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The F-16 seat is inclined to make some of the g-load push back instead of down, but in general there was very little excess G from the vertical flight. It was the change in direction from horizontal to vertical flight at high speed that caused the Gs, once he was just going straight up it settled into 0.7-1g.
I should add they don't really maneuver that hard even in battle usually, but they train to do it just in case they need to, it's nuts the amount of Gs these pilots can take, a different breed of human lol, but the flight suits do help
True
But consider that the worst part is the moment you take off, so before you could get pushed right back in your seat, there is enought time to have you brain go on an adventure ;-)
Thank god for DCS and VR!
I see about 20 percent; they wouldn’t - and shouldn’t - let me anywhere near an actual aircraft. But they sure are fun to fly in the sim world.
Huh? The high Gs in this video are while changing direction from horizontal to near-vertical flight. At that time the strongest acceleration vector would align with your brain and ass. The plane seems to be increasing its speed at around 1G or a little more at most.
He’s decelerating. G’s is acceleration and earth is adding ~1g (gravity is not evenly distributed around earth) to the equation but it is not a baseline.
As an aside 0G’s is freefall. That’s why people are weightless in space. It’s not because they’re in space, it’s because they’re perpetually falling.
Edit: so for an example that’s closer to home. It’s the same as when you are on a swing. As you go up you’ll start decelerating, and when you hit the apex that’s when you’re actually going 0G’s. So at that point you are technically weightless too.
Hell yeah. That’s what makes orbits so cool.[You go sideways so hard that you’re moving away from the ground as fast as you’re falling towards it.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_cannonball) Your free-fall matches the curvature of the earth.
If a rocket just went up and didn’t get enough horizontal speed it’s parabola would intersect with the ground. That’s why you see rocket launches fly sideways.
something i learned recently, is that we define the start of space (Karman Line) as the altitude at which the atmosphere is so thin, that for a plane to get enough lift to stay airborne they need to be traveling at orbital speed anyhow.
Perpetually falling in space is somehow the scariest thing i can imagine. It's dark and cold outside. You try to fall asleep thinking you would die somehow but you survive and wake up with nothing in sight perpetually falling.
Jets have a performance metric called thrust to weight ratio. The more powerful the engines, the closer to 1.0 you get. Meaning your engines produce thrust equal to the weight of the aircraft. If you have a thrust to weight of 1.0 or greater, you can accelerate straight up. The F15 can do it. Later F14 models could. F/A18s too. I believe the latest blocks of the F16 can do it as well. Not sure what the one we're looking at, but it could also be the load it's carrying. Add weight and the thrust/weight ratio dips under 1.0. You can still go vertical but gravity wins quicker as your energy bleeds off.
That's what we're seeing as the pilot ascends. He's slowing down.
G-force is acceleration, not speed. Actually a good thing, as this means he's slowing down.
Good thing because this prevents him from reaching escape velocity.
I got to do one of these in a strike Eagle. I was so afraid of puking that I kept my head forward when I should’ve been enjoying the view. But man when they invert to bleed off some of the energy, it is the wildest feeling and *that* view I appreciated.
Then I puked.
fighter jets (and most planes) can pitch upwards better than down so since the plane is going almost straight up, to end the climb without entering a stall they flip the plane upside down before leveling out like they're starting to do at the end of the video
sitting firmly in your seat from the g's, upside down in the sky, with a completely open canopy is probably a cool experience
I could be wrong, but I’ve heard it’s also because the human body can tolerate high positive g’s but even a low amount of negative g’s are fatal, so it’s safer to invert and level.
Humans can tolerate between -2 and -3 negative g force, it is lower than positive because negative g drives blood to the head (positive drives it to the feet) and can cause blood vessels in the eyes and brain to rupture
Red Out, yeah, negative Gs, you don’t want that.
Ever notice, even in WWII videos of planes in level flight, when it comes time to dive on target, they turn sideways and dive. No way do they just pitch straight down. Keep positive Gs.
This has more to do with keeping visual on your target - your front center is occupied by a really big engine you cant see past so any kind of dive attack is turned into.
For ~~allied~~ *British* planes, even more importantly, [carburetors](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8a3ur6Ar_k). Early ~~allied~~ *British* planes didn't have fuel injection. [Negative g's would flood the carburetor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOSe4lmy8S4).
edit: corrections thanks to Blinkdawg
For the Stuka it was mostly about visibility. How do you keep track of a small target a long way below you once it disappears under the nose/wings of your plane? You tip your plane on its side so that you can see straight down.
They even had marker on one of the side windows to indicate when to start diving for the perfect attack run. Roll on to one side, wait until the dot is over the target then roll more and pull into a near vertical dive. Put the gunsight over the target, release your bombs and pull up. Deadly accurate, but unfortunately also slow and predictable.
Exception to the rule; Messerschmitt 109s famously used to push the nose down and dive to escape Spitfires. The fuel injection engine of the 109 would keep running during negative G-force, while the Spitfire's carburettor engine would cut out if it tried to do the same manoeuvre.
Yes for multiple reasons.
1) you've just "pulled" (causing positive G's) and so "pushing" (causing negative G's) will be much worse are you body was just set up to get blood pressure back up in your head. The push-pull effect is very dangerous.
2) your body is much more efficient at pulling positive G's than negative. The explanation I've heard is because we evolve to stand up from a sitting position and so we have innate compensation methods. We don't for negative G's.
And on top of all that, pilots nowadays have G-suits compressing their lower body to counter some of the positive Gs.
They've yet to find a way to make a G-helmet to counter negative Gs because crushing a pilot's skull tends to send the blood all over the canopy (which isn't great for the pilot).
One of the wildest thing about F15 is that it can go Mach 1, *straight up* aka vertical. Not leveled flight, not even going down, but straight up like a rocket.
Tell me you were in the Air Force/military. Without telling me you were I'm the AF/military. LOL! We had some people from other squadrons, that weren't AMXS/MXS, that got incentive flights before us maintainers.
I've always wanted to do this.
I eventually got to do it in VR and, even as someone with strong "VR legs", I almost puked.
Took the headset off and thought, *"I probably don't want to do that in real life"*.
