[tehf0x]

So a similar thing happened near some friends' in France. A military jet crashed into the forest near their house, but the air force couldn't figure out where it had gone. Eventually a farmer noticed that a new pond had appeared on his land. The jet made enough of a crater when crashing that drained the nearby swamp and created a new pond deep enough to conceal the full fuselage, thus completely hiding the airplane. Once the farmer alerted the air force, they were able to crane the remains out of the newly formed pond and recover the key parts of hardware onboard. Had the farmer not noticed the change in landscape they might have never found it. https://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2011/03/02/97001-20110302...

[Scoundreller]

I wonder if some of the "autopilot" functionality for military aircraft is to swan-dive into water/forest if everyone has already ejected.

If it's going to crash (and can't autoland, which it probably shouldn't attempt even if it could if something ejection-worthy happened), might as well obliterate the thing in a safe place.

[MarkMarine]

The thing you’re thinking of is the pilot. If the plane is capable of control, the pilot will move it on a trajectory away from populated areas if possible. Protecting innocent people on the ground in the case of an emergency was always top of mind, you can see this in the crash reporting for multiple real world incidents (in airframes with, and without ejection seats, where the last actions of the aircrew were steering away from populated areas)

By the time a pilot ejects they’ve exhausted EVERY other option to control the aircraft, no AI is going to regain control at that point.

[ozim]

Well usually it is pilots responsibility to try to aim it in safe direction as much as possible and only then eject. Basically like captain on the ship you don't eject but you are last one to leave the ship after you made what is possible to save others from harm (unless they are of course hostile forces).

I think quite some pilots died this way because they were trying to the last second to save other lives.

If plane is that much out of control that you cannot do much, adding some code to try to do something might make things actually worse from my perspective.

[akira2501]

I doubt it. You do not want an uncommanded activation of that system for any reason. You may actually _want_ your disabled plane to continue in a specific direction for tactical reasons. You generally do not allow auto pilot to make large deflections in control surfaces, as you always want a pilot on the stick to be able to overcome any uncommanded autopilot actions.

[krisoft]

> I wonder if some of the "autopilot" functionality for military aircraft is to swan-dive into water/forest if everyone has already ejected.

Not quite the same you are thinking about but something similar is documented behaviour of the Global Hawk. Obviously since that is a remotely piloted aircraft “everyone has ejected safely” is not the trigger for it.

The way it works at the flight planning stage the operators define pre-determined points, and if the system detects certain faults it cannot recover from it tries to fly to these points and crash land into them. They call these point “termination point” on land and “ditching point” over water.

In this document[1] you can read more about the selection criteria of such points.

This document[2] details for air traffic control under which conditions flight termination points are used. In short (page 22) when the aircraft is uncontrolable for landing or landing at a suitable airfield cannot be achieved safely.

1: https://static.e-publishing.af.mil/production/1/af_a3/public...

2: https://www.eurocontrol.int/sites/default/files/2019-05/atm-...

[bob1029]

Some Hollywood points in this direction. E.g. the Behind Enemy Lines ejection scene.

Seems like a pretty good idea to self-destruct the most sensitive hardware (computers/chips/storage modules/etc) if recovery of the aircraft is no longer feasible.

[CodeWriter23]

I think the failures leading up to ejection preclude any kind of automated flight control afterward. Seeing how modern aircraft are all fly by wire.

[Rygian]

It's relevant to note that the aircraft disappeared from radar in the evening while doing "low altitude exercises" and was discovered the next morning (bad weather preventing the rescue teams from finding it earlier).

The linked article mentions that the pilot and navigator were considered missing. Other news reported also the presence of human remains near the crash site.

[dolmen]

More details on the Mirage 2000 crash: https://www.lamontagne.fr/saint-oradoux-pres-crocq-23260/act...

[hinkley]

From the satellite images of the area, you have several urban areas with large swaths of farmland and some forest around them. One of the lakes is a dammed river. The flood plains downriver from the dam are quite lush. It’s in a field, under a tree, or in a pond it dug itself if the water table is high right now.

[iancmceachern]

Just like Luke's X-Wing on Dagobah!

[bitwize]

Surprised they didn't get Yoda to Force-levitate it out.

[mortureb]

But why? Don’t these billion dollar machines have a GPS tracker on them?

[kube-system]

They have transponders. But military airplanes can and sometimes do turn them off. When airplanes broadcast signals they can be detected. The military sometimes wishes to avoid this.

[jpadkins]

I don't think stealth aircrafts normally have trackers or anything broadcasting a signal. Kind of defeats the purpose...

I did read that stealth aircraft have transponders installed when operating in US airspace, so commercial radar can see them better. But it was not installed on this flight.

[simne]

In civilian planes, sometimes, standard ADS-B tracker turned on automatically.

But in military planes, it must be turned on explicitly, because, depend on target of flight, it is possible, it must be OFF.

In general, this is very frequent case, when pilot just forget to turn on ADS-B.

[_djo_]

They have transponders that transmit their identity and location on the most modern, but those depend on being active (for some reason the one in the F-35 was not) and on there being receivers nearby to pick them up. At lower altitudes in remote locations coverage is spotty.

So it's not a guarantee.

[Aloha]

GPS is not reliable underwater, I'd expect it to have an ELT/EPIRB but those don't work with GPS as far as I know, and the crash could have been hard enough to render it inoperable.

[lofaszvanitt]

Jesus, imagine the thrill, that you have a full blown airplane in your backyard. Going out during the nights and sleep next to it, sit in the cockpit, whatever.

[dheera]

Why don't these aircraft get 10Hz GPS updates and send them to StarLink as they are going down? It's 2023 already.

[izacus]

Because they're stealth military planes and broadcasting it's exact position to Musk owned network is literally the primary thing it should NOT do.

[kube-system]

Well, for the plane in the parent comment's article, that reason is likely because the design for that plane was started in 1972.