Formålet med bloggen er å bidra til informasjon om luftfart av alle slag. Også litt om ubåter og forsvarsspørsmål. Nyheter vil du finne her også, en del på engelsk som er det mest brukte luftfartsspråket. Har du selv noe som bør komme ut, så send meg en mail til per.gram@hesbynett.no
Klikk på overskriften. (Red.)
The KC-46A Pegasus aerial tanker still isn't meeting required mission capable rates, mostly due to parts shortages, and other significant problems are still being remedied, the Pentagon's test director said in a new report.
Høyere grader; dypere vann.... (Red.)
From The Archives |
 We salute this Marine for having a promotion ceremony in the muck |
Bra at NTSB holder kjeft. (Red.)
NTSB video screenshot
The NTSB has declined to confirm statements by Sen. Ted Cruz that the crew of an Army Black Hawk helicopter had the aircraft's ADS-B Out transmitter "turned off" when it was in a collision with a PSA CRJ700 at Reagan National Airport in late January. The NTSB said in a media update on Saturday that it has recovered all the big pieces of wreckage from both aircraft and "retrieved additional avionics" from the Black Hawk but it's still not discussing the status of the ADS-B components at the time of the crash. "We don’t have any information to share on that at this time," an NTSB spokeswoman told AVweb. "The examination of key components for both aircraft is ongoing. No conclusions have been drawn at this time."
Chair Jennifer Homendy said
something similar on Friday but that was before the recovery of the wreckage
was completed. The spokeswoman said there is no timeline set for discussing
that information.
Cruz, who is chairman of the Senate
Commerce Committee, told reporters on Thursday that he'd been briefed on the
accident and appeared to be linking the status of the transmitter to the chain
of events ending with the collision. "This was a training mission, so
there was no compelling national security reason for ADS-B to be turned
off," Cruz said, adding that he's "asked the Army to reconsider and
assess with what frequency is the Army turning off ADS-B Out on military
missions, particularly missions that do not have a sensitive national security
component."
The ADS-B Out's status is part of the
discussion of the helicopter's altitude. The corridor it was flying had a
ceiling of 200 feet but the CRJ's flight data recorder had it at 325 feet, plus
or minus 25 feet, at the time of the collision. "The investigation needs
to proceed," Cruz said. "We need to understand why that is the
case." As part of that investigation the NTSB has examined an airworthy
"exemplar" Black Hawk from the Army to "compare switch and other
settings from the accident helicopter."
In 2019, the FAA issued a rule that allows the military broad discretion on when they disable ADS-B Out. They make considerable use of that discretion according to plane spotters who report that military aircraft often fail to be depicted on any of the major ADS-B tracking websites.
AIRWAYS
DALLAS — The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) continues its investigation into the fatal midair collision between an American Airlines (AA) CRJ-700 regional jet and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (CDA).
According to the NTSB, there are substantial differences in altimeter readings from various sources. The CRJ-700 flight recorder depicted an altitude reading for the aircraft as 325 feet, whereas it had an uncertainty of plus-minus 25 feet.
Conversely, the control tower's data stated the Black Hawk's altitude at 200 feet. Since readings taken by a control tower are mostly approximate, the NTSB could obtain more accurate information from the Black Hawk's black box, which sustained water damage as the helicopter plunged into the Potomac River.
In addition to the black box data, the NTSB investigation will consider eyewitness accounts and recorded communications to determine whether two aircraft were on a collision course. NTSB investigator Brice Banning said this case is too complex and has been analyzed in detail since then.
Multiple factors, such as air traffic control directives, pilot decision-making, and possible mechanical failures, must be considered.
Data from the CRJ-700 flight show how the pilots reacted seconds before impact. The cockpit voice recorder indicates that at this moment, the flight crew was alerted to the helicopter and initiated evasive action by raising the aircraft pitch. Still, nothing could stop the collision. An impact sound is present one second after before the data abruptly terminates.
