These are pretty expensive and specialized electronic warfare planes that are identical to a regular F18 in aerodynamic performance. Sucks to lose two of them for an airshow display. Isn’t that what the Blue Angels are for?
This actually begs the question...why the fuck would they use THESE for an airshow? They're aesthetically identical to F18 from a ground silhouette perspective. They blew through some really expensive planes from a much smaller fleet for a pony show that any regular F18 could've been part of.
They do training all day every day in these planes. Air shows are probably less exciting than the stuff they practice to do. Also, while they a generically '18's' they are EA-18g's and possibly have enough differences to require maintaining a separate NATOPs check from the other variants. (never flown one so I don't actually know though :). Either way, other than the blue angles who can't be everywhere and don't represent the diversity of platforms out in the fleet, there really aren't dedicated airshow aircraft out there.
Yah.. but between the Iran war and this, we've taken some EW losses. And it's not like this is one of the capabilities that we have massively overprovisioned.
The Blue Angels are the Navy's demonstration team. This accident happened at an airshow on an Air Force base. The Air Force's demonstration team is named The Thunderbirds.
Yea, that was my thought too. I can’t think of any reason you would reach for those two planes to assign to an airshow. And even if you did, why would you have two? And why would you have them flying anywhere near each other?
If the Internet is to be believed they're not actually more expensive than an F/A-18, and as far as military aircraft go.. not the most expensive. But a ~$150M accident is nothing to sneeze at.
Perhaps the internet price excludes the EW payload? Seems like a plane with a load of electronics gear and transmitters/antennas would cost more than the same plane sans that stuff?
I do not know the specifics, but I think most of the EW gear sits on pods attached to the pilons, not inside the actual plane. The only difference that I know of compared to a regular F18 is that it requires two crew members to operate.
Most of the Growler "magic" is in pods carried on external hardpoints, but you couldn't just upload the EW pods onto a FA-18F Super Hornet and have a Growler.
The cannon in the nose of a regular Hornet is replaced with computer hardware in the Growler. There are also aerodynamic changes to make it a little more stable so it's a better EW platform. There's probably a million other small differences too, enough that you wouldn't try to convert a -19F Super Hornet into a Growler (although the RAAF did think they'd try at one point).
What is the real purpose of airshows anyway? It always seems like very elevated risk for very little reward but I might just be missing what the reward is.
Too many comments are trying to overanalyze, or just show off their insightful cynicism.
We do airshows because they are cool. Lots of us love airplanes. Humans do all kinds of activities for entertainment that are not strictly justifiable returns on investment. I hope we never get that boring, though every year we do seem to go that direction.
It's worth questioning what the costs are, though. I love military aviation more than the average Joe, and seeing these jets pushed to their limits is pretty gratifying. But this isn't a football/soccer pasttime, the E/A-18 is an expensive F/A-18 block and the aviators are an asset of national security that take decades of experience and millions of taxpayer dollars to train. The losses sustained by the Blue Angels alone is stomach-churning, and they're widely known as one of the most professional groups around: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Angels#Team_accidents_and...
The net benefit is marketing, and little else. As much as I enjoy watching airshow jet maneuvers, I have to acknowledge that the USSR only sent their Sukhoi pilots on-tour as a publicity stunt to increase their exports. Same goes for the US, France and China.
I guess aviation always has an element of risk and the real debate has to be around safety standards and training. A loss of aircraft, crew or worse people on the ground is never acceptable and seems to happen more than it should.
There are a LOT of air shows where military airplanes are a small or zero component.
I'm totally in agreement that armed forces are there for reasons you described. But an "air show" is a massive and sometimes separate Venn diagram. There are air shows where main thing is thousands of private airplanes coming from across the country to be together and meet up and have fun.
