I was going to speculate it was space aliens. But it appears to be swamp creatures instead.

quote:

Originally posted by XinTX:
AI ejected the pilot. Now HAL has an F-35.

It is possible the software was either hacked or otherwise inoperable.

Was it found? Maybe yes, maybe no:

Joint Base Charleston said in a statement that searchers who had been looking for the missing warplane located the wreckage in Williamsburg County, north of Charleston, but stopped short of confirming it was from the missing jet.

They “stopped short?” What? That hardly “ends the mystery.” And, why stop short? What’s causing the confusion? Was the evidence completely burned up into ashes like in Lahaina, or did the jet self-destruct or something? What’s stopping the Marine Corp from identifying the wreckage of its own plane?

They also stopped short of answering all the obvious questions.

— For example, they haven’t said how they lost a top fighter jet with the most highly-advanced, GPS-enabled, networked technology in history. Was the transponder on? If not, why not? From the New York Times article:

“How in the hell do you lose an F-35?” Representative Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican and the first woman to graduate from the Citadel, had asked her social media followers. “We’re asking the public to what, find a jet and turn it in?”

According to manufacturer Lockheed Martin’s promo website, F35.com, the F35 is not just a stealth fighter. It’s a communications gateway:
image 9.png

Ominously, remember this, gateways go both ways.

— They haven’t explained why the pilot ejected from the plane. According to reliable sources, a Marine pilot would never have ejected from an operational aircraft absent orders to do so. Again, from the Times:

It was unclear why the pilot needed to bail out. A second F-35 pilot who had also been on the training mission landed without any problems.

— What was the plane’s “training” mission? Was it really training? Or was it doing something stealthy?

— Why did it take all day to find the debris field? Wasn’t there a plume of smoke over the crash site that should have been obvious for miles, and clearly-spotted from satellites and weather balloons in yesterday’s clear conditions?

What they are saying is: not much. The unaccountable, inexplicable, total loss of a $135,000,000 plane was just a silly mishap, simply bad luck. A Marine Corps spokesperson only said in a statement yesterday that the F-35's pilot "safely ejected from the aircraft. We are currently still gathering more information and assessing the situation. The mishap will be under investigation."

Mishaps.

In spite of all the ubiquitous headlines, the military has not actually identified the Charleston debris field as the missing fighter. A conspiratorial-minded person might think they are just covering their sixes by hanging on to a “possible” crash site in case the plane turns up somewhere else. Whoops! Sorry! We had the wrong debris field. Here it is, over HERE!

All signs point to massive government mendacity and obfuscation, but what else is new? Rather, what’s the worst case scenario here? Let’s start with the second-worst case scenario, which is the pilot defected, perhaps stealthily flying the plane to the new Chinese military base in Cuba, which was easily within range.

But the Marines said the pilot ejected, not defected. True, it’s a pilot they haven’t named. An unnamed pilot they haven’t quoted. A mute, unnamed pilot who is reportedly still somewhere in an unidentified hospital being treated by unnamed doctors for unspecific “injuries.” Okay.

None of that makes sense, but let’s stick with what we know. Taking the official, albeit scant, explanation at face value, and assuming the pilot did eject — keeping in mind the initial reports that the plane had continued flying without its pilot on autopilot — we come to the possible worst-case scenario.

The worst case scenario is the computerized plane ejected its pilot and defected by itself. Maybe it flew itself to Cuba, after Chinese hackers assumed control of its highly-advanced instruments using the stealth fighter’s own networked “communications gateway.” Maybe this summer’s Chinese Spy Balloon mapped out a way to get the plane out of the U.S. undetected?

Could that possibly happen? I did a little research.

At a $1.7 trillion price tag, our enemies have a lot of incentive to capture one of the top fighters, either for reverse-engineering, or just for developing jammers, spoofers, and countermeasures.

The first thing my research produced is that the software running the F35 is hideously complicated. You could call the F35 the world’s first software-driven airplane. Estimates range at over 8,000,000 lines of code. And that’s just the software inside the plane. A code base like that takes a giant team of programmers to maintain, and the opportunities for bugs and glitches scale up along with the code base’s size.

Put differently, a massive code base equals a massive opportunity for bugs and glitches. With a hundred-milllion-dollar, nuclear-equipped fighter jet flying at mach speeds, the opportunities for disastrous bugs and glitches is equally massive. (C&C programmers: feel free to weigh in and offer your own opinions.)

But we needn’t speculate. It is common knowledge that problems have plagued the F35 program since day one. In fact, there have been several crashes just in the last twelve months.

