[Hacker15e]

You have to evaluate what the problem is. If the risk posed by the high-speed abort and subsequent off-roading (if above refusal speed) is less than taking the emergency airborne, then you have to go with the option of what poses less risk to you, any passengers/crew, and the aircraft.

This is why we are professional pilots and not robots.

It really depends on the aircraft, that aircraft's systems/capabilities, and what the possible failure modes are. For example, in the F-15E where I have antiskid brakes, a tailhook, and at least two arrestor cables on the runway, it is possible to abort above "Max Abort" speed (which is this jet's term for refusal speed) and not end up in the dirt off the end of the runway. For certain catastrophic failures, this may be a less-risky option than taking a sick jet airborne and dealing with a really, really severe problem. In some cases it's even a better option than just getting airborne and ejecting from a really sick jet.

In another jet, the T-38, it had such poor brakes, thin tires, no hook, and a so-so ejection seat, that I was in a "go" mentality most of the time. A high-speed abort in that jet was probably going to be bad news, even if it was officially below refusal speed. For any of you guys with T-38 time, recall that the procedure used to generate the TOLD charts in the -1 ("maximum braking in a 3-point attitude") was different than the -1 proscribed abort procedure (which included aerobraking). This means that for decades the jet flew with invalid TOLD. The issue was corrected with a B.S. solution that subtracted 2,000 feet from available runway length and created a new TOLD number called "adjusted refusal speed" to make up for the differences in deceleration procedures. As a side note, when they re-engined the T-38 fleet, they had the Test Pilot School re-test the jets to create new TOLD charts and -- lo and behold -- the new accurate refusal speeds changed quite a bit.

Anyway...

So, V1 is NOT necessarily a binary decisionmaking speed in all cases with all aircraft. If you're talking about a simple engine failure, then sure. But there are other possible failures that blur the lines depending on aircraft capabilities.