What's wrong with the Air Force?

[HeloDude]

13 hours ago, Karl Hungus said:

You really think Uber (or FedEx, Delta, Vanguard's automated financial analyst, the Mayo Clinic's automated neurosurgeon, etc) will just lower their prices by 1/4 and pass that cost savings on to a consumer, long term?  You think the automated Wall Street robots and their shareholders will be ok with that?  LOL.

I know, right!?  I mean, DVD players are more expensive than ever these days...

[Inertia17]

There is no way they would be able to offer flights for half the price just by removing a pilot. Call it a couple hundred dollars and hour per crew and then divide it across each passenger, you won't save any more than $20 per ticket (conservative napkin math, 150pax $500 an hour for 2 crew, 4 hour flight...$13.33 saving per seat).

Then you have incidents like QF72 (QF72). Where the autopilot is out to lunch and tries to fight the pilot. How do you think that would have gone down with no crew on board, and the pilot monitoring was in the middle of an approach on one of his 3-4 other aircraft?

RPA or single pilot ops are a fair way off, not because of technology necessarily, but the risk mitigation that has to take place to even consider it. Cargo would likely be first, and even that would be a battle with the FAA I'm guessing.

[dream big]

13 hours ago, flyusaf83 said:

At my base, aircrew are now required to operate the high lift trucks instead of AFE. That means I have to get pilots and navs to take a course on how to drive the stupid truck, and then have them take it on as an additional duty.  It means when I have a TDY departing or arriving on weekend, someone has to come in just to drive the damn truck.  Also, I had to assign a young copilot to watch other chicks piss in cups for a solid week, 0700-1600.  

I get sitting SOF (kind of). I get sitting Sup.  But what in the bloody hell are we doing? Aside from the insanity of having a pilot, who has millions of dollars invested in their training, not fly in order to drive a truck or watch people urinate... this kind of crap just kills morale.  My Lt copilots are all jaded.  How can you blame them? It's about unmet expectations.  They worked and sacrificed more than their peers to become military pilots. Then we have them do things an E-1 should be doing.

The Air Force is insane.  What they are doing with additional duties is like having a neurosurgeon do less surgeries so he can help the janitors (who get paid the same as the neurosurgeons).

Nailed it.  A lot of this boils down to having a SQ commander who has some balls to tell the shoe clerks running the base: "NO"... No, we aren't using a line flying pilot to watch a piss test.  No, we aren't participating in your g-$ morale run.  And no, we aren't going to have half the squadron sit through LRS's worthless mobility line all day when we have lines to fly.  

[Guest]

Cargo would likely be first, and even that would be a battle with the FAA I'm guessing.

I don't even see cargo happening anytime soon. Imagine instead of the RQ-170 getting hacked, jammed, lost-link, whatever, it happening to an automated MD-11 or 747 over a populated area.

Also, how well is a guy in a GCS going to be able to diagnose and handle something like a wing or fuselage fire? Shit happens and there's no replacement for having a couple pink butts in the seats to exercise judgement and ingenuity to avert crisis.


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[Inertia17]

1 minute ago, ihtfp06 said:

I don't even see cargo happening anytime soon. Imagine instead of the RQ-170 getting hacked, jammed, lost-link, whatever, it happening to an automated MD-11 or 747 over a populated area.

I definitely agree. It wouldn't be for a very long time, even for single pilot ops. But that would be the first place they would likely consider RPA/single pilot.

[Duck]

Maybe this is what senior leadership meant when they said we were all replaceable... lol


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[Guest LumberjackAxe]

Perhaps we can have this pilotless discussion when they have driverless trucks cruising down the highway. Let's start with that before we move on to Airliners. 

The technology exists, obviously, to remove drivers and pilots. But it's gonna take a generation for the public to be okay with driverless trucks and for the guvment to figure out how to regulate it. It'll take even longer for airplanes to go that way, and it has nothing to do with technology. It has to do with public perception and regulation, which I think will take a full three or four decades.

And also how strong the pilot union is. 

 

[Guardian]

Because driving a vehicle on the road is way safer than flying?


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[DirtyFlightSuit]

Automated cars (note I don't say driverless) are a much simpler solution than aviation.  Car has engine problem it can pull over and brake or coast to a stop safely, don't have that luxury with aircraft, also the types of issues that occur (blown tire, engine trouble, etc) are FAR simpler to deal with then the insane possibilities in aircraft.  Any how we've gotten way off topic, I vote this thread should be tuned into "What's right with the Air Force" it would be far simpler and shorter of a thread possibly empty.

[WTFAF]

And I would wager flying an RPA airline is much less intensive than an RPA military plane. Fly from A to B with some wx contingencies. Killing people from an RPA I would imagine isn't as easy as that.


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So they would crash slightly less often with passengers on board? Keep dreaming, but it's never gonna happen in our lifetimes.

[RTB]

1 hour ago, LumberjackAxe said:

Perhaps we can have this pilotless discussion when they have driverless trucks cruising down the highway. Let's start with that before we move on to Airliners. 