The aircraft, carrying 64 passengers and crew, could not complete its final approach from Wichita, Kansas due to the Black Hawk reportedly flying off its assigned track with three soldiers on board during a training mission.
According to an earlier New York Times report, the helicopter may have been flying higher than usual during the crash.
Rescue and salvage operations have been going on ever since the crash, where teams work through the clock to take out bodies and airplane rubble from the Potomac River. To date, 55 victims have been recovered, identified, and their bodies taken on board.
As of Sunday February 2, efforts were still ongoing to find the remaining bodies believed to be trapped inside the fuselage submerged in the plane. Salvage barges, or cranes, will start lifting out the airplane wreckage from the river on Monday morning.
Among the victims were passengers as young as 11 years old, union workers, and foreign nationals from the Philippines and China. The tragedy has left a profound impact on families and communities across multiple nations as investigators work to determine the sequence of events that led to the fatal collision.
According to the NTSB, the investigation will take a few months, but preliminary findings may be reported in the next couple of weeks. The final report will likely be released within more than a year with a complete crash analysis.
The analysis of both aircraft's radar data, cockpit voice recordings, and maintenance records will continue. The collision will also be simulated to understand the accident's dynamics better.
Further, the families of the deceased have been assured that they will be informed throughout the investigation. Meanwhile, aviation safety officials have promised to implement all NTSB's final report recommendations to avoid future catastrophes.
screenshot/wcolby/YouTube
After four engine changes, the Philippine Mars made the 800 mile flight from Vancouver Island to San Francisco on the first leg of its journey to a museum in Arizona on Sunday. Coulson Flying Tanker head Wayne Coulson told Nanaimo News Now that after months of maintenance and the engine swaps he was waiting for weather for the ferry flight that will ultimately take it from its home base in Port Alberni to the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson. The gigantic former Navy troop and cargo transport left Sproat Lake about 11:30 a.m. and landed in the bay by the city in California just before 4 p.m. The plane hugged the West Coast and had good weather the whole way.
Sjekk video her: https://tinyurl.com/2ankvbu5
Last August, the aircraft's stablemate Hawaii Mars made the short hop from Port
Alberni to Victoria where it's now on permanent display at the B.C. Aviation
Museum. In the meantime, a series of engine issues on Philippine Mars
ultimately led to the installation of the four airworthy Wright R3350
18-cylinder engines from Hawaii Mars. The four Curtiss Electric propellers were
also taken from Hawaii Mars. The Mars will leave San Francisco Tuesday for San
Diego where public events and media flights are planned. The massive flying
boat, one of seven built as troop and materiel transports for the Navy, will
then head to an undisclosed lake in Arizona where it will be disassembled and
trucked to Tucson.
The last attempt in early January ended
over Port Townsend, Washington, with the failure of one engine. The plane
turned around and landed in a bay near Victoria before that engine was swapped
for a flight back to Port Alberni. There it was reportedly decided to replace
the remaining two original engines with the two proven engines remaining on
Hawaii Mars. Test flights were done last week.
Det neste blir at han går løs på bibliotekene, offentlige såvel som i skoler, hvor alle bøker av- og om skjeive lukes ut, sammen med bøker som kritiserer jødedommen. Han går ut av absolutt alle FN- organer for deretter be FN finne et annet sted å være. NATO forsvinner ut av interessesfæren til Trump og han stenger grensen mot Canada fordi det flykter mange amerikanere dit. Han bruker/ansetter Qànon og Bad Boys som grensevakter. USA er ikke lenger Europas allierte. Det blir borgerkrig. Jeg har hittil hatt rett om hans tilnærming til Heritage Foundations`Project 2025. Det går ut på å etablere et kristen-fundametalistisk enevelde hvor demokratiet er plukket fra hverandre. Jeg tror at Trump vil få endret lovverket slik at han kan "ta en Putin". Det betyr at han kan fortsette i jobben til han dør. Det høres absurd ut, men følg med......