Put it other way, if armed forces decided it's not worth the recruitment investment and pulled out, air shows would still happen :). For most sizes air shows, the biplane aerobatic stunt done by a crazy local 50 year old real estate agent, is way more fun than the c5 galaxy transporter showing "short takeoff" :-)
Yah.. the roaring sound and precision of military aerial display teams can't be denied, and are an awesome experience. But it's something you see someone doing in a Pitts or Extra or maybe even a Citabria or 150 that makes you question your understanding of the laws of physics :D
I love it when there is a little Cessna 150/152 with aerobatic designation even though it's engine cuts off when you go inverted (carburated design). The sheer pluck of those pilots! I was once given a Cessna 150 aerobatic experience as a birthday gift and the pilot was just cheerfully mad lol. He gave me the parachute, told me we are legally obliged to wear them, but not to worry about it too much - at heights and speeds and Gs we're at, they're absolutely useless. Gulp!
It is not the same. Having a jet do a low pass is something that you will remember for a long time. Or having it go vertical with full after burners, especially close to sunset where you can see it better.
The other factor is showing how good you are: sure, you can do formation flying in an Extra 300 or a C150, but doing it in a fighter jet show precission and skill, because it will not forgive you as easy as a slower moving plane.
I've been to a few air shows and even f22 with its vector thrusting, is not (to me) as impressive as the little prop aerobatics doing things that make me (even with a bit of flight training) wonder how is that even possible :). They are typically closer & slower (so you can appreciate the action better), and just pack so much more stuff and maneuvers right there where you can see them - the density / bang for the buck is far greater. By necessity, military jets are fly bys - they zoom in, pull up and wheee go up fast, then they go away. Then 2 minutes later they zoom in, cross each other impressively closely, then they fly away for a bit. It's exciting and fun don't get me wrong, but when I plan my air show day, I plan it around cool little aerobatic planes, not the military jets.
YMMV :). But my point in this thread is:
1. Yes, absolutely, military is there for recruitment
2. Military recruitment flying is empathically not all there is to an air show to all the people, and there exist air shows with minimal to no armed force presence.
I have seen so many military display teams. Yes, I like the roar. But they blur together.
> sure, you can do formation flying in an Extra 300 or a C150,
But that's not what we watch Extra 330s do. We watch them do other things that are nuts that are also not so easily forgiven. I have fond memories of seeing Patty Wagstaff, Sean Tucker, and Rob Holland (rip). (And before that, Amelia Reid in her 150...)
As an aerobatic pilot that owns an Extra and has flown with several fighter pilots, I can tell you flying an Extra requires a lot more talent than a fighter jet.
I saw a RedBull race and was impressed about the agility of the pilots.
But I like jets more because they go faster. And they have afterburners. And they go vertical faster than any propeller plane will ever be able to. And the margin of error is smaller. Espcially closer to the ground.
The margins, that completely depends on the pilot and act design. You can make margins arbitrarily small at any speed :).
(As an imperfect example - a world rally car going through a 80kph blind corner over a crest on snow between the trees is not necessarily more of a margin / less of skill or spectacle than F1 taking a tarmac open corner at 200kph:)
> (As an imperfect example - a world rally car going through a 80kph blind corner over a crest on snow between the trees is not necessarily more of a margin / less of skill or spectacle than F1 taking a tarmac open corner at 200kph:)
I think it's interesting how as humans we tend to sort into valuing one of these much more than the other, though.
I like the rally car and the aerobatic piston plane a lot.
I want to like F1 and the fast jets more... but after being initially blown away I get bored pretty quick. I think what they're doing is incredibly cool and I can appreciate it but...
But the dude upthread is the exact opposite.
[I do think you need to be more of a "car guy" to like rally and more of a "plane guy" to like what the little planes do. The stuff that is big and loud and fast is easier to appreciate. But I know plenty of people who really know their stuff that still prefer the big and loud and fast].
Even the airshows that the military flies at are often primarily civilian shows. The military clearly has recruiting and power demonstration goals but airshows in general exist outside of those goals. The majority of the aviators at these shows are civilian hobbyists.
I like air shows and there's no chance I'm enlisting. Maybe citizens like to see the cool toys they pay for actually do cool things other than seeing them parked in museums.
Sure, but the purpose is recruitment. They wouldn't do them if they didn't get anything out of them, and what they get out of them is PR and boosts to recruitment efforts.
I mean, also statistically, it is bound to inspire young people who potentially might be interested in picking an aviation related future. Maybe they will invent something they otherwise wouldn't have.
I don't understand this comment. If you want to be the minimally charitable + maximally accurate commenter your tone suggests, then you're also wrong.
