5th T-38 crash in 12 months today

a reply to: Zaphod58
Not to derail the thread but it probably serves to pick up on your F-35 point and highlight the hidden dangers of pumping all your resources into a gold plated program. Its true that the budget probably is equally to blame and the sequestration move didn't end up doing what it was intended and reign in some of the more obscene US DoD spending. But its also a certain level of stupid to continue as it was a few years ago, gutting everything you can lay your hands on in order to fund the next wonder fighter when it clearly had deep program structural problems and engineering issues to solve. THAT is actually what so many detractors like myself had a problem with, not whether the aircraft capability was there to be justified. And that is something the blind pro lobby just never understood. The end result with the sequestration move that undoubtedly was driven by the Obama administration because of out of whack programs like JSF, DDG-1000, LCS etc, led unintentionally to delaying of other vital programs as well as gutting of critical maintenance and personnel by bureaucrats and uniformed officers more interested in their careers and new toys than the safe operation of other fleets. The T-38's falling safety record and those deaths is evidence of that.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I was just reading about him, it sounds like a sh!tty situation all around, and it sucks to see our armed forces in such a decrepit Russia-like state.

a reply to: thebozeian

What screwed them the most is the games they played with sequestration. They tried to play hardball with Congress and failed. Then they had no plan in place, so looked at the biggest chunk of budget available to cut, which happened to be maintenance.

a reply to: Zaphod58
Yes exactly, playing hardball is the oldest bureaucrats trick in the book when trying to block budget cuts. Deliberately cut front line services and personnel, make it hurt and then hopefully the politicians fold. Problem is when the politicians actually show half a backbone and dont back down those same bureaucrats as you said dont have a second plan so it all gets horrible and then takes sustained efforts for the next 2 decades to fix.

The crew were in the process of making an emergency landing, reportedly for hydraulic failure. Both pilots were able to eject, but one seat was apparently out of envelope.

A T-38 belonging to the 71st Fighter Training Squadron, 1st Fighter Wing, at Langley went off the runway at the Newport News/Williamsburg Airport yesterday. One pilot was on board at the time, and pictures indicate that the aircraft suffered significant damage.

ETA: Actually it doesn't look that bad. The right main collapsed either as part of the accident, or as a result of the accident, so the other picture looked wrong. You couldn't see the tail or other structures that would identify it as an aircraft.