Nå er tiden inne for Xi Jinping å ta Taiwan. USA vil ikke løfte en finger. Det er jo ikke Trump som har lovet å forsvare dem. (Red.)
By Betsy Klein, CNN
Published 6:00 AM EST, Sun February 9, 2025
President Donald Trump steps off Air Force One upon
arrival at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, on
Friday.
Roberto
Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images
West Palm Beach, FloridaCNN —
Nearly
three weeks into Donald Trump’s second term in office, the president is continuing to dramatically
reimagine and expand his use of executive authority — and to use that authority
to carry out retribution against his perceived political enemies.
The
president spent his first days in office pushing the levers of
government — and his unique powers as commander in chief — to target his
perceived enemies both inside and outside the government. But it didn’t stop
there. His actions in recent days — including revoking former President Joe Biden’s security clearance, announcing plans to gut the Kennedy Center board, and dismissing the national archivist — have only expanded on those
themes.
Trump’s actions over the past few days underscore a president who remains intent on settling scores new and old — and his implicit confidence in his administration’s ability to fight and win subsequent legal challenges.
Related articleTrump is gutting an agency that his daughter once championed
Trump
claimed during a January 2024 Fox News town hall that he would not “have time
for retribution” because he would be too busy making the country successful,
but revenge was still a common theme during his campaign for reelection.
Over
the summer months, it became clear that Trump and his top allies were bracing
for an opportunity to exact revenge, escalating calls for retribution after a Manhattan jury convicted the former president on 34 felony counts in a hush-money trial. Trump
repeatedly suggested that his perceived enemies should be jailed, from the
prosecutors in the Biden administration Justice Department who indicted him to
members of the House select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, attack
on the US Capitol.
Emboldened
by a sweeping November victory, the president is now using his mandate to air
grievances and retaliate — and installing loyalists in key agencies such as
the Department of Justice and the FBI.
These
efforts began in earnest during the first week of Trump’s second term as
he pulled security details for top officials from his
first term; reassigned and dismissed career DOJ officials; issued
executive orders weakening protections for federal workers; and
directed his Justice Department and Office of the Director of National
Intelligence to open broad investigations into Biden administration
“weaponization” of law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
The
president also issued an order pardoning more than 1,000 people charged in the Capitol attack,
and his Justice Department fired officials who worked on the federal criminal
investigations into Trump.
While the initial fast and furious pace of his Week 1 actions has slowed somewhat, a new batch of actions over recent days has only intensified Trump’s grievance tour.
Related article‘Second American Revolution’: The team behind DOGE’s government overhaul
Trump
announced Friday that he was removing Biden’s access to classified information
by revoking his security clearance and stopping his daily intelligence
briefings, a move that Biden took against Trump after January 6. In the social
media post announcing the move, Trump recalled a tagline from his reality
television era, saying, “Joe, you’re fired.”
In
an interview with the New York Post published Saturday, the president said he
intended to target other political rivals with the same measures, restricting
New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin
Bragg, a symbolic move that Trump warned would “take away every right they
have.”
Trump
initiated a number of dismissals Friday night that also appeared to focus on
revenge.
He
announced aggressive plans to gut the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center,
removing multiple members who he said “do not share our Vision for a Golden Age
in Arts and Culture,” as well as ousting its chairman, the billionaire
philanthropist David Rubenstein, an ally of Biden.
A bust of John F. Kennedy is seen inside the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, on February 3, 2024. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
And
the administration announced it had dismissed the archivist of the United
States, Colleen Shogan, at Trump’s direction. While Trump had said he wanted to
replace the archivist, it still amounted to a shocking move targeting Shogan,
who had largely been loyal to Trump.