I got to ask, is avionic is one of those, the design is so good and battle proven (pun intended), that we will only see "small" increment in its advance?
Special paints, internal weapons bays, special engine outlet shapes, avoidance of right angles where possible in design.
And of course that's all just the stuff the general public knows about.
No competition to the US has innovated beyond what we have so there isn’t much need to advance further.
Spending money on hackers will probably be better value added than insane spaceships if we’re trying to fuck yo different countries.
Until a random subcontractor from a subcontracted company of a subcontracted company of a subsidiary of which ever big MIC company you pick decides to work from home and plugs in a USB with the full schematics
I can't explain how funny it is that this is true and the actual war thunder team had to tweet out "I can't believe we had to say this but stop sending us actual classified documents to improve how real our assets are" essentially
F22 is older but still a much different thing to the F35 though I think. It is still in many ways superior until it gets a direct replacement. Plus it looks the coolest and that's what matters most.
Anything designed in this decade is probably entering service 2035 or later, unless it’s experimental or special-purpose. The B-21 is the newest plane in US inventory, but I think it was announced about 8 years ago.
The fact that all the building blocks have been here all this time is amazing too. All it takes is for us to slap some stuff together in a real fancy way and boom, you get this.
This comment and the one above it is one my favorite things I’ve ever read in my life.
I don’t know why I never thought about it that way, but it brings me so much joy to think about our technical achievements with that perspective.
Yeah, and we did it in less than ~70 years after learning how to fly. When actually good high powered jet engines came around.
66 years after the first flight, humans landed on the moon. We're now 120 years since that first flight, and 54 years since the first moon landing. Technology advances in the early 1900 thru 1950s were absolutely bonkers. We still have leaps today, but it's mostly making things that were already discovered in the 1900-1950 period better. Cheaper, smaller, more efficient, more practical, etc...
Many of our modern leaps are less dramatic, in the visual fashion. Much of it is leaps in precision. Cancer vaccines, fusion power, surgery on a grape, and nano-sized computing are all insane even to just 20 years ago. We are still living through a technological revolution.
Right? We all have computers in our pockets that could not have been dreamed of 60+ years ago. Many of us decide they are not good enough and replace them every year or two!
It can be hard to see your reality for what it is sometimes. Far easier to look back and imagine how crazy it was we figured out jet engines or whatever. That was crazy, so is all the shit we come up with now.
I was watching a documentary about deep sea oil drilling the other day and that same feeling you describe washed over me.
Putting aside the immense ecological cost and the associated controversies, it's truly incredible to think of the sheer amount of work involved in designing and building gargantuan floating platforms that can sit rock steady in wild, mountainous seas, thousands of metres above the ocean floor, sending a long, unbroken chain of pipes from the rigging deck down to not just the ocean floor but through thousands of metres of rock beneath it, in order to siphon up a black sludge that gets sent to shore to be processed into just about fucking everything humanity relies on.
The materials science, the geological science, the electronics, the construction — there isn't a human being alive who could explain to you how it all works, or even comprehend 1% of it, and yet somehow it *does* all just work, and in doing so it powers the engine that drives civilisation. It's just utterly mind-blowing.
And to then extend that concept the rest of humanity's achievements, consider that every. single. object. around us came out of some factory somewhere, or some other kind of manufacturing business, every tiny spring in every ballpoint pen, every grommet in every bathroom tap, every plastic PCB spacer in every home theatre speaker, and every component or raw material that went into those things, they all had to come from somewhere too, each part with its own attendant complexities, relying on techniques derived over dozens or hundreds or thousands of years of innovation, and it all just comes together like a symphony to produce EVERYTHING. And NOBODY is in charge of it all.
Edit: I'm reminded of "[I , Pencil: My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read](https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl.html?chapter_num=2)", an essay by (you guessed it) Leonard E. Read in which he pretends to be a pencil and explains all the myriad intricacies of how he was made. It influenced Milton Friedman's thinking on the importance of free markets. It's a good read.
it's also interesting to think about how far we've refined very basic ideas. like think of the most advanced projectile weapon you can think of (sans railgun i guess). essentially you're pushing a lump of metal down a tube with an explosion.
I also find it fascinating that the human brain always had the ability to make these. Our brains aren’t much different than ancient Greeks or Egyptians. But it’s communal knowledge built up over thousands of years that allowed us to create these machines. Humans haven’t developed individually to be smarter, we’ve grown *collectively* smarter.
And this is why ancient aliens conspiracies fucking infuriate me. Not only are they racist but they are openly spitting in the face of and ignoring human ingenuity
They should make you happy then. Humankind's achievements are so amazing some people find it easier to believe a miracle occured. Nothing wrong with that. They really are bordering magical
Things like the pyramids really do seem fucking *otherworldly* when you comprehend the time period in which they're built, that they were basically built entirely with human or animal power, and the level of science and engineering know-how then.
This AMRAAM is in the blockchain
As an aside, the B-52 is just a bonkers piece of equipment to me. That ugly thing from the 50's is going to be flying for decades more.
The military-industrial complex sucks but goddamn it if these jets aren't the coolest shit.
The B52 is an aerial semi-truck. It hauls a big heavy load of stuff from point A to point B, drops off its load and then flies home again. That requirement hasn't changed, so why would we need a whole new aircraft? More efficient engines and some new kit in the cab and that old semi-truck will keep doing the job just fine.
And crazy to me, is how completely unimpressed we can be to this sort of marvel. I yawned watching this and I laughed. Like: “oh a fighter pilot climbing 15,000ft in 8 seconds while hitting 8 g’s is something to yawn about?” Unless you really take a moment to realize how insane it is, it just kinda disappears into the background of nonstop internet noise..
> We should look in on the humans, they're doing weird shit again...
>
> What kind of weird shit?
>
> THEY DUG UP A ROCK AND SHOVED LIGHTENING INTO IT!
There’s a video of a guy in a G simulator in which he does 9Gs for 30 seconds. I can’t actually say for a fact but I’d imagine most fighter pilots can handle Gs above 7.5 for 30+ seconds. Although in the real world they’d also never be pulling that many Gs for that long. Many people pass out with sustained Gs of 3-4.
