rmiller@i88.isc.com (Richard J. Miller) (10/16/89)
From: rmiller@i88.isc.com (Richard J. Miller)
[Bill, someone asked about the reliability of weapon systems (the B-1
with all its bad press in particular), which hit one of my hot buttons.
edit as you see fit for the group]
i once heard the story that the F-111 (TFX at the time) had lost 5-7
aircraft during its prototype testing, while the F-4 had lost more than
12 aircraft. faithful readers no doubt remember which aircraft caught
the most grief from the press and Congress.
i recall a news story circa 1964 from some Marines in Vietnam asking
their families to send them rifle cleaning kits for the new M-16s they
had just been issued, no doubt due to the early published comment by some
"informed source" that the gun would not need to be cleaned (as someone
else has mentionned here).
(we introduce another corollary to Murphy's law)
when dealing with complicated programs, the truth will out, but not in
the first edition.
the B-1 program has had (i think) 3 crashes. the bird ingestion may have
been avoidable with an inlet design change, but the Air Force's
investigation should have figured that out, not the press. and with the
mission that the aircraft is supposed to fly, how is it possible to not
run into a bird every so often? statistically, 3 crashes is not that
bad considering that the airplane has to live below 1000 feet.
is it a safe airplane? no prototype is safe (read Yeager again and pay
attention to his description of street names at Edwards), the test and
flight training programs are there to try to make it safer. will that be
enough? i don't have the qualifications to say.
i hate to hear about crashes of any kind, but not just because of the
loss involved. the hype of a "big" crash misinforms everyone (remember
the bomb theories for United 232?), side tracks useful projects that are
tainted by accidents (recall the fuel demisting tests that got dumped
after a test failed because the remote control pilot lost the airplane
and created a worst case crash instead of a controlled test of the fuel)
and prevents the accident specialist people from doing their job and
getting the REAL information out about what happened.
Rich Miller
Schempp-Hirth Discus JBX
{sun, amdahl, att (maybe)}!laidbak!rmiller