TWs getting expertise on T-6 issues

Sustaining a 9 G-Force break turn in an F-16 is no small feat, but let go of your breath the wrong way, and the world will fade from gray to black in an instant. Major Justin Elliott, an Air Force Strategic Policy fellow, experienced those events for two weeks in 2015 trying to identify an array of physiological episodes (PEs) problems affecting Defense Department fighter pilots. Elliott is now studying the complexity of PEs affecting DoD’s fighter and training fleet. He’s had more than 255 combat hours in 30 aircraft, and spans the early F-22 Raptors’ breathing tests to the development and testing of the AF’s first “smart” cockpit pressure gauge that’s scheduled to come on line later this year. Air Education and Training Command officials decided to capitalized Elliott’s following recent series unexplained physiological events (UPEs) with AETC’s T-6 instructors and student-pilots within the AF’s training wings (TWs), including at Columbus AFB, Miss. The “priority is making sure our aircrew are safe and smart in the aircraft, confident in themselves and their equipment,” he said. Three years after the F-22 investigations in 2012, today’s research has grown to include collaborative anecdotes from F-35, T-45C Goshawk, international fighter community and even the AF’s pararescuemen. Elliott has recorded briefs that are being integrated into student undergraduate pilot training across AETC bases. The T-6A II is used to train JPPT students in one of the four AF/Navy training tracks. (Source: Air Education and Training Command 03/16/18) Instructor pilot training in the T-6A is currently at the 14th Student Squadron at Columbus AFB; Vance AFB, Okla.; and Laughlin and Sheppard AFBs in Texas.