Usaf F-22 Life Support System Review Several Years Ago
Exclusive: Air Force Warned of Fatal F-22 Fighter Flaw Decade Before Crash
Expressionless pilot'due south sister tells ABC News the Air Force "let my brother dice."
Aug. 14, 2012 — -- The Air Force and major defense contractors were warned about a pattern flaw in the F-22 Raptor fighter jet more than a decade earlier it directly contributed to the expiry of an American pilot, according to an internal Air Force document obtained exclusively by ABC News.
Air Force officials also revealed that early in the aeroplane'due south development, in society to salvage coin on the $79 billion program, the service had decided confronting a prophylactic mensurate that would've addressed the flaw -- the same safety measure the military is now paying millions to install and that the pilot's family insists would have saved his life.
"Information technology'due south actually nice of the Air Force to have known about this 12 years agone and and so permit my brother die," Jennifer Haney, sister of the tardily Capt. Jeff Haney and family unit spokesperson, told ABC News.
Late Monday Lockheed Martin and Boeing confirmed the companies had settled a wrongful death lawsuit with the Haney family unit for an undisclosed sum. The accommodate, filed in March, had alleged the companies knowingly provided the Air Force with a "dangerous" and "defective" aircraft. The Air Force was non named as a defendant in the suit.
The settlement came merely days subsequently ABC News requested comment from the Air Force and Lockheed Martin concerning a memo written by a combined Air Force and noncombatant contactor test group in March 2000 that warned of an "operational deficiency" in the F-22s life support system -- a flaw that was only partially addressed in the last decade and one that was explicitly referred to in the Haney lawsuit.
Capt. Haney was 31 years old when he was killed in a crash approximately a minute later on a malfunction in his F-22 cutting off his oxygen supply during a routine training exercise in Alaska in Nov 2010. An Air Force investigation blamed the crash on Haney, maxim he failed to properly fly the airplane or deploy a manual emergency redundancy oxygen organization while experiencing a sense "similar to suffocation."
"The Air Force and Lockheed both knew of the pattern flaws associated with the [F-22 life support organisation] for x years before and failed to correct this deadly flaw that killed a airplane pilot, destroyed a half-billion dollar shipping and placed all F-22 pilots and these aircraft at unacceptable adventure," a source in the F-22 plan told ABC News.
READ Sectional: Family Demands Truth in F-22 Fighter Pilot's Death
'Unacceptable…May Result in Pilot Debilitation or Fatality'
The certificate, written past a member of the Combined Test Force at California's Edwards Air Force Base in March 2000 and updated in 2002, described a trouble with the design of the plane's Environmental Control System (ECS), which is charged with regulating several systems in the plane including the conditions in the cockpit. During certain specific high-altitude maneuvers, the ECS system would close down and it was built and so that if it failed, it would spark a cascade outcome that would likewise cut off the pilot'southward primary oxygen supply.
Under the heading "Bear on If Not Fixed," the test group member wrote, "Real-earth failure of [the oxygen system] due to ECS shutdown is unacceptable. ECS failure and the subsequent loss of supplemental breathing oxygen may result in airplane pilot debilitation or fatality due to either altitude hypoxia [oxygen deprivation] or decompression sickness in the event of motel depressurization."
"Investigate and take corrective action," the 2000 document says. "Advise repairing the ECS system so it will provide continuous, adequate service throughout the flight envelope. Propose providing a reliable source of bleed air for [the oxygen system] in the event of ECS failure... [C]onsider improver of pilot breathing air plenum to fill gaps when [the oxygen organization] is not operating, every bit during ECS shutdown."
A plenum, as described by former Marine Corps fighter pilot and ABC News consultant Steve Ganyard, is a common feature in legacy fighter planes akin to a tank within the primary oxygen system that could hold excess air for employ in the case of crisis.
The Air Strength was able to "mitigate" the instances of ECS close down due to the high-altitude maneuvers to "an acceptable level of operational risk," the service said, but information technology never provided a secondary "reliable source" of air for the oxygen arrangement nor did it add a plenum as a back-up. Instead, the Air Forcefulness directed pilots to a manual emergency oxygen system in the event of an ECS shutdown.
That emergency system -- currently installed on the 180-odd F-22s -- gets oxygen directly from a separate oxygen bottle and tin can just be activated after a pilot locates and pulls a small ring tucked into the corner of the cockpit, a process the Air Forcefulness admits is difficult even under controlled weather and during which the pilot would not be able to exhale.
At the time the memo was written, the test group said the delay between the primary oxygen system being cut off and the pilot being able to activate the manual emergency system was "an adequate safety risk for flight test operations."
Capt. Haney'southward F-22 Experiences ECS Failure Before Crash
It was the band on the emergency organisation that Air Strength investigators believe Haney was struggling to find and pull as he turned his jet into a dive from 51,000 anxiety and flew nearly direct into the ground in 2010.
Moments before, a all the same unidentified malfunction caused Haney'south ECS to close down and he lost all oxygen to his mask.
In the total, nearly 1,000-folio version of the crash written report obtained by ABC News through a Freedom of Information Deed request, Air Strength officials noted that the band Haney was meant to pull to give himself air was hard to see and, if he dropped the band during a failed pull, he would have had "significant difficulty" retrieving information technology from between the seat and console.
The study however concluded "by articulate and convincing evidence" that Haney was at error in the crash, saying he was likely distracted by trying to actuate the manual back-up arrangement and did not properly wing the plane.