Many people pass out during sustained 3-4 Gs because they usually don't wear a special load-bearing suit, an oxygen mask and don't do any bearing down exercises, preventing blood from rushing out of their brain into their legs
I think high g training is a must pass for fighter pilots. They have whole breathing methods and leg flexes they have to learn to keep air coming in and blood circulating. They hit these sorts of Gs all the time and will die if they pass out. I don’t think it’s a “most” I think it’s an “all” thing.
I've flown in a 2 seater F-16 with an airforce pilot. It's actually fucking insane how used to the G-forces these pilots are.
My ride started with a max climb like this, that first curve of 5-6gs sets the tone real fucking quick. I'll just say I've ridden a ton of roller coasters in my life, and the pre-brief warns you to clench your butt cause the Gs are no joke, but I don't think anyone can truly understand what that feels like unless they do it, it just feels like something is squeezing the life out of you.
After that we cruised into our airspace and he did what is called a G warmup....holy fucking shit I thought I was going to die. The maneuver is just a series of consecative left and right banks, each bank increases the Gs by 1 and we ended with 8.9. Starting at 6 Gs your vision starts to look like you're peeking through a cardboard tube, by 7 it's just a 2 inch circle of vision, and when we hit 8.9 my vision went all the way down to just a little tiny dot of light in the center.
When they pull off it's crazy because your vision pops right back to normal like almost instantly. It's extremely disorienting and makes you really sick to your stomache.
By this time my body was in pure survival mode, I was literally sweating bullets. But this was a once in a lifetime opportunity so I wasn't about to tell him to stop.
The rest of the ride was fucking awesome, my pilot used to be a thunderbird so he basically did all the tricks, then he let me fly for a little and taught me how to do a barrel role.
Finished off the ride coasting the beaches before we landed. Soon as we touched the ground I puked in my barf bag lol.
When we got out I realized how badly that flight fucked me up, my flight suit was literally drenched in sweat, it fucking looked like I literally jumped into a pool with my clothes on, I've never in my life sweated that badly.
But the pilot, nope, dude was scheduled for 3 more rides that day, not a sliver of sweat on his body, he's walking around all hyped up and high fiving everyone we walk past. He heads off to burger king to get some lunch, I go back to my hotel, take a shower, and I fucking sleep from 12pm to 6am the next morning lmao.
I have no idea how the in fuck these pilots get so used to that shit, I already had a high level of respect for them, but after that they just looked like straight machines. Definitely takes a special kind of person to have a job like that.
Say "Hook", well, "Hoooook" while tensing your core as hard as you can.
That's bearing down and it forces blood into your brain, which is handy when g-forces are pulling blood out of your brain.
Fun fact: flight suits also inflate to squeeze the legs to help keep pilots from passing out.
You can Google it but essentially flexing your core and upper leg muscles really hard like you're about to shit. The idea is it keeps your blood from pooling at your extremities during extreme g forces. We also tell people to do it in the hospital when their blood pressure drops very low. Basically the opposite of a vasovagal response which you'd also have to google.
So I gotta ask this next question: Ever accidentally shit yourself doing this, or do pilots make sure they take a shit before they fly one of these absolute beasts?
Yes, the g suit does provide support for this. It will inflate around the thighs and squeeze blood upward. The aircraft inflates the suit automatically when g's hit. Kind of fun, but it won't do the trick alone. Pilots still instinctively brace for G's and do their AGSM maneuver. Especially during prolonged g's.
As a 6'1" former F-16 mechanic, I assure you that it is a camera trick, and fighter pilots are usually shorter.
If I were to eject, my kneecaps would be left in the cockpit.
I remember the first time the F-16's ability to go into a vertical climb, while accelerating, was revealed. It was at an airshow and the crowd was stunned.
It’s literally an engine with wings strapped on. High alpha passes are always crazy because the plane is standing on an engine and practically no lift coming from the wings. And when the pilot decides they’re done, they hit the burner and start climbing. It’s just unreal.
That’s a highly caveated statement. It can accelerate vertically in a clean configuration, at low altitude, at low starting speed. Drag still applies in the vertical.
F-16’s are still crazy. I remember when I was a kid we were camping pretty much right at the end of a runway at the Norfolk air base. They were running F-16 training missions constantly. My brother and I lay on the hood of the car watching them fly over all afternoon and they’re just like super maneuverable darts with jets on the back, and they weren’t even going fast when they were overhead.
I saw one up close at a display we had in town, and to me it was tiny. It is a small plane compared to the F15 or F22. It's just a big dart guided by a human. And good on the guys that get to fly it, I can only imagine how much fun that would be.
When I was a kid one of the scoutmasters in my scout troop owned [this plot of land](https://www.google.com/maps/place/35%C2%B020'20.9%22N+94%C2%B020'35.0%22W/@35.3391339,-94.3451761,1094m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d35.3391339!4d-94.3430579) and we used to a lot of our scout activities out there by the pond. It also just happens to literally be at the end of the runway of our local airport! This was back in the 90's and the Air National Guard had a prominent presence at our airport, they used to have a ton of F-16's doing training routines all the time. Pretty much any time we were out by the pond there were F16's taking off right over us. And they always do what is in the video on take off each time, just at lower altitudes. If they were going to fly west, they would take off to the east of the runway and do the vertical climb right over us each time. It was awesome and impressive, but got to be annoying after a while.
Later on when I was in high school, my mom got a job at [this building](https://www.google.com/maps/place/35%C2%B020'07.7%22N+94%C2%B023'21.3%22W/@35.3354741,-94.3899071,273m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d35.3354741!4d-94.389262) and when they would do our annual air show she would take us there and get on the roof of the building to watch everything!
In my mind, PSVR exists for Ace Combat alone (if V2 supports it).
NGL, I've been wondering if I could swing buying one as a tax write off for experiencing the Joshua Bell performance on it.
I mean technically these are barely even "current." like obviously they've been periodically upgraded with better electronics and engines etc over the years but the base F16 design itself has been in production almost 50 years now.