In March, an F35 crashed in Texas. From Military.com in March:
image 7.png

In June, the DOD froze all F35 shipments due to — watch this — software problems. From Defense News:
image 5.png

Finally, as recently as August 25th, another pilot ejected from an F35 after another “mishap” on takeoff, and the $135M dollar plane unceremoniously plopped into the ocean. From Navy Lookout:
image 4.png

But an earlier crash about eleven months ago was the most interesting. In July, the Pentagon released the cause of another F35 crash in Utah in October 2022. Guess what caused the mind-bogglingly-expensive stealth fighter to go down? A software glitch. From Air Force News in July:
image 6.png

The accident’s description of the software glitch was terrifically provocative: It sounded like the plane was trying to take over and fly itself:

As they prepared to land, the pilot felt a “slight rumbling” of turbulence from the wake of the aircraft in front of him, the report said. The bumpy air caused the F-35′s flight controls to register incorrect flight data, and the jet stopped responding to the pilot’s attempts at manual control.

The pilot tried to abort the landing and try again, but the jet responded by sharply banking to the left. Further attempts to right the aircraft failed, and the pilot safely ejected north of the base. His F-35 crashed near a runway at Hill.

How curious. I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t land the plane right now.

Given the program’s secrecy, we have no way of knowing precisely what kind of tech was in that cockpit, of course, but clearly something else, like glitchy software, or someone else, like a hacker, was trying to fly the downed Utah F35.

Yesterday, an article in Aerospace Manufacturing described a major software upgrade for all F35 models:
image 16.png

Was yesterday’s training mission running on the updated software? Was the October 2022 instrument takeover actually a hacker trial run instead of a “software glitch”? Was the “software glitch” actually an exploit allowing a hacker to take control and crash the plane?

And more importantly, did the Chinese just steal one of our most advanced fighters yesterday by exploiting our own buggy software?

Either way, the Utah incident raises profound questions about the fundamental wisdom of software-based controls in hyper-costly fighter jets. Software glitches shouldn’t crash $135M-dollar planes. If the pilot had a manual stick, there would never have been any problem, no way for the jet to “stop responding to the pilot’s attempts at manual control.”

Anyway. I could be 100% wrong, and if so, we’ll get a complete briefing from the Marine Corps today efficiently answering all the unanswered questions with military precision. But I’m not counting on it.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com...7n3&utm_medium=email

All highly maneuverable aircraft are inherently unstable. Computers are required to fly them because humans just can't.

One unfortunate confluence of technology and human nature is trying to stuff more functionality into a product via software. It's why our cell phones have an endless cascade of menus and sub-menus with settings and features that are impossible to fully understand, and which then get modified regularly by software updates.

In civilian aircraft the trend has been to centralize all functions through one computer, the Flight Management System. You literally cannot fly the airplane without it. The manual has many pages of known software bugs, and each update adds new ones. The pilot is intentionally taken out of the loop under the assumption human errors are more hazardous than computer errors. Presumably the military suffer the same thing, where every system communicates via a centralized processor, and they are all interdependent, bugs included.

Dumps pilot and goes into something called "Zombie mode."(Christ almighty can we not say autopilot?) That was nice of it.

I think they have a new software issue that didn't exist a few months ago.


I think that software issue was a test by a foreign actor.

If you make something remote-controllable, the huge issue is that it's remote controllable.

If I take off the tinfoil this looks like a colossal goat-fuck by the coders, I know it's easy to think that happens all the time, but no... We've been making craft like this for a very long time. There is no magic. But there is rampant espionage, enabled by leftist presidents.

quote:

Originally posted by DoctorSolo:
Dumps pilot and goes into something called "Zombie mode."(Christ almighty can we not say autopilot?) That was nice of it.

I think they have a new software issue that didn't exist a few months ago.


I think that software issue was a test by a foreign actor.

If you make something remote-controllable, the huge issue is that it's remote controllable.

If I take off the tinfoil this looks like a colossal goat-fuck by the coders, I know it's easy to think that happens all the time, but no... We've been making craft like this for a very long time. There is no magic. But there is rampant espionage, enabled by leftist presidents.

Do you know of evidence of this, or is this just internet speculation?

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:

quote:

Originally posted by XinTX:
AI ejected the pilot. Now HAL has an F-35.

It is possible the software was either hacked or otherwise inoperable.

<big snip>

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com...7n3&utm_medium=email

That is some serious tin foil hat shit, right there.

The earlier “Chinese Weather Balloon” overflights downloaded data and uploaded viruses into flight computers; preparing the battlefield.

$80+ million aircraft are too costly to send into combat situations and will make good “static displays”.

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:

quote:

Originally posted by DoctorSolo:
Dumps pilot and goes into something called "Zombie mode."(Christ almighty can we not say autopilot?) That was nice of it.

I think they have a new software issue that didn't exist a few months ago.


I think that software issue was a test by a foreign actor.

If you make something remote-controllable, the huge issue is that it's remote controllable.

