{"id":200276,"date":"2021-05-22T19:14:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-23T00:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/05\/22\/this-aint-rocket-science\/"},"modified":"2021-05-22T19:14:00","modified_gmt":"2021-05-23T00:14:00","slug":"this-aint-rocket-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/05\/22\/this-aint-rocket-science\/","title":{"rendered":"This Ain’t Rocket Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

Specifically, supplying oxygen to fighter pilots has been a known quantity for well over 50 years, but somehow or other, Lockheed-Martin has been able<\/strike> unable to make this work on the F-35<\/a>.<\/p>\n

NASA has done a study, and found that the Joint Strike Fighter has problems not shared with other aircraft using onboard oxygen generate systems.<\/p>\n

The F-35 office had declared this a tempest in a tea pot, which is typical for them:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n

Between 2011 and 2017, more than a dozen U.S. Air Force F-35 pilots reported experiencing oxygen-deprivation symptoms. NASA has obtained new information that may help solve the mystery behind these physiological episodes and wants to study the issue more deeply. But the F-35 Joint Program Office is disputing the findings.<\/p>\n

The recently released\u2014but not widely circulated\u2014report from the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) pinpoints a lag time between the pilot\u2019s breathing pattern and the aircraft\u2019s life-support system, due to differences between mask pressure and line pressure. It is the first independent review focused on the hypoxia-like episodes reported by pilots in the Lockheed Martin F-35 for more than a decade.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

The NESC\u2019s work builds on a 2017 report that assessed pilots\u2019 physiological episodes in other fighter aircraft (AW&ST March 28-April 10, 2016, p. 23)<\/a>. That study was driven by a congressional mandate to the U.S. Navy to conduct an independent review of the episodes in Boeing F\/A-18 and T-45 aircraft going back to 2009. But the mandate did not cover the F-35. The new report is part of a larger pilot-breathing assessment that includes F\/A-18 and F-15D data using CRU-103 or CRU-60 breathing gear. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

But the F-35 data set, the first of its kind, was subsequently embargoed by the Air Force, and the NASA team had to wait about a year for the service to release pilot–breathing data for independent analysis. F-35 pilots admitted in interviews with the NESC that information about breathing problems had been suppressed over concerns about protecting the program<\/span><\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Bottom line:  The Pentagon wants its over-priced and under-performing mistake jet, and if a few pilots have to experience suffocation, it’s a small price to pay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Specifically, supplying oxygen to fighter pilots has been a known quantity for well over 50 years, but somehow or other, Lockheed-Martin has been able unable to make this work on the F-35. NASA has done a study, and found that the Joint Strike Fighter has problems not shared with other aircraft using onboard oxygen generate …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,987,1216,1025],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-fail","category-safety","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200276"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}