God and Country

The Jewish Community Centers (JCC) Association has decided to present its Jewish Military Leadership Award to Rear Admiral Herman Shelanski, commander of USS Harry S Truman strike group.  The group said the reasons include RAdm Shelanski’s

consistent concern for the ability of Jews in the Navy to fully express their Jewish identity while they serve their country.

As commander of the carrier USS Harry S Truman, RAdm Shelanski  Read more…

Ever wonder how they get small, limited-range General Aviation aircraft to the mission field?

They put’em in a box.

Mission Aviation Fellowhip (MAF) has a short write-up on boxing up a Cessna 182 before it is shipped to Mozambique.

Hugh Beck pokes and prods the Cessna 182 like he’s a physician giving his patient a physical. No joint overlooked, no piece misplaced. Meticulousness is required when you’re about to put a plane in a box and ship it 8,000 miles to be reassembled in the jungle…

Read more.

Update: The military has said enemy action was not involved in the U-28 crash.

A U-28A — an AFSOC version of the Pilatus PC-12 — went down over the weekend during a mission from Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti (in the horn of Africa, for those unfamiliar).  All four aircrew were killed.  The least amount of deployments among the crew was 3 (in 5 years).

Of the three officers, one was from ROTC, one from OTS, and one was a 2009 USAFA graduate.  That represents all 3 possible commissioning sources in the Air Force in one loss.  While there are often good-natured rivalries among OTS, ROTC, and USAFA, risk and sacrifice know no bias.

Captain Ryan Hall…was a U-28A pilot on his seventh deployment. Read more…

The US Air Force has gone through a variety of iterations of its “flight screening program,” including the tragic T-3 Firefly program more than a decade ago.  The short, civil aircraft-based program is designed to filter out those who demonstrate less than Read more…

F-15E Strike Eagle #89-0487 recently achieved 10,000 flight hours, making it the first F-15 of any type to log that many hours.

It an interesting bit of trivia, 487 is the same F-15E that logged the only Strike Eagle air-to-air kill in Operation Desert Storm when it dropped a bomb on an airborne Iraqi helicopter. It also scored an air-to-air kill on a rogue Reaper in Afghanistan, fulfilling every fighter pilot’s dream…

As noted previously, the US Air Force has proposed cutting a large number of A-10s from the inventory in response to the reduced Department of Defense budget.

An article at AOL Defense notes this isn’t the first time this has been proposed, and the author starts to rattle off the reasons people think the A-10 Thunderbolt II (better known as Warthog) is so great:

Two things make the A-10 especially fine at CAS: its amazing 30mm cannon which can destroy a tank with ease; and the Read more…

Investigators determined pilot error caused the 6 April 2011 crash of a US Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet near Lemoore Naval Air Station, California.  Both the pilot and the backseat NFO were killed.

The pilot, Lt. Matthew I. Lowe, 33, of Plantation, Fla., and the plane’s weapons officer, Lt. Nathan H. “Beefcake” Williams, 28, of Oswego, N.Y., were Read more…

A C-5 Galaxy – the US Air Force’s largest cargo aircraft — from Westover Air Reserve Base, Massachusetts, performed a flyby of Gillette Stadium at the conclusion of the National Anthem on Sunday.  The ceremony opened the NFL Patriots-Ravens football game.

Inscribed along the bottom of the aircraft, visible from the stands, was an emblem and “Go Pats!”  The Patriots went on to win.

You never know, fighter aircraft flybys may have similar endorsements on their lower wings or fuselages…  Read more…

The Air Force has released the report of the September 2011 crash of an A-10C Thunderbolt II in Georgia.

According to the report, the mishap aircraft’s stall warning system malfunctioned at 15,000 feet, preventing stall warning tones from functioning properly… Without evidence of additional malfunctions, the mishap pilot continued the FCF.

At 34,000 feet, the mishap aircraft experienced a stall Read more…

The Stars and Stripes reports the F-15E Strike Eagle that crashed in March in Libya was brought down due to a weight imbalance.

An Air Force investigation into what caused the crash of an F-15E Strike Eagle during a night combat operation over Libya last March has concluded that a weight imbalance was a major factor…

The situation deteriorated Read more…

The Military Times notes the unveiling of a Navy airship at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey.

The MZ-3A is the Navy’s scientific test platform for surveillance cameras, radars and other sensors…[used] “to prove LTA [lighter-than-air] has a place in our military construct,” said Cmdr. Jay Steingold.

The slow, long-endurance vehicles are variations on the blimp/dirigible and could fill a variety of roles.  The Navy isn’t the only one to have such a program:  Read more…

The Air Force Times says Langley AFB’s F-22 fleet has returned to flight after a short grounding following an oxygen-related incident last week.

The rest of the USAF F-22 fleet was not affected.

The US Air Force has reported that an F-15C Eagle from Nellis AFB crashed near Alamo, NV, yesterday afternoon.  The pilot ejected and had “started walking” when he was picked up by a rescue helicopter about 30 minutes later.

As usual, the AF will investigate the mishap and report on it some months from now.

Public reports indicate the US Air Force has grounded its F-22 Raptors again — after a pilot reported an oxygen problem, again.  In this case, it appears to be a single-unit “pause” at Langley AFB, as opposed to a fleet-wide grounding.

Air Force officials are meeting on Friday to determine whether it is necessary to extend the grounding to the rest of the F-22 fleet. The pilot experienced what is known as “hypoxia,” and had to return to base.

The Raptors were previously grounded for months, though no specific cause was found for the reported oxygen issue.

An MQ-9 Reaper has crashed on final approach at Holloman AFB, New Mexico.  The base reported that the owning squadron was a training unit for the MQ-9.