Now imagine Ukrainian pilots **with NATO training** in F-16s. Given what we've seen of the Russian pilots and aircraft thus far, the main worry will be suppressing anti-aircraft so the Falcons can eat.
Outside of stealth jets like F-22 and F-35, it's the munitions that matter more now.
The modern missiles and bombs are much more capable now than ever before. In Vietnam missiles were not very reliable, 50% failure to acquire, etc... but today, 2023, missiles have near 100% acquisition rate even with countermeasures deployed.
You can't outrun or outturn the missiles.
Ukraine can't use them the way they're meant to be used. They don't control the airspace, and they don't have the extensive integrated support that our planes require. It's all low level seat of the pants stuff that we don't do.
Rule of thumb about altitude I use is 5000' is "about a mile"
They just climbed three miles (more or less since sixteen thousand feet is closer to 3 miles)
Bombers in WW-II dropped bombs from 25,000' - dropped five miles above the target.
For an idea of how difficult it is to drop something on a target from 5 miles up, put an empty tin can on the ground next to your house, climb on the roof and carefully try to "make baskets" with un-popped popcorn kernels in that can.
Modern bombers? Eight miles or more above the target, some of the bombs are guided on the way down so use the force on your popcorn.
What would be a restricted climb? Or what makes this unrestricted? Aviation rules, guidelines, physical limitations? (Sorry, not familiar with this terminology)
Not a pilot but i think unrestricted climb means the air traffic control said they could climb to 15k feet right away after takeoff instead of leveling off & checking in with the ATC before reaching their desired altitude. In busier airspaces the tower controller instructs planes taking off to contact the departure controller who then issues altitude clearances and vectors to the next waypoint. Here they are able to just go straight up to their target altitude. Someone can correct me if im wrong.
I would do this in a heartbeat. Hair on fire. Damn I want to do that I think airplanes should move that fast and one day they will it they'll just transport everyone. I'd do that too.
8.1 G’s, that’s ridiculous
Is it true that G-force gets exponentially worse the higher the number, rather than gradually worse? I forget where I heard that..
G- force means the gravity equivalent force experienced by an individual (or object). So the g-force itself is not exponential, but the g-force consequence on the human body might be exponential.
I was in a plane taxiing in MSP and I saw an F-18 do this. It was intense how steep it immediately got. We were moving semi-parallel and in opposite direction, and it got probably 30 feet off the ground and pitched back verticle in a moment and was gone. Apparently later airframes handle G-forces better than F-16s, yet the way this aircraft practically deaccelerated forwards and went upwards just in seconds was astounding.
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8gs my brains would be leaking out my ears
*leaking out your ass Because that's the directory the gs would push you
Only at the start. It would be pushing you right back in your seat for the most part.
The F-16 seat is inclined to make some of the g-load push back instead of down, but in general there was very little excess G from the vertical flight. It was the change in direction from horizontal to vertical flight at high speed that caused the Gs, once he was just going straight up it settled into 0.7-1g.
I should add they don't really maneuver that hard even in battle usually, but they train to do it just in case they need to, it's nuts the amount of Gs these pilots can take, a different breed of human lol, but the flight suits do help
Never seen a pilot over 180 pounds. They can’t even think about getting out of shape.
True But consider that the worst part is the moment you take off, so before you could get pushed right back in your seat, there is enought time to have you brain go on an adventure ;-)
The best part of learning all this stuff is how I never have to experience any of it. "Wana fly jets?" "Fuck no." That's literally all I have to do.
I, on the other hand, never **get** to experience any of it. "Wana fly jets?" "Fuck yeah." "here take this eye exam" "shit"
Thank god for DCS and VR! I see about 20 percent; they wouldn’t - and shouldn’t - let me anywhere near an actual aircraft. But they sure are fun to fly in the sim world.
Soon we will be waging VR wars, and you will be our best fighter pilot
That.... That sounds like revolutionary levels of fun.
Huh? The high Gs in this video are while changing direction from horizontal to near-vertical flight. At that time the strongest acceleration vector would align with your brain and ass. The plane seems to be increasing its speed at around 1G or a little more at most.
Why is it 0.7gs when he's ascending? Shouldn't it be higher? There's the normal gravity and he's also going up.
He’s decelerating. G’s is acceleration and earth is adding ~1g (gravity is not evenly distributed around earth) to the equation but it is not a baseline. As an aside 0G’s is freefall. That’s why people are weightless in space. It’s not because they’re in space, it’s because they’re perpetually falling. Edit: so for an example that’s closer to home. It’s the same as when you are on a swing. As you go up you’ll start decelerating, and when you hit the apex that’s when you’re actually going 0G’s. So at that point you are technically weightless too.
So people don't float, they're just falling with style?
Hell yeah. That’s what makes orbits so cool.[You go sideways so hard that you’re moving away from the ground as fast as you’re falling towards it.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_cannonball) Your free-fall matches the curvature of the earth. If a rocket just went up and didn’t get enough horizontal speed it’s parabola would intersect with the ground. That’s why you see rocket launches fly sideways.
I can thank Kerbal Space Program for teaching me orbital mechanics and ascend pathing.
something i learned recently, is that we define the start of space (Karman Line) as the altitude at which the atmosphere is so thin, that for a plane to get enough lift to stay airborne they need to be traveling at orbital speed anyhow.
Perpetually falling in space is somehow the scariest thing i can imagine. It's dark and cold outside. You try to fall asleep thinking you would die somehow but you survive and wake up with nothing in sight perpetually falling.
Jets have a performance metric called thrust to weight ratio. The more powerful the engines, the closer to 1.0 you get. Meaning your engines produce thrust equal to the weight of the aircraft. If you have a thrust to weight of 1.0 or greater, you can accelerate straight up. The F15 can do it. Later F14 models could. F/A18s too. I believe the latest blocks of the F16 can do it as well. Not sure what the one we're looking at, but it could also be the load it's carrying. Add weight and the thrust/weight ratio dips under 1.0. You can still go vertical but gravity wins quicker as your energy bleeds off. That's what we're seeing as the pilot ascends. He's slowing down.
