Here is the full 60 Minutes piece about the two pilots that have decided not to fly the F-22 out of concern for their safety.
There are in fact some revelations. Bullying and punishment over core flying safety concerns. Incompetence in finding the root cause of aircrew breathing troubles on the jet.
If what they say is true, General Schwartz who is the boss of the Air Force and Mr. Donely who is the Secretary of the Air Force, need to be fired on behalf of the American people as a message that this kind of negligence and bullying will not be allowed.
This is serious to the extreme.
4 comments:
Schwartz looks like a clown on the 60 Minutes news clip. The Air Force brass response is typical of those who want to bully and intimidate to cover up the mess, they have been running for years. What amazes me even more is that with all the people involved in trying to fix the oxygen problem on the Raptor, nobody can find the root cause. It suggests to me that years of systematic control on creativity or aspects of groupthink have severely hampered the efforts. It's amazing that a multi-billion dollar company like LockMart that has built aircraft for decades can not solve this problem.
Serious indeed! Technical problems aside, there also seems to be a serious leadership problem fueling pilot insubordination. The pilots must feel like lab rats, with every physiological and psychological aspect of their lives under the microscope. Apparently, they do not trust management. It was a good idea to allow the top guys to fly single seaters again, but it may not stop the pilot's union from organizing further.
Everyone has suggestions on what to try. Here's mine. Buy back the big centrifuge in Pennsylvania. Engineer the mods to make it a true physiologic mission simulator, and fly F-22 missions in it. Confirming nominal design performance of the ECS equipment does not get you anywhere if the specs are not right. If the hardware specs should be something else, this aeromedical research will determine what it should be using precise instrumentation under controlled conditions. Mitigating measures like exposure limits can also be evaluated. If a facility like this already existed, we could start now. It doesn't. Ooops.
The "60 minutes" pilots have similar "There I was..." stories to F-18 pilots. A google of " Acceleration atelectasis " will get you a neat item on an affiliated CBS site with a description of the plight of the Navy fighter pilot. The Navy safety publication " Approach " magazine has a full issue (Nov-Dec 2011) dedicated to Hypoxia stories. It's good. Check it out. I am warning you, it will be more difficult to be sympathetic to the F-22 heroes. It is clear we need some work to help all these guys, but to blame it all on the F-22 is odd. There must be something else going on.
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