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The military throws away a lot of equipment simply because it doesn't hold up to current standards. So I was wondering the following.
As a fighter pilot, would you ever get a practice run ejecting out of a plane, or is it just kind of one of those things you read about and hope you never have to do it? What is it like ejecting out of a plane at 500 knots? 1000?
Air forces use special training rigs rather than real ejection seats. Example video
Plenty of pilots have survived ejection (Wikipedia says "As of 20 June 2011 ... the number of lives saved by Martin-Baker products was 7,402 from 93 air forces")
The types of injury are illustrated by this example
The ejection seat has been responsible for saving the lives of thousands of pilots around the world since its introduction in the late 1940s. Typical survival rates quoted in the literature vary from 80–97%.
It is generally accepted that radiographic evidence of vertebral fracture can be found in 30%–70% of aircrew after ejection
The reason real ejection seats are not used is almost certainly the high risk of injury. Ejecting clear from a high speed jet requires a lot of acceleration.
Ejecting at 1000 knots means ejection into supersonic flow. Not even the Zvezda K-36, the indisputably best ejection seat around, is rated for that. For this kind of speed, whole enclosures have been designed which did not work all too well when they had to be used.
For training, there are simulators to prepare pilots for that hopefully rare occurrence (the picture above is from this link; there you'll find more pics and a list of their customers), but mostly, simulations are run with simulated pilots, too. The spinal loads are too high to have pilots exposed to them regularly without the benefits which go with a successful ejection.
For the things that might happen, see what William Rankin went through on July 26, 1959. It can last quite a while, too. In his case 40 minutes.
By the way, ejection seats started to save pilot's lives in 1942 (Germany) and 1945 (Sweden).
What is it like ejecting out of a plane at 500 knots? 1000?
Look for this story on the linked site... A USAF F-15 crew ejected, at night, estimated well over mach 1. The back seater was killed in the ejection; the pilot survived; wreaked havoc on his musculoskeletal system and required the lower part of one leg to be amputated but eventually returned to flying status.
As a fighter pilot, would you ever get a practice run ejecting out of a plane
My experience in a ejection trainer, much like the "air force training rig" above, gave a very short initial jolt equivalent to the real thing. I had my head bent ever so slightly and I had a sore neck for weeks. There was never a repeat ride in our year long training.
Ejecting out of the real thing for training? We would have called that sort of thing "practice bleeding".
There are ejection seat trainers, most concentrate of the required procedure before ejection and upon successful completion do a short 10 cm hitch upward, only a jolt to indicate end of procedure.
Some air forces do have trainers that give more of a ride. I got a demo ride in the sim in the picture, since I was involved in supplying some of the hardware. It was a severely toned down ride with much lower accelerations than pilots experience for real, but still too much for my blood pressure: one moment I was giving the all clear to the instructor, the next moment I was 3 metres in the air with an aching neck. I have no recollection of what happened in between.