Perhaps this is my juvenile mind at work, but can you imagine how many people would be out intentionally screwing with those driverless trucks just for entertainment purposes? 

"Hey Bubba, watch this..." 

 

[nsplayr]

2 hours ago, LumberjackAxe said:

But it's gonna take a generation for the public to be okay with driverless trucks and for the guvment to figure out how to regulate it.

I'll bet ya a bottle on that one. A generation is what, 25 years generally? And what's the criteria for "public to be okay with" and "government able to regulate?"

Uber/Otto already delivered 50K cans of Budweiser using a driverless truck last October. Daimler is investing a ton of money into driverless trucks in Europe. Most experts believe significant job disruptions in the trucking industry are more like 5-10 years away.

I mean honestly, depending on the criteria for the bet, the video below kind of contradicts both of the issues you raised. The truck drove down a public highway in a populated area, with hundreds of other civilian vehicles, and the trip was done legally meaning there was coordination with the appropriate levels of government.

Granted this setup still required a man in the machine for city driving, pickup/delivery, etc., so not fundamentally different than what airline guys are doing today.

Either way, this bet should be settled waaaay before the leaving Afghanistan one 

p.s. - this thread is way off the rails...+1 for separating out automation stuff

Edited May 13, 2017 by nsplayr

[Guest LumberjackAxe]

1 hour ago, nsplayr said:

I'll bet ya a bottle on that one. A generation is what, 25 years generally? And what's the criteria for "public to be okay with" and "government able to regulate?"

Uber/Otto already delivered 50K cans of Budweiser using a driverless truck last October. Daimler is investing a ton of money into driverless trucks in Europe. Most experts believe significant job disruptions in the trucking industry are more like 5-10 years away.

I mean honestly, depending on the criteria for the bet, the video below kind of contradicts both of the issues you raised. The truck drove down a public highway in a populated area, with hundreds of other civilian vehicles, and the trip was done legally meaning there was coordination with the appropriate levels of government.

Granted this setup still required a man in the machine for city driving, pickup/delivery, etc., so not fundamentally different than what airline guys are doing today.

Either way, this bet should be settled waaaay before the leaving Afghanistan one 

p.s. - this thread is way off the rails...+1 for separating out automation stuff

Whelp, I stand corrected on that one. 

 

Back to what's RIGHT with the Air Force, a few bros in my Squadron put together a "condensed" powerpoint that covered a bunch of the annual/semi-annual/deployment CBTs, sent it out in an email with a request that we simply email them confirming we reviewed the slideshow, and then they could log it in ADLS for us, thus saving us the trouble of doing said CBTs.

I'm not too sure about the finer details, or how it turned out, but I wasn't about to not participate. My knowledge on the CBT subjects still remains the same.

Edited May 13, 2017 by LumberjackAxe

[matmacwc]

We do them all as a Wing, and they are signed off for us, but anything like this is good

[Prosuper]

God Dammit!!,But it will be fun to see MX officers tell Watson to change parts that don't need changing so they look good at Wing standup. 

[pawnman]

22 hours ago, Karl Hungus said:

You really think Uber (or FedEx, Delta, Vanguard's automated financial analyst, the Mayo Clinic's automated neurosurgeon, etc) will just lower their prices by 1/4 and pass that cost savings on to a consumer, long term?  You think the automated Wall Street robots and their shareholders will be ok with that?  LOL.

I do.  It's called competition.  If I can cut my prices by 25% for the same amount of profit per customer, then I will get more customers relative to the competition.

[pawnman]

23 hours ago, dream big said:

If an Uber showed up to my house without a driver, I wouldn't get into it for free.  You honestly think passengers would get into a pilot-less airline? Okay even single pilot, what happens when one of those crash with 300 souls on board? Why on earth would airlines accept that capital risk? I didn't say it will never happen, just that it's not happening in our lifetime.  

I'd get into that car.  I'm not sure I trust planes that much yet.  A computer-driven car will never be subject to human error.  

[pawnman]

4 hours ago, Guardian said:

Because driving a vehicle on the road is way safer than flying?


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Two-dimensional space at 60 MPH is a lot easier to navigate than three-dimensional space at 400 KTS.

[HuggyU2]

On 5/12/2017 at 0:45 PM, caseylf said:

Is the Deuce that insulated from the rest of the AF? Or you just like the community that it's easier to deal with the BS?
 

It's a good question that I'm not really sure of the answer.  And, frankly, having been gone almost three years, my opinion is of little value.  

My best... and possibly inaccurate... answer is that it I just enjoyed the flying and people so much that it made the BS tolerable.  

But toward the end, it did seem the BS was getting much worse.  But, once again, the perspective of a guy who was about to retire.  

There are others on here who can speak to the issue better.  However, they are currently in a good place leadership-wise with excellent SQ/CC's, OG/CC, and inbound RW/CV.  

