Posted on 03/25/2012 8:24:53 PM PDT by U-238
The Air Force and the Navy have combined research into a perplexing problem that may have vexed both services in the skies.
The U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine and the Naval Medical Research Unit, next door to each other at Wright-Patterson, have linked research for hypoxia — incidents that may have caused a lack of oxygen to reach pilots during some flights in the Air Force’s F-22 Raptor stealth fighter and the Navy’s F-18, military leaders said.
“We had what we believe was a common issue,” said Capt. Rita Simmons, executive officer of the Naval Medical Research Unit. “Nobody knows what the underlying problem is yet.”
Col. Donald L. Noah, deputy commander of the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine, said hypoxia research is a high priority at the school. “That’s one of the major tests going on right now,” he said.
Noah and Simmons say the two are collaborating more on medical research since both relocated to Wright-Patterson last year to comply with the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure law.
“Having them here just prevents duplication of effort,” Noah said. “Before we start any research, we say to them, ‘Have you ever done this, do you want to do this with us?’”
In the largest construction project in Ohio since World War II, the Air Force’s $239 million aerospace medical school opened at Wright-Patterson last year with 900 military and civilian staff members, and trains more than 5,000 students a year. The 680,000-square-foot complex, part of the 711th Human Performance Wing, relocated from its long-time home at Brooks City-Base in San Antonio, Texas.
The Navy unit, with about 75 staffers, relocated aerospace medical research to the Dayton air base from Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida.
(Excerpt) Read more at daytondailynews.com ...
OBOGS is great, up until it tries to kill you.
ping
CPAP therapy is widely used by people with sleep apnea (a-pnea -> no air -> hypoxia), and there’s plenty of research available on different approaches to therapy which might offer help with this particular cause of hypoxia.
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Depending on the aircraft a lot of these fighters already have free flow and emergency forced flow .
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