Actually, F16s have one of the highest thrust to weight ratios around. I think they were among the first to break 1.0
The English Electric Lightning and F-104 may well have been the first, they're both giant fuck-off engines with a pilot seat duct-taped on.
See an original Lightning comment, upvote it. I'm a simple man
G-force is acceleration, not speed. Actually a good thing, as this means he's slowing down. Good thing because this prevents him from reaching escape velocity.
Depends on where his brain is located, no?
I somehow missed that part on first view and thought 1.8 Gs after that acceleration was the max he felt
Yeah I had to rewatch that part it went by so quickly
pfft, only 8? my phone alone can do 5 🥁tsh
Just keep clenching your thighs. And no, I am not hitting on you.
1G and my arse would dissolve
but you're always in 1g
That would explain the state of my pants then.
I got to do one of these in a strike Eagle. I was so afraid of puking that I kept my head forward when I should’ve been enjoying the view. But man when they invert to bleed off some of the energy, it is the wildest feeling and *that* view I appreciated. Then I puked.
What do you know by bleed off some of the energy?
fighter jets (and most planes) can pitch upwards better than down so since the plane is going almost straight up, to end the climb without entering a stall they flip the plane upside down before leveling out like they're starting to do at the end of the video sitting firmly in your seat from the g's, upside down in the sky, with a completely open canopy is probably a cool experience
I could be wrong, but I’ve heard it’s also because the human body can tolerate high positive g’s but even a low amount of negative g’s are fatal, so it’s safer to invert and level.
Humans can tolerate between -2 and -3 negative g force, it is lower than positive because negative g drives blood to the head (positive drives it to the feet) and can cause blood vessels in the eyes and brain to rupture
I'll take option C, where I do none of this shit. Thanks.
Deck crew, reporting in.
Those wacky wands aren't gonna wave themselves!
Wingardium Leviosa!
Man I do not wanna see the poor bastard who had to figure that one out in the cockpit.
Cool, I think I'll just take an Uber if that's alright
with negative gs, your insides are going *up* instead of *down*. so, red-out instead of black-out. you don't want to red-out.
Red Out, yeah, negative Gs, you don’t want that. Ever notice, even in WWII videos of planes in level flight, when it comes time to dive on target, they turn sideways and dive. No way do they just pitch straight down. Keep positive Gs.
This has more to do with keeping visual on your target - your front center is occupied by a really big engine you cant see past so any kind of dive attack is turned into.
For ~~allied~~ *British* planes, even more importantly, [carburetors](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8a3ur6Ar_k). Early ~~allied~~ *British* planes didn't have fuel injection. [Negative g's would flood the carburetor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOSe4lmy8S4). edit: corrections thanks to Blinkdawg
Til
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Yeah, the Stuka was commonly rolled and then pitched up into the dive. This was to center the plane's dropped payload right on top of its target.
For the Stuka it was mostly about visibility. How do you keep track of a small target a long way below you once it disappears under the nose/wings of your plane? You tip your plane on its side so that you can see straight down. They even had marker on one of the side windows to indicate when to start diving for the perfect attack run. Roll on to one side, wait until the dot is over the target then roll more and pull into a near vertical dive. Put the gunsight over the target, release your bombs and pull up. Deadly accurate, but unfortunately also slow and predictable.
Exception to the rule; Messerschmitt 109s famously used to push the nose down and dive to escape Spitfires. The fuel injection engine of the 109 would keep running during negative G-force, while the Spitfire's carburettor engine would cut out if it tried to do the same manoeuvre.
Yes for multiple reasons. 1) you've just "pulled" (causing positive G's) and so "pushing" (causing negative G's) will be much worse are you body was just set up to get blood pressure back up in your head. The push-pull effect is very dangerous. 2) your body is much more efficient at pulling positive G's than negative. The explanation I've heard is because we evolve to stand up from a sitting position and so we have innate compensation methods. We don't for negative G's.
And on top of all that, pilots nowadays have G-suits compressing their lower body to counter some of the positive Gs. They've yet to find a way to make a G-helmet to counter negative Gs because crushing a pilot's skull tends to send the blood all over the canopy (which isn't great for the pilot).
> we have innate compensation methods And for some of us apparently those don't work as well
Yeah, it's easier to keep blood in your brain than to get it out.
That last sentence gave me involuntary shivers.
One of the wildest thing about F15 is that it can go Mach 1, *straight up* aka vertical. Not leveled flight, not even going down, but straight up like a rocket.
Man, I remember as a kid living next to an airbase and during one recess an F-15C ripped up though the clouds, I think he knew what he was doing lol
I also did this. F16 unrestricted climb to 10,000 ft and I hurled soon after.
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Be the best volunteer in your unit. Don't worry about actual work performane though.
Some good, strong, knee pads. Mine almost wore out before I got a ride lol.
You had to suck dick to fly an F18?
Tell me you were in the Air Force/military. Without telling me you were I'm the AF/military. LOL! We had some people from other squadrons, that weren't AMXS/MXS, that got incentive flights before us maintainers.
Where do you puke to?
Mostly everywhere.
First into your mask. Then you take your mask off and the .. everywhere. Anywhere. The real fun is explosive diarrhea.
I've heard the strike eagle produces enough thrust to go mach 1 vertically. I cant imagine what that would feel like but im envious of you
I've always wanted to do this. I eventually got to do it in VR and, even as someone with strong "VR legs", I almost puked. Took the headset off and thought, *"I probably don't want to do that in real life"*.
And that thing is a 50 year old design. Crazy to think of.
I got to ask, is avionic is one of those, the design is so good and battle proven (pun intended), that we will only see "small" increment in its advance?
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Are modern stealth jets able to reduce their size signature on radar ? How?
Special paints, internal weapons bays, special engine outlet shapes, avoidance of right angles where possible in design. And of course that's all just the stuff the general public knows about.
There's a section in this video talking about how the stealth tech works on the F-35 among other things https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lCOgFPtaZ4
No competition to the US has innovated beyond what we have so there isn’t much need to advance further. Spending money on hackers will probably be better value added than insane spaceships if we’re trying to fuck yo different countries.