The role
of the National Archives took on new prominence in recent years, coming under
scrutiny from Republicans in the wake of the search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort as part of
an investigation into his handling of classified documents. Shogan, who has
enjoyed a personal relationship with first lady Melania Trump, was not at the
National Archives when FBI agents searched Trump’s home in 2022.
Trump
stripped more former officials of their security details, even those who are
facing credible threats. Last week, Trump revoked the security detail assigned
to his former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, adding to the growing list of
officials who have faced retribution from their onetime boss. Esper is one of
several top aides who continued to have security after leaving office because
of threats from Iran for actions they took while serving in Trump’s
administration. Gen. Mark Milley, former national security
adviser John Bolton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have all had their details pulled in the
first few weeks since Trump took office.
Also last week, the FBI provided the Justice Department with
names of employees who worked on January 6-related cases after a demand from
the acting deputy attorney general, capping a weeklong back-and-forth between
bureau leadership and the department. Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove
said the information was not gathered to retaliate against agents, but FBI
employees feared it was meant to amass a list of personnel for possible
termination by the Trump administration.
Many
of the recent actions have been expedited and executed by the Department of
Government Efficiency, or DOGE, headed by tech billionaire Elon Musk.
DOGE has moved quickly to dismantle the US Agency for International Development. Trump issued a Day 1 executive order freezing most foreign aid, and many of USAID’s programs were subject to stop orders in the weeks that followed. The agency’s acting leadership announced all direct hires would be placed on leave just before midnight on Friday, gutting the 10,000-person workforce to about 300 essential personnel. But a federal judge issued an order temporarily blocking more than 2,000 USAID officials from being placed on administrative leave. Still, the agency, which Trump has said is run by “radical lunatics,” faces much uncertainty.
Related articleHow Trump and Musk have shaken the federal workforce
A
similar effort appeared to be taking effect this weekend at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, where Trump loyalist
Russell Vought took over as acting director on Friday night. The bureau has
long been a target of conservatives.
“CFPB
RIP,” Musk said in a social media post, adding a tombstone emoji.
DOGE
is also moving to cancel a $168,000 contract through the Department of Health
and Human Services to build a museum exhibit honoring Dr. Anthony Fauci, a
frequent target of Trump’s ire. Fauci, the former director of the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, confirmed the
cancellation of the project, which would have been housed at the National
Institutes of Health. News of the cancellation was first reported by SAN.
CNN’s Steve Contorno, Jerermy Herb and Evan Perez contributed to this report.
Defense secretary to meet
troops in Germany, Poland during first overseas trip
By
John Vandiver
Stars and Stripes • February
8, 2025
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivers remarks from the Pentagon, Jan.
30, 2025. (Alexander Kubitza/U.S. Navy)
STUTTGART,
Germany— Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will swing through Europe next week,
making his first overseas trip that will include stops in Germany and Poland to
meet with troops.
Hegseth, during
a town hall meeting at the Pentagon Friday, said that the trip will involve his
attendance at a NATO defense ministers meeting on Thursday in Brussels.
Forsvarssjefens Militærfaglige Råd av 2023 synes vel pessimistisk. Les saken her: https://tinyurl.com/2c2ef72c
House investigating secret
Navy study of potential brain injuries among TOPGUN pilots
By
Alison Bath
Stars and Stripes • February
7, 2025
An F/A-18 Super Hornet launches during a night
flight in March 2024. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
has asked for documents related to a secret Navy study about potential brain
injury to pilots. (Alison Bath/Stars and Stripes)
A powerful congressional committee is probing a
secret Navy program studying potential traumatic brain injuries suffered by the
service’s aviators, which may have led to the recent suicides of at least three
Super Hornet pilots.
On Thursday, Rep. James Comer, chairman of the
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter to acting
Secretary of the Navy Terence Emmert requesting information and documents
related to Project Odin’s Eye, an internal service review of traumatic brain
injuries potentially sustained by pilots with the Strike Fighter Tactics
Instructor program, popularly known as TOPGUN.
