US Army seeks vendor to disassemble remaining AH-64D attack helos

On the same subject

• 

  January 7, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  New in 2019: Here’s what the Air Force is doing about aviation mishaps

  By: Kyle Rempfer The Air Force, like the other services, suffered a string of fatal aviation mishaps in 2018. A Military Times in-depth review of 5,500 aviation accidents that have occurred since 2013 found that accidents among the nation's manned fighters, bombers, tankers, tilt-rotor and helicopter aircraft has increased 39 percent. In the Air Force, the most serious Class A mishaps have declined, but the number of non-fatal Class C mishaps is increasing, causing some experts to warn that future problems could be on the horizon if the issue is not dealt with. To address concerns among the aviation community, Congress created an eight-person independent commission to review the mishap spike in the 2019 defense bill. For its part, the Air Force conducted a wave of one-day safety stand-downs of flying and maintenance wings over the summer. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein ordered the stand-down in May, after several high-profile mishaps, including the May 2 crash of a WC-130 Hercules and the March 15 loss of an HH-60G Pave Hawk in western Iraq, both of which killed all on board. In a September news release, the Air Force said their review of the data identified six potential risks to aviation safety: stress caused by high operations tempos; a lack of time to properly focus on flying basics, mission activities and training; pressure to accept risk; a culture that pushes airmen to always execute the mission; decreased availability of aircraft; and the potential for airmen to become complacent when carrying out routine tasks. “The review proved tremendously helpful as we continue to seek both high levels of safety with intense and realistic training," Goldfein said in the release. The full report summary, provided at Air Force Times' request, also raised concerns about the increasing requirements on maintainers, and low experience among some maintenance personnel. The service has distributed those findings to the field, according to the release. The findings will help flying and maintenance leaders guide their decisions. “We're taking necessary steps to ensure our airmen operate as safely as possible in an inherently dangerous business,” Goldfein said. “I want to train hard and I want commanders to push themselves and their airmen to achieve high levels of readiness. Sometimes the right answer is knock it off ... sometimes it is push it up. Confidence in the air, safety on the ground and in the air, it's a commander's business.” The summary also cites the aging fleet of Air Force aircraft as a problem contributing to increased maintenance requirements and decreased aircraft availability. The Air Force has already started putting plans into place to address airmen's concerns, including adding more support back to squadrons, reducing additional duties, “enhancing information processes for aircrew mission planning” and cutting staff requirements, according to the release. https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2019/01/05/new-in-2019-heres-what-the-air-force-is-doing-about-aviation-mishaps

• 

  November 16, 2021 | International, Aerospace

  Thailand becomes first foreign customer of AT-6 light-attack aircraft

  Thailand's deal with the American company on the first day of the Dubai Airshow makes it the first international customer of the light attack aircraft.

• 

  June 21, 2018 | International, Security

  Synthetic biology raises risk of new bioweapons, US report warns

  Ian Sample Report warns that swift progress in our ability to manufacture viruses is making us vulnerable to biological attacks The rapid rise of synthetic biology, a futuristic field of science that seeks to master the machinery of life, has raised the risk of a new generation of bioweapons, according a major US report into the state of the art. Advances in the area mean that scientists now have the capability to recreate dangerous viruses from scratch; make harmful bacteria more deadly; and modify common microbes so that they churn out lethal toxins once they enter the body. The three scenarios are picked out as threats of highest concern in a review of the field published on Tuesday by the US National Academy of Sciences at the request of the Department of Defense. The report was commissioned to flag up ways in which the powerful technology might be abused, and to focus minds on how best to prepare. Michael Imperiale, chair of the report committee, and professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Michigan, said the review used only unclassified information and so has no assessment of which groups, if any, might be pursuing novel biological weapons. “We can't say how likely any of these scenarios are,” he said. “But we can talk about how feasible they are.” In the report, the scientists describe how synthetic biology, which gives researchers precision tools to manipulate living organisms, “enhances and expands” opportunities to create bioweapons. “As the power of the technology increases, that brings a general need to scrutinise where harms could come from,” said Peter Carr, a senior scientist at MIT's Synthetic Biology Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. More than 20 years ago, Eckard Wimmer, a geneticist at Stony Brook University in New York, highlighted the potential dangers of synthetic biology in dramatic style when he recreated poliovirus in a test tube. Earlier this year, a team at the University of Alberta built an infectious horsepox virus. The virus is a close relative of smallpox, which may have claimed half a billion lives in the 20th century. Today, the genetic code of almost any mammalian virus can be found online and synthesised. “The technology to do this is available now,” said Imperiale. “It requires some expertise, but it's something that's relatively easy to do, and that is why it tops the list.” Other fairly simple procedures can be used to tweak the genes of dangerous bacteria and make them resistant to antibiotics, so that people infected with them would be untreatable. A more exotic bioweapon might come in the form of a genetically-altered microbe that colonises the gut and churns out poisons. “While that is technically more difficult, it is a concern because it may not look like anything you normally watch out for in public health,” Imperiale said. The report calls on the US government to rethink how it conducts disease surveillance, so it can better detect novel bioweapons, and to look at ways to bolster defences, for example by finding ways to make and deploy vaccines far more rapidly. For every bioweapon the scientists consider, the report sets out key hurdles that, once cleared, will make the weapons more feasible. One bioweapon that is not considered an immediate threat is a so-called gene drive that spreads through a population, rewriting human DNA as it goes. “It's important to recognise that it's easy to come up with a scary-sounding idea, but it's far more difficult to do something practical with it,” said Carr. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jun/19/urgent-need-to-prepare-for-manmade-virus-attacks-says-us-government-report