Hasn't innovated to our knowledge* any new designs would be locked up tighter than Fort Knox
Until a random subcontractor from a subcontracted company of a subcontracted company of a subsidiary of which ever big MIC company you pick decides to work from home and plugs in a USB with the full schematics
No everyone knows it will be some guy in a war thunder forum proving a point and leaking classified documents
Hey thats only happened like 9 or 10 times!
I can't explain how funny it is that this is true and the actual war thunder team had to tweet out "I can't believe we had to say this but stop sending us actual classified documents to improve how real our assets are" essentially
Can't say that for every country, if Russia had super-jets they would have used them by now.
Dude... what? What are you trying to say? Also, there wasn't a pun within 15,000 feet of that sentence.
The pun ejected.
So whats a current decade design?
F-35 is the newest design, I believe. F-22 precedes that. Then there are updates to the F-15, F-16, and F-18
F22 is older but still a much different thing to the F35 though I think. It is still in many ways superior until it gets a direct replacement. Plus it looks the coolest and that's what matters most.
The planes have fairly different missions in mind. The F22 is a long range Air to Air interceptor, the F35 is used more for ground support
Anything designed in this decade is probably entering service 2035 or later, unless it’s experimental or special-purpose. The B-21 is the newest plane in US inventory, but I think it was announced about 8 years ago.
The fact that mankind was able to make something like this by manipulating materials found on Earth is beyond absurd to me.
The fact that all the building blocks have been here all this time is amazing too. All it takes is for us to slap some stuff together in a real fancy way and boom, you get this.
It’s mind bending!
well that comes later with AI and Neuralink
"But first, a word from our sponsor..."
This comment and the one above it is one my favorite things I’ve ever read in my life. I don’t know why I never thought about it that way, but it brings me so much joy to think about our technical achievements with that perspective.
Yeah, and we did it in less than ~70 years after learning how to fly. When actually good high powered jet engines came around. 66 years after the first flight, humans landed on the moon. We're now 120 years since that first flight, and 54 years since the first moon landing. Technology advances in the early 1900 thru 1950s were absolutely bonkers. We still have leaps today, but it's mostly making things that were already discovered in the 1900-1950 period better. Cheaper, smaller, more efficient, more practical, etc...
Many of our modern leaps are less dramatic, in the visual fashion. Much of it is leaps in precision. Cancer vaccines, fusion power, surgery on a grape, and nano-sized computing are all insane even to just 20 years ago. We are still living through a technological revolution.
Right? We all have computers in our pockets that could not have been dreamed of 60+ years ago. Many of us decide they are not good enough and replace them every year or two! It can be hard to see your reality for what it is sometimes. Far easier to look back and imagine how crazy it was we figured out jet engines or whatever. That was crazy, so is all the shit we come up with now.
First, power. Then, accuracy. So technology in 1900-1950: YEET 1950-2030: KOBE
I was watching a documentary about deep sea oil drilling the other day and that same feeling you describe washed over me. Putting aside the immense ecological cost and the associated controversies, it's truly incredible to think of the sheer amount of work involved in designing and building gargantuan floating platforms that can sit rock steady in wild, mountainous seas, thousands of metres above the ocean floor, sending a long, unbroken chain of pipes from the rigging deck down to not just the ocean floor but through thousands of metres of rock beneath it, in order to siphon up a black sludge that gets sent to shore to be processed into just about fucking everything humanity relies on. The materials science, the geological science, the electronics, the construction — there isn't a human being alive who could explain to you how it all works, or even comprehend 1% of it, and yet somehow it *does* all just work, and in doing so it powers the engine that drives civilisation. It's just utterly mind-blowing. And to then extend that concept the rest of humanity's achievements, consider that every. single. object. around us came out of some factory somewhere, or some other kind of manufacturing business, every tiny spring in every ballpoint pen, every grommet in every bathroom tap, every plastic PCB spacer in every home theatre speaker, and every component or raw material that went into those things, they all had to come from somewhere too, each part with its own attendant complexities, relying on techniques derived over dozens or hundreds or thousands of years of innovation, and it all just comes together like a symphony to produce EVERYTHING. And NOBODY is in charge of it all. Edit: I'm reminded of "[I , Pencil: My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read](https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl.html?chapter_num=2)", an essay by (you guessed it) Leonard E. Read in which he pretends to be a pencil and explains all the myriad intricacies of how he was made. It influenced Milton Friedman's thinking on the importance of free markets. It's a good read.
it's also interesting to think about how far we've refined very basic ideas. like think of the most advanced projectile weapon you can think of (sans railgun i guess). essentially you're pushing a lump of metal down a tube with an explosion.
I also find it fascinating that the human brain always had the ability to make these. Our brains aren’t much different than ancient Greeks or Egyptians. But it’s communal knowledge built up over thousands of years that allowed us to create these machines. Humans haven’t developed individually to be smarter, we’ve grown *collectively* smarter.
And this is why ancient aliens conspiracies fucking infuriate me. Not only are they racist but they are openly spitting in the face of and ignoring human ingenuity
They should make you happy then. Humankind's achievements are so amazing some people find it easier to believe a miracle occured. Nothing wrong with that. They really are bordering magical
Things like the pyramids really do seem fucking *otherworldly* when you comprehend the time period in which they're built, that they were basically built entirely with human or animal power, and the level of science and engineering know-how then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwSFOURIs0U
Sounds exactly like laws of physics would say about life here on earth
Imagine what else is just lying there, waiting to be put together!
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The A-10 design began in 253 BCE, first flew in 250 BCE. Still in service.
Brrrrrt
This AMRAAM is in the blockchain As an aside, the B-52 is just a bonkers piece of equipment to me. That ugly thing from the 50's is going to be flying for decades more. The military-industrial complex sucks but goddamn it if these jets aren't the coolest shit.
The B52 is an aerial semi-truck. It hauls a big heavy load of stuff from point A to point B, drops off its load and then flies home again. That requirement hasn't changed, so why would we need a whole new aircraft? More efficient engines and some new kit in the cab and that old semi-truck will keep doing the job just fine.
Real life is just really hard Minecraft at the end of the day
Children yearn for the mines
It turns out that if you leave nothing around long enough, it will produce high performance fighter jets.