Edited May 14, 2017 by HuggyU2

[Hacker]

21 hours ago, Inertia17 said:

Then you have incidents like QF72 (QF72). Where the autopilot is out to lunch and tries to fight the pilot. How do you think that would have gone down with no crew on board, and the pilot monitoring was in the middle of an approach on one of his 3-4 other aircraft?

That wasn't just the "autopilot" that was out to lunch -- that was the flight control computer.  Even after the crew tried to go to the lowest level of automation possible, it was still a computer that took a crap between their hands and the flight controls.  So, even more dangerous than just an autopilot acting up.

But, you have to put this in context.  As freaky as that was (and as catastrophic as the outcome could have been if it was unpiloted or remotely piloted), compare it to the number of lives lost due to pilot error (which is still by far the leading cause of accidents and fatalities in aviation).

Edited May 14, 2017 by Hacker

[Inertia17]

4 hours ago, Hacker said:

That wasn't just the "autopilot" that was out to lunch -- that was the flight control computer.  Even after the crew tried to go to the lowest level of automation possible, it was still a computer that took a crap between their hands and the flight controls.  So, even more dangerous than just an autopilot acting up.

But, you have to put this in context.  As freaky as that was (and as catastrophic as the outcome could have been if it was unpiloted or remotely piloted, compare it to the number of lives lost due to pilot error (which is still by far the leading cause of accidents and fatalities in aviation).

My statement was overly general, I should have been more specific. And while human error is the leading cause of accidents, aviation will continue to be about redundancy for risk mitigation. The time where they entrust an aircraft to remote piloting, or even single pilot is likely still many years off. The FAA would never allow something with a single point of failure. Single pilot, with a remote capability, with multiple redundancies, would be the minimum they would consider initially. In my opinion at least.

[dream big]

34 minutes ago, Inertia17 said:

My statement was overly general, I should have been more specific. And while human error is the leading cause of accidents, aviation will continue to be about redundancy for risk mitigation. The time where they entrust an aircraft to remote piloting, or even single pilot is likely still many years off. The FAA would never allow something with a single point of failure. Single pilot, with a remote capability, with multiple redundancies, would be the minimum they would consider initially. In my opinion at least.

"Single pilot, with a remote capability, with multiple redundancies, would be the minimum they would consider initially. In my opinion at least."

Yepp, still seeing zero cost savings here.  You still have to pay for that pilot (potentially more because of Unions and the hardship of sitting on your ass by yourself for 14 hours from DFW to NRT), you still have to pay for that remote pilot on the ground, you still have to pay for the "redundancy" and not to mention the means to mitigate the retarded risk of single or remote piloted airlines.  

Not to mention, human error is still very much in the chain.  Why are we still talking about this? I'm sure some socially awkward engineer type living in his parents' basement is having wet dreams about this, but let's be real here. 

[Sprkt69]

15 hours ago, pawnman said:

I'd get into that car.  I'm not sure I trust planes that much yet.  A computer-driven car will never be subject to human error.  

That's fake news, very fake news. Computers are programmed by humans, and the current self driving cars are having difficulty driving with humans around. 

[nsplayr]

15 hours ago, pawnman said:

Two-dimensional space at 60 MPH is a lot easier to navigate than three-dimensional space at 400 KTS.

The complete opposite is true. Once you're over the speed where fatal accidents become more certain in a crash, it doesn't really matter if you hit something at 120mph closure or 400kts closure, you're still in a bad place.

On the ground, you're sometimes inches and often no more than a few feet away from numerous other objects, including other piloted vehicles whose drivers may or may not be paying attention. You're dealing with pedestrians, stray dogs, limited sightlines with no ability to see through the obstacle, confusing or missing road markings, and most of all, other idiot human drivers an arm's length away.

Compare that to IFR flying, where the roads are mostly straight and all well-marked, you're not anywhere near other objects (relatively speaking compared to driving), and all pilots in that environment are much more highly trained than your 16 year old daughter in a mustang talking on the phone.

Obviously I've simplified both environments, but you get the idea.

Controlled for volume, there's a reason that traveling by air is orders of magnitude safer than traveling by car. Flying is almost 96x safer depending on how you work the numbers, and that margin of safety isn't just because the airlines have two pink bodies up front rather than one.

Edit to add: Pilots can safely fly an RPA, even in a busy stack, with a 2-second delay in control inputs. Do you think you could remotely pilot your car through an urban commute with that same 2-second delay and maintain an acceptable safety record over time?

1 hour ago, Inertia17 said:

The FAA would never allow something with a single point of failure.

You mean like a single commercial pilot flying passengers in a single-engine airplane? Something that preposterous would never be allowed by the august regulators at the FAA!

Edited May 14, 2017 by nsplayr

[matmacwc]

14 minutes ago, nsplayr said:

 

Edit to add: Pilots can safely fly an RPA, even in a busy stack, with a 2-second delay in control inputs. Do you think you could remotely pilot your car through an urban commute with that same 2-second delay and maintain an acceptable safety record over time?

Pssst.  Shhh!  Pilots don't really fly RPA's.  Don't tell anyone.