The Air Force said Haney was non believed to be unconscious due to lack of oxygen at any point in his ordeal -- a claim strongly disputed by his family and questioned by other F-22 pilots, aviation experts and the Pentagon's own Inspector General, who has launched a rare review of the Air Force investigation. Haney's family said it was more likely he was unconscious due to lack of oxygen at to the lowest degree part of the time and, therefore, could non be held responsible for the crash.
Whatever happened in Capt. Jeff Haney's concluding moments, no one disputes that his ECS shut down at 51,000 feet and, for about a minute until his decease, he could not breathe.
DOWNLOAD: Air Force'south Capt. Jeff Haney F-22 Crash Report (Abbreviated, PDF)
Rubber System Cutting to Relieve Cash
Though the Air Force investigators' crash findings were fabricated public final December, information technology wasn't until this May -- more than 12 years after the warning document was written, a year and a one-half after Haney'due south decease and in the wake of prominent news reports including an ABC News "Nightline" investigation -- that an Air Force Scientific Advisory Lath recommended that the Air Force requite the Raptor an automatic back-up oxygen system. In addition to Haney's crash, the informational board had been looking into why, in at least two dozen incidents since 2008, F-22 pilots had experienced the symptoms of oxygen deprivation in mid-air while the oxygen system appeared to be working properly.
In June the Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a $nineteen meg contract to retrofit forty jets in the armada with the new automated system, designed to boot in whenever the plane'south instruments detected an interruption in the oxygen flow, such as in the case of an ECS failure. A month later the Pentagon announced information technology believed it had solved the mystery oxygen deprivation problem with the other F-22 pilots, which it said was unrelated to Haney'due south crash, but would be going alee with the automatic back-up system regardless.
According to a top Air Force official, notwithstanding, installing such a redundancy oxygen system for the $420 million-a-piece planes was not a new thought, but ane that was scrapped to save money years before Haney climbed in the cockpit.
"The back-up oxygen system was originally in the pattern of the F-22, equally we got into cost constraints it was eliminated from the design," Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles Lyon told reporters earlier this month.
The Air Force later antiseptic Lyon'southward comments.
"In his response, General Lyon was summarizing a Scientific Informational Board discussion about the necessary trade-offs fabricated in the early history of the jet between improving prophylactic margins and controlling costs. During the F-22'southward development, the determination to select an emergency oxygen system (EOS) -- as referenced in his remarks -- was adamant to provide an acceptable level of control for the risk of an interrupted air menstruum, based on operational experience in legacy fighters," the Air Force said in a statement to ABC News. Lockheed Martin began developing the F-22 in mid-1980s and was awarded an Air Force contract for the aeroplane in 1991, according to the Air Force.
The new arrangement, the Air Force said, will "further improve that safety margin that is provided by the [emergency oxygen system]."
Jennifer Haney questioned why the military would have "skimped" on a safety precaution in a plan that'south estimated to cost $79 billion.
"I'm glad they saved money, but they didn't save Jeff," she said. "I empathize that things can be expensive, only when y'all have a jet that is capable of doing the things that the jet can do and all the technology it has, I can't understand why you would cede on the rubber of the pilots you lot are putting in the jet to fly information technology."
'They Knew At that place Was a Trouble'
Jeff Haney's wife, Anna, filed a wrongful decease lawsuit against Lockheed Martin and other contractors in March and claimed, among other allegations, that the Raptor was "designed, manufactured, distributed and sold with a dangerous and defective oxygen back-upwards system that did not automatically provide life back up or breathable oxygen to the airplane pilot in the event of a malfunction."
Lockheed Martin said at the time the lawsuit was filed that while Jeff Haney's death was a tragedy, the visitor disagreed with his widow'south claims and would fight them in court. Early on Tuesday Lockheed Martin confirmed the lawsuit had been settled, only declined to respond whatever questions almost the settlement, citing confidentiality.
As the major civilian partner to the Air Force in the F-22's production, Lockheed Martin officials make up part of the F-22 Combined Test Grouping -- the same grouping that wrote the March 2000 memo.
When ABC News contacted Lockheed Martin final calendar week near the F-22 life support concerns raised in the memo, a spokesperson for the company said, "Since the beginning of the F-22 programme, Lockheed Martin has and continues to back up the U.South. Air Force's requirements to ensure the F-22 meets their expectations on availability, performance and reliability, and to enhance the aircraft's capabilities to address emerging and proliferating threats."
The spokesperson said that Lockheed Martin "fully supports the Air Force's conclusion regarding the automatic emergency dorsum-up oxygen arrangement and has no farther comment."
The Air Force contends that the original warning document did not explicitly "specify a need for a back-up oxygen system," despite the suggested plenum and second source of "reliable" oxygen, just said the service is adding an automated back-up now considering it is "a prudent step to further reduce risk of interrupted oxygen flow to the pilot."
Jennifer Haney said such a prudent step had been taken far too tardily.
"Information technology was 12 years ago. That's x years earlier Jeff died that they could've done something and they did aught," she said. "They knew at that place was a problem with the jet."
The Air Strength does not expect Lockheed Martin to have outfitted the commencement batch of F-22s with the new automatic redundancy oxygen system until next spring. Until then, the Air Force plans to begin loosening strict flying restrictions placed on the planes by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in March.
Though they were officially "gainsay ready" beginning in December 2005, none of the $420 million-a-popular F-22 Raptors have ever been sent to war.
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/exclusive-air-force-warned-fatal-22-fighter-flaw/story?id=16957535
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