The Defense Department could offer a $10 million prize to anyone who can solve the mystery around the oxygen deprivation incidents plaguing Navy aircraft, under the Senate’s version of an annual defense policy bill published Tuesday.
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the sponsor, said the prize competition could “unleash the brain power of the entire country and the entire globe” on the oxygen problems in T-45 Goshawk trainer jets and F/A-18 fighters.
Recent spikes in incidents have caused a Navy pilot boycott, groundings of the T-45s in April and delays for student pilots, and have puzzled military engineers and experts who ripped the aircraft apart searching in vain for an answer.
“After the best minds we have at the federal government have tried and, so far, haven’t found an exact diagnosis of what the problem is … we could offer a prize to anyone in the country, anyone on the face of the globe for that matter, and you don’t pay the money unless you get a solution,” Wicker said.
The measure is part of the Senate’s current version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which was crafted by the Armed Services Committee. The bill was published Tuesday and is now headed for a floor vote in the chamber.
The Navy performed a 30-day review to pinpoint the cause but there was no smoking gun in the findings released in June, though the service cited shortcomings with the aircrafts’ onboard oxygen generation system, known as OBOGS.
Despite the findings, flights were to fully resume this month at training facilities in Texas, Mississippi, and Florida with new monitoring for pilots and maintenance procedures to guard against dangers to pilots.
Air Force F-35 jets also experienced a rash of oxygen deprivation incidents at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona and were briefly grounded in June.
Oxygen deprivation among pilots can cause anxiety and confusion, and some crews have been reluctant to fly as reports of hypoxia-like symptoms were on the rise over the past year.
Air Force F-35 jets also experienced a rash of oxygen deprivation incidents at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona and were briefly grounded in June.
Oxygen deprivation among pilots can cause anxiety and confusion, and some crews have been reluctant to fly as reports of hypoxia-like symptoms were on the rise over the past year.