It's a superset of the reasons you poorly articulated, and those reasons would include the fact it's cool. Cool things can help both recruitment and morale, and the US military seems to recognize that: https://armedforcessports.defense.gov/Sports/Esports/
If this is just meant to be another comment on the situation which comes with an implicit grain of salt, then the browbeating doesn't make sense.
They're being rude, but right. Burying your head in the sand is not an intellectually gratifying response to barbazoo's comment, and the actual meat of their answer ("because they're cool") is obviously incorrect.
Both are unprofessional comments, but only the original was dishonest. The "too many comments" shtick is a thought terminating cliche that shouldn't be encouraged on HN.
The military participates in airshows because it's good for morale, because it helps showcase capabilities, because it's good PR for military expenditures, and because it's good for recruitment. All of these effects are mostly because it's cool.
The other people flying in airshows are flying there because they love aviation and because it's cool (not so much the money :)
Again, they're not even right if we're going maximum correctness here...
Maximally correct answer is "there are many reasons with complex interplay", and those reasons do include the fact it's cool! Being cool has interplay with morale, recruitment, and even their ham-fisted attempt at referencing geopolitics.
They'd be "more right" if they said in addition, but they just straight up said "No."
(Also where did you read a too many comments shtick?)
Seeing and hearing the last remaining Avro Vulcan pull up over the chalk cliffs at Eastbourne a few years back is something I won't forget for a long time.
I’ve seen PdF perform, they are pretty impressive in the maneouvers they execute.
It is worth mentuoning though they do all that in trainer jets, not actual fighter jets. Which is not that cool. I would loved it more of they would fly actual fighters.
It has absolutely been a thing in Europe and there have been numerous accidents involving Russian and European aircraft at events like the Paris Airshow.
I remember going to an air show when I was 12 with a good friend. Walking through the C-5 and then seeing a thunderbirds display just captured my friends imagination in a way that’s hard to describe. He ended up becoming a Marine Aviator and basically started planning that path that day.
Presumably recruitment and PR for the air force, and morale for the aviators, as they can show off their training and skills to friends, family and the general public.
Acting as a sales platform for aircraft manufacturers is also a thing. The RAF Red Arrows are probably responsible for a load of sales of the Hawk advanced trainer they use in their displays.
For the audience - we love airplanes and love seeing them. I personally prefer the ground portion of air shows, where I can see and sometimes touch the airplanes up close, talk to the pilots and engineers, and generally have a nice day outside :). The aerial component is impressive too, depending on the show. Sometimes it's a bit drawn out.
For the organizers, typically it's a mix of profit and also organizer enthusiasm - a LOT of air show is basically hard-working volunteers.
For the participants, depends - the private entries are there for fun and visibility and showpersonship, cammarederie etc. The armed forces are there to promote and recruit and invoke patriotism and show off and impress.
Ultimately though, if airplanes aren't your kink, you probably won't emotionally / internally understand and that's ok. It's like world rally championship or formula 1 or anything redbull does, a risky entertaining spectacle.
It kind of is a miracle when you think about what goes in to creating those machines, maintaining them, and learning to fly them so well, of course crashes notwithstanding.
Crashes are rare. Exposure to the civilian for what their tax dollars are paying for, opportunities for pilots to become more skilled and train other pilots for advanced maneuvers. Things like that. Overall there’s not too much meat on the bone as far as criticisms are concerned.
I am not sure what point you are trying to make... are you saying that if anyone is killed in at accident at something, we should never do that something again?
Even more people died at the Hillsborough disaster than died at the Ramstein air show, so I guess we should never have sports events at stadiums anymore.
More people died at the Station Nightclub fire, so I guess we can never have nightclubs anymore.
I could go on and on. Yes, we should take all precautions and be safe as possible for events, but everything has some risk.
You can do advanced maneuvers without getting so close to another plane in some weird attempt at simulating a scenario that will never happen.
Did some cursory searches/math and it looks like about 1-2% of aerial shows in the US have a fatality (1-2 deaths annually with about 2000 shows on average over the last 20 years). If those numbers are correct (and they may very well not be as it’s a mix of LLM and Google quick searches) 1-2% doesn’t seem worth it.
