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F/A-18 Recovery
- Thread starter Malo83
- Start date
Would be interested to learn if the motivation for recovery was based on location or for investigative purposes.
Location...location...location, and 189 feet of water.
Ah, thank you. I missed the 189' of water on first read.
A little duck tape and it'll buff right out.
exNavyOffRec
Well-Known Member
It is nice to know the Pilot and NFO got out OK.
The article mentioned that the mishap casual factor was mechanical and that the salvage was to determine more specifically what had gone wrong.
Also, it's free to the end user to request salvage for a mishap. If memory serves the cost of salvage comes from the safety centers budget.
A sister squadron lost one of our 60R dipping sonars in several thousand feet of water. Brand X didn't want to "go through the trouble" of requesting salvage but our CO told them to request salvage and go find the damned thing. NSC did all the legwork in getting the salvage ship, divers, etc. I even got invited on the planned two week long recovery op (no thanks). As it turns out it took the salvage guys several hours to get to the bottom of the ocean and then they found the sonar in 15 minutes. Sonar was recovered, returned to the OEM, refurbed, and reissued. Not only did the salvage recover a limited quantity asset it also reduced the cost of the mishap from several mil to several hundred K.
All that said it also doesn't seem like good business to leave a hornet in irans backyard. Not that they don't already have access to an RQ-170.
It also provided excellent training in a relatively benign maritime environment. Sort of like how we used to send military surgeons to emergency rooms that would get a lot of gunshot victims, nothing like training on the real thing so when the time comes to do it for real you have some experience.
These days the cost and decision whether to salvage or not belongs to the Controlling Custodian. (MARFORCOM for Marines on the East Coast) We recovered 2 UAVs that we put in the drink this summer for my SIRs. Interesting process. The biggest learning point is that salvage starts after you find it, so before hand you're still in the search and recovery mode- depending on what's on the airplane/where it may be, your search and recovery effort could last months. The other interesting point is that recovery of those who are still aboard the airplane isn't necessarily a reason for salvage.
Also gives divers shit to do.
The salvage guys aren't exactly overworked for real world ops.
They do say, "Fly Navy, Divers Need the Work!"
Find the front half and get to work with some JB Weld, AM2! We'll have her flying again in a year, two years TOPS.
They did. If you watch closely in the video there is a short clip of it being brought up at night.
The big ones do, but Group 3 UAS tend not to. The RQ-7 and MQ-21 both do not. We found our RQ-7s with some really good help from local firefighters and waterman. The Firefighters brought HD side scan and down scan SONAR that they could use in as little as 6 feet of water (or as much as 300+ feet).
It's really stupid that the MQ-21 doesn't have a pinger. It's a cheap airplane that we throw some really expensive and one off payloads on to, and it would be nice to be able to get that stuff back when the airplane decides to go for a swim despite it's pilot's best effort.