If I take off the tinfoil this looks like a colossal goat-fuck by the coders, I know it's easy to think that happens all the time, but no... We've been making craft like this for a very long time. There is no magic. But there is rampant espionage, enabled by leftist presidents.

Do you know of evidence of this, or is this just internet speculation?

It's blatant speculation by someone who spent time as a dinky little DoD RF engineer.

I'm sure everything is fine.

New Footage Reveals Wreckage Of F-35 Jet Amidst Speculation Of Potential 'Cyberattack'

New footage shows the wreckage of the missing F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter in Williamsburg County, South Carolina. The F-35's debris field is approximately 80 miles from Joint Base Charleston. The military has confirmed the stealth jet was on autopilot when the pilot ejected, but the reasons for the ejection remain unknown. As a result, aviation commanders have grounded Marine Corps aircraft on Tuesday.

The Marine Corps has labeled this incident a "Class-A mishap." This began on Sunday afternoon when the pilot of the stealth jet ejected safely into a North Charleston neighborhood. Through Monday afternoon, the military asked the public for help to locate the $140 million jet.

As a result, the Marine Corps issued a two-day stand-down of all military aircraft on Monday.

"How in the hell do you lose an F-35?" South Carolina US Rep. Nancy Mace, R-Charleston, wrote on X. She added, "How is there not a tracking device and we're asking the public to what, find a jet and turn it in?"

Consider this from Daily Mail, citing Project On Government Oversight, a nonpartisan independent watchdog that investigates and exposes waste, corruption, and abuse of power, released a report in 2019 that showed "nearly every software-enabled weapon system tested between 2012 and 2017 can be hacked - including the F-35."

Despite years of patches and upgrades, the F-35's most combat-crucial computer systems continue to malfunction, including the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) maintenance and parts ordering network; and the data links that display, combine, and exchange target and threat information among fighters and intelligence sources.

As in previous years, cybersecurity testing shows that many previously confirmed F-35 vulnerabilities have not been fixed, meaning that enemy hackers could potentially shut down the ALIS network, steal secret data from the network and onboard computers, and perhaps prevent the F-35 from flying or from accomplishing its missions.

And there's this...

Green Hills Software produces the Integrity 178B Operating System that powers the F-35, F-22, F-16, and B-2. It also powers the Airbus A380. It was also quite possibly leaked. Now you understand why the entire USMC air fleet has been grounded.
https://twitter.com/stillgray/...otential-cyberattack


Was the multi-trillion-dollar F-35 program, often criticized as America's most dysfunctional weapons program, compromised by a cyberattack?


https://www.zerohedge.com/mili...otential-cyberattack

^^^^^^^

Testing my "X" embedding...

https://twitter.com/stillgray/...otential-cyberattack

Holy Schnike

So just to clarify......

We can't have a tracking device on it, because somebody might know where it is. However, bad actors can potentially log right into the thing while it's flying and download/upload information?

That sounds about right. The Chinese can know everything about our most sophisticated war machines, but we can not.

I know it's still not clear whether the pilot ejected himself or was ejected by the aircraft. Just out of curiosity, if the aircraft decides to part ways with the pilot does it provide any warning? Is it a "Hey, in 5 seconds you're leaving, you better get ready" sort of thing, or a "you were just in here, but now you're flying through the air" situation?

Obviously the polite thing to do is warn the guy and let him brace himself for getting rocketed off.

"Hey guy flying my plane, you going bye bye in 10 seconds..."

"Just kidding, Hello!" BOOM!!

quote:

Originally posted by erj_pilot:
^^^^^^^

Testing my "X" embedding...

https://twitter.com/stillgray/...otential-cyberattack

[FLASH_VIDEO]<iframe id="twitter-widget-1" scrolling="no" src="https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&lang=en&theme=&id=1703988467771015430" style="position: static; visibility: visible; width: 550px; height: 970px; display: block; border: medium; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-image: url('https://codejanitor.azurewebsites.net/embeds/bgmessage.png'); background-position: center 20px; background-size: 300px; overflow: hidden;" title="Twitter Tweet"></iframe>[/FLASH_VIDEO]

Do you really, honestly think this guy Larkin is somehow smarter and more alert than the entire Pentagon and intelligence services? All of them? From top to bottom? From the Secretaries of Defense down to the lowliest private? None of them noticed this and allowed the plane to fly around with a security hole so big that even the mooks on Twitter/X knew about it?

I know some do think that. And I know others think that it was a plot of some sort.

If it is a plot, is everyone in on it?

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:

quote:

Originally posted by erj_pilot:
^^^^^^^

Testing my "X" embedding...

Do you really, honestly think this guy Larkin is somehow smarter and more alert than the entire Pentagon and intelligence services? All of them? From top to bottom? From the Secretaries of Defense down to the lowliest private? None of them noticed this and allowed the plane to fly around with a security hole so big that even the mooks on Twitter/X knew about it?