Edit: I’m an idiot. .05-.1%. Seems a bit silly still but not as bad as I thought.
> You can do advanced maneuvers without getting so close to another plane in some weird attempt at simulating a scenario that will never happen.
That is likely true. However, it is a heck of a demonstration of pilot skill. The Blue Angels somewhat regularly post in-cockpit views of their airshow practice and it is wild how tight a formation they fly; I really recommend seeking out some of those videos, it is totally worth it. Well, for me at least :). It is not unheard of (but not common) for them to inadvertently make contact, since they fly like 18 inches apart, but given they have nearly identical vectors it does not often result in a crash.
You might want to double check that LLM... If theres 2000 shows and 1-2 deaths, that's 0.05%-0.1%. still too high, but given the simple math error I think the other numbers are probably suspect too
I'm sure there's some bean-counter calculus involving recruitment, PR, demonstration of capabilities, they were going to be doing training flights anyway so why not do a few in public, etc. but they're more rationalisations rather than reasons.
I hope it stays that way too. A world where we take everything away unless it fits into the 5 year ROI spreadsheet sounds dreadful. In any case there'll a long tail of nth-order outcomes that we can't simply reduce down to a risk-reward calculation.
There's probably some deep reason why humans just have a drive to show off their awesome stuff.
This is a question that comes up internally as well. It gets into questions like "Why do we fund the Thunderbirds etc". I will hold off on my 2c because the arguments are already covered!
Immediately after a show like this, yes, it looks foolish to lose 2 combat planes and almost 4 aircrew for a performative event. Looking at it more generally, it's a tradeoff.
For recruitment, awareness, to boost civilian confidence/engagement/support in the military as a whole. The blue angels and thunderbirds are the best of the best when it comes to air shows because the best pilots are used and they train extensively.
All I know is I’m glad I don’t live in the world where this kind of reasoning dominates. All the greatest things I’ve seen in my life have been arguably pointless in this way.
Posturing, showing of your military capabilities towards the enemy. Raising morale (aka war propaganda) towards your own population.
Contrary to popular belief, war is mostly about public opinion, not raw strength. Even since (before) roman times, you almost never fight to the last man, you fight until you route the enemy.
Healthcare is expensive because we buy fancy airplanes? It seems at least as likely to do with the incredibly high salaries we pay doctors. And the fact that we use like 50% more healthcare services than a typical single-payer society.
> Healthcare is expensive because we buy fancy airplanes?
This is a bad faith rebuttal that intentionally tries to distort the comparison.
Here's the salient point you're trying to ignore: many other countries have lower healthcare costs and better health outcomes because they've prioritized investing in healthcare systems that work better for their citizens.
Government budgets are not unlimited and when your country spends nearly $1 trillion/year on the military (more than double the second-biggest spender) on top of a debt pile rapidly approaching $40 trillion, it's reasonable to question whether the people running the show have their priorities straight.
As Martin Luther King Jr. recognized a long time ago, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
To which I'd add a point about socioeconomic death. Of course, that doesn't resonate with people who measure the country's economic situation by stock prices.
> It seems at least as likely to do with the incredibly high salaries we pay doctors.
Doctor wages account for about 8% of healthcare spend in the US, so even if doctors worked for free, you wouldn't even come close to parity with other countries in terms of healthcare costs.
Don't you think something is wrong when the cost of an emergency room visit in much of the country exceeds individuals' median liquid savings?
> And the fact that we use like 50% more healthcare services than a typical single-payer society.
This simply isn't true. Per Kaiser Family Foundation: "The U.S.’s higher spending on providers is driven more by higher prices than higher utilization of care. Patients in the U.S. have shorter average hospital stays and fewer physician visits per capita, while many hospital procedures have been shown to have higher prices in the U.S. "
Saying we should trim fat to spend more on healthcare is like saying we should just keep adding pumps rather than fixing the hole in the ship.
I think it beyond anything that could be construed as honesty to call such advocacy "good faith".
Let the people have their stupid circuses. The actual cost of airshows is fairly low on an annual basis. The DOD is gonna make a bunch of C5s pack random crap around, make a bunch of pilots do training hours, make a bunch of NG units practice crowd control, might as well use all that expense to put on a show. Better for PR and for morale and for training that way (turns out everyone gives more of a crap about doing a good job when the public is there).
