It appears that there may be a serious safety problem for pilots of F-22 Raptors, and it looks like there’s some butt-covering by the brass over it.
A full PDF of the official Air Force report on the crash of Capt. Jeffrey Haney is available here. The most chilling note, to me, is in the conclusion:
“By clear and convincing evidence, I find the cause of the mishap was the MP’s failure to recognize and initiate a timely dive recovery due to channelized attention, breakdown of visual scan and unrecognized spacial disorientation.”
Thus writes Brigadier General James S. Browne.
You cut off a guy’s air supply, and then you figure he’s at fault for “channelized attention?”
OK, carefully thinking about that, and reading other parts of the report, it seems that there may have been a training issue there; suggestion of the report is that what the pilot should have done was take off his oxygen mask, which would plausibly give him a minute or three of air while he made sure his plane was oriented properly and also worked on getting oxygen restored, but apparently, according to them, he panicked because his airflow was restricted and he felt suffocated, and because of his high speed he had barely a minute to figure out what to do before he crashed, and he was focused on his oxygen mask instead of his plane. Plausibly, this could be fixed in training procedures where you simulate the oxygen mask suddenly stopping and suffocating you, so you can practice whipping it off your face while still keeping the airplane reasonably oriented. I can see that as a defensible position.
But where is the question of whether or not there might be a design flaw somewhere in the oxygen delivery system? You know, even if we didn’t give a damn about human life, those airplanes are worth a few hundred million dollars each, and just in pure monetary terms fighter pilots themselves are pretty damned expensive when you add up how much time it takes to recruit, train, take care of, and pay them, and compensate their families. Even if you do take the “if you signed up to be a fighter pilot you knew you could die” mentality, there doesn’t seem to be much excuse for not demanding a very careful review of the design of the oxygen systems. Not just the maintenance procedures, but the design itself. One unforeseen problem by the design engineer, or manufacturing flaw, plausibly something very simple, could cause something like this. I would think that pilots expressing concern over that would be respected, wouldn’t you?
(This item cross-posted to Dean’s World.)
Dean Esmay is the author of Methuselah’s Daughter. He has contributed to Dean’s World, Huffington Post, A Voice for Men, Pajamas Media. Neither left nor right wing, neither libertarian nor socialist.