I know some do think that. And I know others think that it was a plot of some sort.

If it is a plot, is everyone in on it?

Did you see the Mooch and Sunshine video on the UAP hearing?

All it takes is bureaucracy. And that we got.

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:
All highly maneuverable aircraft are inherently unstable. Computers are required to fly them because humans just can't.

Well maybe all extremely maneuverable aircraft. I fly a Pitts S-2B that most folks would agree is highly maneuverable that has no computer onboard. The same is true for all the Extras, Edges, and as far as I know all aircraft used by folks who compete at the unlimited level in aerobatics.

quote:

One unfortunate confluence of technology and human nature is trying to stuff more functionality into a product via software. It's why our cell phones have an endless cascade of menus and sub-menus with settings and features that are impossible to fully understand, and which then get modified regularly by software updates.

In civilian aircraft the trend has been to centralize all functions through one computer, the Flight Management System. You literally cannot fly the airplane without it. The manual has many pages of known software bugs, and each update adds new ones. The pilot is intentionally taken out of the loop under the assumption human errors are more hazardous than computer errors. Presumably the military suffer the same thing, where every system communicates via a centralized processor, and they are all interdependent, bugs included.

As someone who was a software engineer in computer networking, I got a kick about the story about computer controlled flight controls at Stanford Instructional Television. The instructor set up the scenario to the student in the classroom and other watching in remote classrooms at companies around the Bay Area, “The stewardess (it was a while ago) is closing the cabin door prior to pushback and it is announced that the airplane is completely fly by wire and your software team wrote the software. Who wants off right now?” Everyone except for one gentleman wanted off right <bleeping> now! The prof looked at the gentleman and said, “You are really confident in your team.” The student replied, “No, I know if my team did the software we won’t be able to taxi to the end of the runway so I don’t have to fear crashing.”

Anyone who has written much software and worked on complex systems knows that it is exceedingly difficult to consider everything that might happen and figure out the right approach to every eventuality.

quote:

Originally posted by slosig:

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:
All highly maneuverable aircraft are inherently unstable. Computers are required to fly them because humans just can't.

Well maybe all extremely maneuverable aircraft. I fly a Pitts S-2B that most folks would agree is highly maneuverable that has no computer onboard. The same is true for all the Extras, Edges, and as far as I know all aircraft used by folks who compete at the unlimited level in aerobatics.

Yeah, I'm talking about the latest generation of fighter aircraft. Many have negative stability built in and need the electronics to rapidly and continuously make adjustments to the control surfaces to not depart controlled flight.

When very high speeds are involved the flight control displacement needs to be very limited so as not to impart structural overloads. This is true on airliners, too. The AA587 crash off of JFK in 2001 was an example where the human reaction time (PIO) coupled with excessive control surface deflection broke the airplane.

quote:

Originally posted by slosig:
As someone who was a software engineer in computer networking, I got a kick about the story about computer controlled flight controls at Stanford Instructional Television. The instructor set up the scenario to the student in the classroom and other watching in remote classrooms at companies around the Bay Area, “The stewardess (it was a while ago) is closing the cabin door prior to pushback and it is announced that the airplane is completely fly by wire and your software team wrote the software. Who wants off right now?” Everyone except for one gentleman wanted off right <bleeping> now! The prof looked at the gentleman and said, “You are really confident in your team.” The student replied, “No, I know if my team did the software we won’t be able to taxi to the end of the runway so I don’t have to fear crashing.”

Lol!

quote:

Originally posted by slosig:
Anyone who has written much software and worked on complex systems knows that it is exceedingly difficult to consider everything that might happen and figure out the right approach to every eventuality.

Hence the general paranoia of airline pilots flying the modern iteration of airplanes! The rumor is the final words on Airbus cockpit voice recorders when they crash are, "What's this thing doing?". I am one of those pilots who avoided an accident in an older generation airliner by flying outside of the envelope. Had a computer been in charge it would not have allowed the AOA, bank angle, and thrust setting required when we had an engine flame out during a microburst arriving into a one-way mountain airport. The FDR was downloaded and programmed into the sim as one of the surprise scenarios, and it is not a survivable event by the book.

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
If it is a plot, is everyone in on it?

Clearly, the pilot was left out.

I'm just so inspired by how well the Pentagon and DOD have done since January of 2021.

With regard to the theory that the CCP gained access to the F-35 flight software from a questionable development company via some South American connection, a friend of mine opined:

"If the head of the country sucks chink dick, you know there are many below him who will do the same. The chinks know how to play the long game..."

Regardless, currently far far too many questions, many normally answered in military crashes well before the incident investigation report is completed, remain on the table.