> Saying we should trim fat to spend more on healthcare is like saying we should just keep adding pumps rather than fixing the hole in the ship.
It's not just about the numbers themselves, it's about what they signal in terms of priorities.
Is it really so strange to question whether a country with $40 trillion in debt that spends nearly a trillion dollars a year on its war machine - more than 2x the amount spent by the second-largest military spender in the world - has its priorities straight?
The saddest thing about healthcare in America is that it's working exactly as designed. The high costs are a feature, not a bug. And large numbers of the people who are an emergency room visit away from a financial crisis cheer the products of a military-industrial complex that has produced enough firepower to destroy the planet thousands of times over.
What's your source for claiming "[the US] uses like 50% more healthcare services than a typical single-payer society"?
Personal take-home pay for physicians is 8-10% of total US healthcare spending ($5tr). (or 20%/$1.11t for "physician and clinical services" overall which includes doctors, clinical staff, admin, and overhead costs.)
US total spending on pharmaceuticals is $1 tr; net spending on outpatient prescription drugs is $600b.
The DoD's total spending is $961.6b for FY 2026.
There's little argument against reforming both military spending and healthcare spending in the US, but (as Scott Galloway says) it's awfully hard to find a prominent politician who vocally supports reforming both these (not one at the expense of the other). So, the out-of-control spending/borrowing will continue.
Anyway, as to this crash, all other considerations apart, E/A-18Gs (electronic warfare planes) cost 60% more than F-18s. Who authorized flying them in an airshow?
I'm reminded of a short video clip I saw a while back with a dollar-counter on-screen. Different kinds of weapons were fired, each one bigger and more expensive than the last, the counter spinning upwards all-the-while. And here's me thinking: man, just don't shoot two or three of those anti-aircraft missiles, give the cash to me, and I could buy a house and live comfortably with my family.
I'm not sure on the history of why there's a Growler display team, but they regularly perform at air shows, even air shows where the Blue Angels or Thunderbirds are also performing. Their display isn't formation aerobatics, more a sort of fancy fly-by.
Air force, Navy and Marines have many display teams in addition to the two everyone knows. E.g. there's an F-35 display team and an F-22 display team. Usually they fly single though.
If the plan was to demo the Growlers team then calling the Blue Angels makes no sense, that’s a completely different team on completely different aircraft. You can still demo them with reduced risk like avoiding flying close profile.
How do you feel about the batteries in electric vehicles?
What about wearable devices like a smartwatch, headphones, smart glasses?
Should all these be consumer-replaceable without tools, regardless of the effect on the other things people value in these devices (waterproofing, size and weight, battery life, etc.)?
FYI I do not work for anything close to the consumer tech industry.
In software architecture, we talk about essential complexity and incidental complexity.
Essential complexity is inherent to the problem being solved; it can't be eliminated through better tools, process, or design. Incidental complexity is anything added by poor choices or flawed tools. Every line in a "hello world" program that isn't something pretty close to `print("hello world")` is incidental complexity.
To change the battery in electric vehicles that follow typical present-day design patterns, it's essential to have a way to get some clearance under the vehicles like a lift, ramps, or a pit, and it's essential to have a lift or jack to support the weight of the battery. Everything else is basic hand tools.
It is not essential to use any proprietary tools or software that isn't onboard the car or battery. Requiring anything like that is incidental, and a regulation could forbid it in the name of right to repair, reducing waste, or maintaining a healthy used car market.
For EVs you need at least a hoist/lifter/crane/other power tool to replace a battery. But sure, there's no actual engineering reason they can't be replaced by the user. Same for the smartwatch - you can replace a battery in most ordinary wristwatches that use them, why not the smart ones? IEMs are usually too small and that's where the engineering limitations might matter. Headphones, no problem.
Magneto-optical drives are what I miss! The nearest thing we ever had to a durable and useable long-term storage media for normal users, as far as I know.
Don’t know who this guy is, but I’m glad I never interviewed with him. This is language-version-specific behavioral minutiae that anyone can look up in 5 minutes in the rare case it matters, and is otherwise irrelevant to engineering software at a senior level.
