue team.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Zaphod, could that have been Harper Dry Lake?
I thought I saw an F-22 flying last week; I hadn't seen one in ages out there (we always see the F-16's), so I was pleasantly surprised. There were more sonic booms than other times we'd been out there.
Very sad.

reply to post by desert


I believe that's where they said it was at. It was near an old airstrip that they used many years ago for experimental aircraft.