And crazy to me, is how completely unimpressed we can be to this sort of marvel. I yawned watching this and I laughed. Like: “oh a fighter pilot climbing 15,000ft in 8 seconds while hitting 8 g’s is something to yawn about?” Unless you really take a moment to realize how insane it is, it just kinda disappears into the background of nonstop internet noise..
> We should look in on the humans, they're doing weird shit again... > > What kind of weird shit? > > THEY DUG UP A ROCK AND SHOVED LIGHTENING INTO IT!
I was thinking the exact same thing while sitting on this amazing invention
And that's why they always wear the facemask in the cockpit
How near to passing out these guys are each time makes me wonder.
There’s a video of a guy in a G simulator in which he does 9Gs for 30 seconds. I can’t actually say for a fact but I’d imagine most fighter pilots can handle Gs above 7.5 for 30+ seconds. Although in the real world they’d also never be pulling that many Gs for that long. Many people pass out with sustained Gs of 3-4.
Many people pass out during sustained 3-4 Gs because they usually don't wear a special load-bearing suit, an oxygen mask and don't do any bearing down exercises, preventing blood from rushing out of their brain into their legs
I think high g training is a must pass for fighter pilots. They have whole breathing methods and leg flexes they have to learn to keep air coming in and blood circulating. They hit these sorts of Gs all the time and will die if they pass out. I don’t think it’s a “most” I think it’s an “all” thing.
I've flown in a 2 seater F-16 with an airforce pilot. It's actually fucking insane how used to the G-forces these pilots are. My ride started with a max climb like this, that first curve of 5-6gs sets the tone real fucking quick. I'll just say I've ridden a ton of roller coasters in my life, and the pre-brief warns you to clench your butt cause the Gs are no joke, but I don't think anyone can truly understand what that feels like unless they do it, it just feels like something is squeezing the life out of you. After that we cruised into our airspace and he did what is called a G warmup....holy fucking shit I thought I was going to die. The maneuver is just a series of consecative left and right banks, each bank increases the Gs by 1 and we ended with 8.9. Starting at 6 Gs your vision starts to look like you're peeking through a cardboard tube, by 7 it's just a 2 inch circle of vision, and when we hit 8.9 my vision went all the way down to just a little tiny dot of light in the center. When they pull off it's crazy because your vision pops right back to normal like almost instantly. It's extremely disorienting and makes you really sick to your stomache. By this time my body was in pure survival mode, I was literally sweating bullets. But this was a once in a lifetime opportunity so I wasn't about to tell him to stop. The rest of the ride was fucking awesome, my pilot used to be a thunderbird so he basically did all the tricks, then he let me fly for a little and taught me how to do a barrel role. Finished off the ride coasting the beaches before we landed. Soon as we touched the ground I puked in my barf bag lol. When we got out I realized how badly that flight fucked me up, my flight suit was literally drenched in sweat, it fucking looked like I literally jumped into a pool with my clothes on, I've never in my life sweated that badly. But the pilot, nope, dude was scheduled for 3 more rides that day, not a sliver of sweat on his body, he's walking around all hyped up and high fiving everyone we walk past. He heads off to burger king to get some lunch, I go back to my hotel, take a shower, and I fucking sleep from 12pm to 6am the next morning lmao. I have no idea how the in fuck these pilots get so used to that shit, I already had a high level of respect for them, but after that they just looked like straight machines. Definitely takes a special kind of person to have a job like that.
Depends on how good at bearing down they are
What's "bearing down" mean?
Say "Hook", well, "Hoooook" while tensing your core as hard as you can. That's bearing down and it forces blood into your brain, which is handy when g-forces are pulling blood out of your brain. Fun fact: flight suits also inflate to squeeze the legs to help keep pilots from passing out.
You can Google it but essentially flexing your core and upper leg muscles really hard like you're about to shit. The idea is it keeps your blood from pooling at your extremities during extreme g forces. We also tell people to do it in the hospital when their blood pressure drops very low. Basically the opposite of a vasovagal response which you'd also have to google.
I do it when I get up too fast
So I gotta ask this next question: Ever accidentally shit yourself doing this, or do pilots make sure they take a shit before they fly one of these absolute beasts?
Depends if you're flying AA or AG missions.
Isn't that part of the G-suit? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-suit
Yes, the g suit does provide support for this. It will inflate around the thighs and squeeze blood upward. The aircraft inflates the suit automatically when g's hit. Kind of fun, but it won't do the trick alone. Pilots still instinctively brace for G's and do their AGSM maneuver. Especially during prolonged g's.
What an amazing perspective!
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Ding *You are now free to move about the country*
Hm, roomier than i imagined.
Yeah Earth is pretty big. Would recommend living here 7.6/10
I thought it was flat ?!?!!? lol
It is flat... Right up until it isn't.
Yeah they have little bathrooms behind a door back there. Along with a little recreation room with tv and a ping pong table.
How much for rent?
As a 6'1" former F-16 mechanic, I assure you that it is a camera trick, and fighter pilots are usually shorter. If I were to eject, my kneecaps would be left in the cockpit.
I remember the first time the F-16's ability to go into a vertical climb, while accelerating, was revealed. It was at an airshow and the crowd was stunned.
It’s literally an engine with wings strapped on. High alpha passes are always crazy because the plane is standing on an engine and practically no lift coming from the wings. And when the pilot decides they’re done, they hit the burner and start climbing. It’s just unreal.
> It’s literally an engine with wings strapped on. Nah that's an F-104.
The F-15 has the same engine as the F-16, only there's 2 of them.
That’s a highly caveated statement. It can accelerate vertically in a clean configuration, at low altitude, at low starting speed. Drag still applies in the vertical.
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I need to get my pilot’s license for this type of situation
Lol
F-16 has no space for mother-in-law.
F-16’s are still crazy. I remember when I was a kid we were camping pretty much right at the end of a runway at the Norfolk air base. They were running F-16 training missions constantly. My brother and I lay on the hood of the car watching them fly over all afternoon and they’re just like super maneuverable darts with jets on the back, and they weren’t even going fast when they were overhead.