This article is a junior engineer’s idea of what a senior engineer should know.
This feels like an overly negative comment. language specific minutiae is interesting to a lot of developers, and this kind of stuff is exactly what you'd ask if someone claimed to be an experienced C++ developer. You're not going to decide not to hire them based on them not knowing this specific thing, but if you ask them 5 different questions about specific behaviour/edge cases/whatever and they don't know any of them it's probably a bad sign.
(Although "this is bad practice, I've never done it, I didn't care to look up details" would be a perfectly fine answer to me if I was the interviewer)
I am an experienced C++ developer, I know what happens in this particular case, but this type of minutiae are only interesting to the developers who have never had an actually hard problem to solve so it's a red flag to me as well. 10 years ago I would have thought differently but today I do not. High performance teams do not care about this stuff.
It's as close as you can get to useless knowledge. It's like asking a pilot "exactly how will the aircraft break apart if you nose dive it at high speed into the ground?"
This analogy makes a lot of sense until you need to deal with an exception emanating from a destructor... then it looks a lot more like "what's the proper way to hold a chainsaw"
I want to play a game. In your hands is a chainsaw about to be destructed. Another exception is already in flight. Live, or std::terminate. Make your choice. -Jigsaw
> This is language-version-specific behavioral minutiae that anyone can look up in 5 minutes in the rare case it matters, and is otherwise irrelevant to engineering software at a senior level.
The fact that C++ programming books have entire sections about destructors (see: Effective C++) shows that this is very much not irrelevant minutiae. C++ forces you to deal with this kind of detail all the time.
Now, we can have a much more interesting discussion about whether C++ is a disaster of a language precisely because you are forced to deal with this kind of minutiae by hand. We could also have an interesting discussion about whether RAII is the "object oriented" of our time. We could even have an interesting discussion as to why so many companies ban constructors/destructors in their C++ programming guidelines.
However, irrelevant minutiae C++ destructors are not.
What book covers in depth *throwing* from destructors? Even more sane thing — throwing from constructors and function arguments — is mentioned in passing ("unwind will take care of everything, don't think too hard about it") unless you are in a language lawyer mailing list. But exceptions *during destruction*? What book discusses that? That's like covering use of NaN values as map<> keys...
Chapter 2: Constructors, Destructors, and Assignment Operators
Item 5: Know what functions C++ silently writes and calls.
Item 6: Explicitly disallow the use of compiler generated functions you do not want.
Item 7: Declare destructors virtual in polymorphic base classes.
Item 8: Prevent exceptions from leaving destructors.
Item 9: Never call virtual functions during construction or destruction.
Item 10: Have assignment operators return a reference to *this.
Item 11: Handle assignment to self in operator=.
Item 12: Copy all parts of an object.
This stuff is bread and butter of C++ (or at least it used to be; perhaps this is different in "modern" C++) and lots and lots of grist for people like Scott Meyers and Herb Sutter.
"Prevent exceptions from leaving destructors." — thank you for providing well known sources that support my point! Although sadly we all have to eat Sutter Meyers bread, at least it explicitly tells you to not worry about the way exceptions are handled during object destruction — by simply avoiding such exceptions.
No C++ "bread and butter" I have seen so far goes into depth on this subject.
Because the two go together. If you have to ban one, you pretty much have to ban both.
Although, I guess if you only statically allocated everything once at startup, you could use constructors without destructors? Presumably using the placement versions would also let you use constructors without destructors.
I'm generally talking about systems that are <64KB. You basically don't get heap and determinism is really important.
If you noticed, the article did not actually tell you what happens when destructor throws. It was only about double-exception case and throwing in nothrow() function (both perfectly valid things to know when jobbing).
What state are members left in when destructor throws? If exception happens in virtual base? If member destructor throws, what other class members have they destructor executed? will delete[] be called?
The author possibly does not care to know themselves! As you say, totally irrelevant to any normal programming. Unless you are writing clang or gdb
350 was late last year. The text at the top of the linked page says prices are up about 30% over the past month. Directly prior to the war starting the price was about 470
Interesting product advice you have to offer. Who do you think is the target market for expensive Italian sports cars, if not “car enthusiasts”?
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