The pilot was the only person aboard the jet.īy early Friday afternoon, the pilot was receiving visits from friends and family at the medical facility, according to a base spokesperson. The pilot, whose name has not been released, ejected safely from the aircraft and was taken to the Eglin AFB hospital. Friday on the Eglin Air Force Base reservation. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to AFB - An F-22 fighter jet with the 43rd Fighter Squadron crashed at about 9:15 a.m. If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.īut you know what? We change lives. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.” My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. “Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. The result, he says, is that Air Force officials "regard maintaining the image of the airplane as more important than maintaining the health of the pilots.” He adds, “It’s an unkind and simple assessment, but it’s true.”Ībout a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”: “The F-22 is the highest icon of the Air Force: It’s the embodiment of their vision of warfare and technology,” says Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project within the Project on Government Oversight. Yet their technology is cutting edge, potentially allowing the United States to launch stealth attacks by flying at supersonic speeds and taking out enemy aircraft using advanced radars. Developed with enemies like the Soviets in mind, F-22s have yet to fly a single combat mission. The F-22 is a controversial symbol of American air power. US military officials said they could not estimate the cost of fixing the valve and vest, although they said it would certainly be in the “millions” of dollars. At least one Air Force pilot death in an F-22 crash is suspected to have been related to oxygen deprivation. But the service resumed flights in September, and since then, nearly a dozen more possible such cases have been reported, according to Pentagon officials. This has been caused by a faulty valve, installed to protect against chemical attacks.Īir Force officials decided to ground the F-22 in May 2011, after nearly a dozen cases of hypoxia were reported. It has inflated “before it should” in some cases, creating a tightness in the chest. The problem, it turns out, is largely due to a pressurized vest that pilots wear when they fly. In May, two F-22 pilots went public on CBS saying they refused to fly the plane after becoming woozy and dizzy in mid-flight. This was a grave concern for pilots as well. “At one point we got up to 11 incidents, which we could not explain.” Charles Lyon, director of operations for Air Combat Command, who headed the investigation. “What gave the Air Force grave concern last year was the unexplained nature of the incidents and the incident rates,” says Maj. On Tuesday, they announced the results of a wide-ranging investigation into dangerous malfunctions surrounding the most expensive fighter jet in military history. That has been the mystery vexing Pentagon officials for more than a year. Why have US military pilots been passing out at the controls of their F-22 fighter jets?