By DANA LIEBELSON
The Pentagon said this week that it has found the cause of health problems that are plaguing pilots of the F-22 stealth fighter jet and compromising their ability to fly. According to the Department of Defense, the mystery can be traced to malfunctions in the pilots’ air supply equipment.
But how does that explain the fact that members of ground crews have exhibited similar symptoms?
In response to questions from the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), Air Force spokesmen said that maintenance workers have gotten sick for an entirely different reason: exposure to the jet’s engine exhaust.
“The incidents experienced by the maintainers are not connected with the physiological incidents experienced by the pilots,” 1st Lt. Sarah D.A. Godfrey, a spokeswoman for Air Combat Command, told POGO.
According to another Air Force spokesman, Lt. Col. Edward T. Sholtis, “The symptoms reported by maintainers have been attributed to breathing ambient air during periods in which environmental and flightline conditions increased the amount of engine exhaust present.”
Sholtis likened the exhaust to what people may experience in congested traffic but declined to elaborate on what exactly in the jet engine exhaust is making the maintenance workers sick.
Nonetheless, the spokespeople said they had ruled out the hypothesis that toxins in the F-22’s stealth coatings are causing the health problems.
Sholtis said that “all potential sources of contaminants were evaluated.”
If the problem involved the stealth coatings, it could be much harder to solve. As is, the Air Force plans to modify and test specific equipment used by the pilots.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz told reporters on Tuesday that problems with the upper pressure garment worn by the pilots, in addition to the hose, valve and connection hardware in the cockpit, have been causing symptoms among F-22 pilots resembling hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation.
These hypoxia symptoms could be deadly to pilots of the F-22. In November 2010, a pilot fatally crashed in Alaska after he was unable to activate his jet’s emergency oxygen system. F-22 pilot Capt. Josh Wilson said on the CBS show “60 Minutes” this year that he experienced hypoxia while flying and was so disoriented that he was unable to find the handle to access an emergency oxygen supply.
Citing Air Force documents, members of Congress have reported that the rate of these symptoms among F-22 pilots is about nine times the rate for any other military aircraft.
But since September 2011, at least five ground crew members working on the F-22 have also experienced hypoxia-like symptoms such as “dizziness, nausea and other signs of oxygen deprivation,” Brig. Gen. Daniel Wyman, surgeon general of Air Combat Command, told Air Force Times. But the maintenance workers don’t use the pilots’ breathing equipment or oxygen valve.
“Because of the symptoms’ ambiguities, the deciding evidence was the absence of compounds in quantities capable of causing symptoms,” said Sholtis, adding that the Air Force and outside experts tested and analyzed more than 2,000 samples.
Anyone hoping to examine how the Air Force reached its conclusions is out of luck.
“There have been no written reports summarizing all the various testing analysis efforts, findings and results produced at this point,” Sholtis said by email.
According to Godfrey, there are no plans to release such reports in the future.
Some experts are skeptical that the Air Force has actually found the cause, if it won’t provide evidence.
According to Winslow Wheeler, who direct's POGO's Straus Military Reform Project, “That the Secretary of Defense has left the Air Force free to investigate itself and explain the mystery stretches credulity past the breaking point.”
Although there are still some flight restrictions on the F-22, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has approved the deployment of a squadron of F-22s to Japan, via the Northern Pacific transit route, within “days.”
At the press conference Schwartz said, “There’s an operational requirement and the birds are ready to go.”
POGO contacted Pacific Air Forces Public Affairs asking why exactly the U.S. needs to send F-22 Fighter Jets to Japan, but the spokesman did not respond.
Dana Liebelson is the Beth Daley Impact Fellow at the Project On Government Oversight. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class George Goslin.
Schwartz said, “There’s an operational requirement and the birds are ready to go.”
The irony here is that the Pentagon's somewhat stealthy "fifth generation" fighters, the unproven F-22 and the useless F-35, are utter failures on an operational level. If we were generous and assumed that these complicated new fighters were as reliable as proven but "outdated" designs such as the F-16, then there are still major shortcomings for "next generation" warplanes. Compared to say an F-16, these new planes will require more money spent on more maintenance so that they can spend much more time in a hanger and tie up much more resources. Even if the F-22 or an F-35 worked as advertised (and thats all that they have been is advertised) then they may be tactical successes. Still, they only carry so much fuel and so many weapons,thats if they want to keep the stealth they depend on. Compared to older designs, Americas so called fifth generation fighters just fly too few sorties, carry too few weapons, and are too expensive too maintain a decent force size. They are so limited in range for a supposed leap forward that they can not be deployed, unless equipped with external fuel tanks, but even then the range issue would come back if fitted for combat. The fuel issue is even more important if these airplanes are used for close air support, as loiter time would be too low... On and on the problems mount once you get past faux tactical questions like who would win an F-22 or an F-16... because wars are never fought between just two airplanes. On a tactical level these turkeys just do not fly.
Posted by: Will Leach | Jul 29, 2012 at 01:43 AM
They needed an easy fix, because anything else would jeopardize the F-35, especially if it had to do with toxic chemical outgassing from composite structures or stealth coatings.
Posted by: Dfens | Jul 28, 2012 at 12:06 PM
Who in the world are "maintainers"? Having worked in a "rapid paced" jet engine operational situation for twelve (12) a day for more than a year, I find that the reason stated for the "maintainers" health problems is absolutely and totally BS.
Posted by: Don | Jul 28, 2012 at 10:27 AM
Until you can state the "Root Cause" and clearly show the failure mechanism,
you have no confidence that you have solved the problem.
Posted by: pat b | Jul 27, 2012 at 02:14 PM