Posted on 03/31/2012 2:47:00 PM PDT by U-238
A US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) panel investigating a series of hypoxia-like incidents afflicting pilots flying the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor has not discovered what is causing the problem, but service officials vow they will find the root cause.
"I am convinced there is a root cause," says Maj Gen Charles Lyon, Air Combat Command's (ACC) director of operations. "I want everyone to know--particularly those who operate it and their families--we will not rest until we find that root cause."
The USAF is continuing to test the F-22's life-support systems to try to determine what is still causing these "physiological incidents."
Those efforts started in September 2011 under the auspices of ACC, says retired Gen Greg "Speedy" Martin, who led the SAB study. "Those are ongoing today," he says.
The most recent of these physiological incidents happened on 26 March where a pilot at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia had to declare an emergency after his pulse-oximeter alerted him that there might be a problem. The small device is part of the new ensemble of safety gear F-22 pilots are now required to fly with to mitigate the potential risk from life-support system anomalies.
(Excerpt) Read more at flightglobal.com ...
And my statement isn’t specifically to anything especially aeronautical. Anytime you change hardware, software, firmware, and use new things and make new configurations, and change the way control systems monitor and interpret, change vendors for parts, change what computer chips you’re using, hell, even what wiring you’re using to connect everything, new and different problems can arise that were not present in prior planes (or subs, or cars, or boats) because they are different parts and materials and vendors and configurations.
I mean problems can arise in machines that were working just fine but they change a vendor for a part and that part isn’t as good as the prior part, and now they’re getting failures they never had before. It is totally possible given the complexity of these systems.
The THEORY behind how the systems of things is the same, but the physical systems themselves, being designed and made differently can cause problems in one that are not present in another.
You are a cool guy
When things get really bad they send a humanoid up in a saucer to fix it.
Yeah...like the Marine helicopters that fell out of the sky with split rotors a few years ago....
Caused by an operator cleaning her nails with acetone.
On a lighter note....a semiconductor chip manufacturing plant went haywire every few weeks,,,,until it was discovered that some duty one on the night shift was bead blasting motorcycle parts in the bead blaster used for critical fab components.
Really...no more LOX converters?
Watch the training movie, The Man From LOX.
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