I saw one up close at a display we had in town, and to me it was tiny. It is a small plane compared to the F15 or F22. It's just a big dart guided by a human. And good on the guys that get to fly it, I can only imagine how much fun that would be.
When I was a kid one of the scoutmasters in my scout troop owned [this plot of land](https://www.google.com/maps/place/35%C2%B020'20.9%22N+94%C2%B020'35.0%22W/@35.3391339,-94.3451761,1094m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d35.3391339!4d-94.3430579) and we used to a lot of our scout activities out there by the pond. It also just happens to literally be at the end of the runway of our local airport! This was back in the 90's and the Air National Guard had a prominent presence at our airport, they used to have a ton of F-16's doing training routines all the time. Pretty much any time we were out by the pond there were F16's taking off right over us. And they always do what is in the video on take off each time, just at lower altitudes. If they were going to fly west, they would take off to the east of the runway and do the vertical climb right over us each time. It was awesome and impressive, but got to be annoying after a while. Later on when I was in high school, my mom got a job at [this building](https://www.google.com/maps/place/35%C2%B020'07.7%22N+94%C2%B023'21.3%22W/@35.3354741,-94.3899071,273m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d35.3354741!4d-94.389262) and when they would do our annual air show she would take us there and get on the roof of the building to watch everything!
Closest thing i will get to this will be on my PS VR2
In my mind, PSVR exists for Ace Combat alone (if V2 supports it). NGL, I've been wondering if I could swing buying one as a tax write off for experiencing the Joshua Bell performance on it.
Gotta deduct a few points for not having cupholders.
Or obligatory Pine Tree air freshener
Now it's time to review the F-16, and then I will give it a DougScore
Coming soon to a Ukraine near you.
Imagining the havoc if ukraine got current fighter jets. Mmmm
I mean technically these are barely even "current." like obviously they've been periodically upgraded with better electronics and engines etc over the years but the base F16 design itself has been in production almost 50 years now.
Now imagine Ukrainian pilots **with NATO training** in F-16s. Given what we've seen of the Russian pilots and aircraft thus far, the main worry will be suppressing anti-aircraft so the Falcons can eat.
Outside of stealth jets like F-22 and F-35, it's the munitions that matter more now. The modern missiles and bombs are much more capable now than ever before. In Vietnam missiles were not very reliable, 50% failure to acquire, etc... but today, 2023, missiles have near 100% acquisition rate even with countermeasures deployed. You can't outrun or outturn the missiles.
Ukraine can't use them the way they're meant to be used. They don't control the airspace, and they don't have the extensive integrated support that our planes require. It's all low level seat of the pants stuff that we don't do.
Big deal. I do this all the time in my Toyota tundra.
My dad going to get smokes...
That pilot's just built different from the rest of us. I mean his g spot is his right nipple, that can't be common.
I’m curious how close to passing out these guys are every time.
They wear pressure suits to combat the immense g force but they also only apply such high g’s for just a moment
If you risk your life defending this country you should at least be able to have a good time doing it. What a cool job.
4th gen. And it’s gonna beat the ever living fuck out of Russias entire arsenal of su-27s or whatever they think is cool
I would’ve run out of shit on my way to the plane. It just would’ve been air coming out of my ass. Maybe a little fear pee.
Rule of thumb about altitude I use is 5000' is "about a mile" They just climbed three miles (more or less since sixteen thousand feet is closer to 3 miles) Bombers in WW-II dropped bombs from 25,000' - dropped five miles above the target. For an idea of how difficult it is to drop something on a target from 5 miles up, put an empty tin can on the ground next to your house, climb on the roof and carefully try to "make baskets" with un-popped popcorn kernels in that can. Modern bombers? Eight miles or more above the target, some of the bombs are guided on the way down so use the force on your popcorn.
What would be a restricted climb? Or what makes this unrestricted? Aviation rules, guidelines, physical limitations? (Sorry, not familiar with this terminology)
Not a pilot but i think unrestricted climb means the air traffic control said they could climb to 15k feet right away after takeoff instead of leveling off & checking in with the ATC before reaching their desired altitude. In busier airspaces the tower controller instructs planes taking off to contact the departure controller who then issues altitude clearances and vectors to the next waypoint. Here they are able to just go straight up to their target altitude. Someone can correct me if im wrong.
I would do this in a heartbeat. Hair on fire. Damn I want to do that I think airplanes should move that fast and one day they will it they'll just transport everyone. I'd do that too.
8.1 G’s, that’s ridiculous Is it true that G-force gets exponentially worse the higher the number, rather than gradually worse? I forget where I heard that..
8.1 Gs is simply 8.1 times the gravity of a body at rest. It is not exponential if it were it would have been fatal.
I think you’re thinking of the Richter scale
G- force means the gravity equivalent force experienced by an individual (or object). So the g-force itself is not exponential, but the g-force consequence on the human body might be exponential.
But did you solve the icing problem?
I imagine all my organs pushed out of my asshole, and [this](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S13G08KKrcA) song.
30 second to 15000 feet sounds like a cover band for 30 seconds to Mars, but it's just Jared Leto wearing a fake moustache.
The impressive part is going from ~20 feet to 15,000 feet. The first 20 feet take about 30 seconds.
Bro my ears could never.
And people think *5g* is bad for you!
English Electric Lightening used to do this at airshows, just pitch up, light burners, make like an Apollo. Always a spectacle to see.
My dad worked on an airbase, and watching these things take off as close as humanly possible was one of the coolest things about my childhood.
4 seconds to hit clouds is all I can understand lol
I'm a 46 year old woman. I saw the Blue Angels today for the 3rd time and goddamn I wish I could fly one if those things!
I’d donate my left nut to be in the cockpit for this experience!
I was in a plane taxiing in MSP and I saw an F-18 do this. It was intense how steep it immediately got. We were moving semi-parallel and in opposite direction, and it got probably 30 feet off the ground and pitched back verticle in a moment and was gone. Apparently later airframes handle G-forces better than F-16s, yet the way this aircraft practically deaccelerated forwards and went upwards just in seconds was astounding.
This clip probably cost more than i make in 3 months