Navy Fix on Pilots' Oxygen Shortage Seen Stalled by Red Tape
- Communications breakdowns cited in defense policy bill report
- A $10 million contest would be authorized to find a solution
US Navy crew members stand on deck as a F-18 Super Hornet strike fighter plane takes off from the deck of USS George Washington during a joint US and South Korea military exercise on the Korean Peninsula's west sea on November 29, 2010 South Korea.
Photographer: Lee Jong-Geun-Korea-Pool/Getty ImagesThe Navy’s hunt for a solution to its top aviation safety issue -- oxygen deprivation and loss of cockpit cabin pressure in its training aircraft and fighters -- is hampered by communications breakdowns between engineers and pilots, according to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“While a lot of good work was being done and data being created and analyzed, those efforts are not always being effectively communicated down to the flightline, where the dangers” of oxygen-deprivation related physiological episodes, or PEs, “are most acute,” the committee said in the report it released late Tuesday on its fiscal 2018 defense policy bill, S 1519.