AF, reservist lawmaker clash over flight suit - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

AF, reservist lawmaker clash over flight suit

A KC-135 pilot in Congress is facing off against Air Force leadership over whether now is the time to invest $100 million in a new high-tech flight suit.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Reserve captain and first-term Illinois Republican elected last year on a tea party platform to cut spending, has already gotten the House to go along with his push to cancel the $99.4 million, seven-year program.

Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz and other aviation experts argue the new flight suit could save lives and is a sound investment.

The week of June 13, the fight moves to the Senate, as the Senate Armed Services Committee takes up its version of the 2012 defense authorization bill.

Kinzinger’s argument is the new flight suit is a waste of money. And he cites an unusual source to support his position: Schwartz, himself.

Schwartz has not discussed the issue extensively in public. But in a budget hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, he had this exchange with Rep. Tim Griffin, R-Ark.

Griffin: “Representative Kinzinger of Illinois wanted me to ask about the flight suit development. He indicated that he had seen the press articles about a $100 million price tag for developing a flight suit. He was just wondering if that’s accurate and if you have anything to say about that. I think he’s an Air Force pilot himself.”

Schwartz: “We’re not in the business of redesigning our flight suit under the current circumstances.”

Kinzinger later cited that statement in testimony on the House floor when he offered his amendment to the authorization bill.

“General Schwartz, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, also stated that now is not the right time to develop a new flight suit. On Feb. 17, 2011, at the hearing for the 2012 budget request for the Department of the Air Force … General Schwartz stated, ‘We are not in the business of redesigning our flight suit under the current circumstances.’

“I agree with General Schwartz and believe we must work together to ensure that money we do not have is not spent on government programs we do not need.”

But Lt. Col. Sam Highley, Schwartz’s spokesman, told Air Force Times in an email that Kinzinger took the general out of context. Highley did not elaborate, but because Griffin did not distinguish between the coveralls and the protective gear worn with it, it is possible Schwartz failed to grasp exactly what the congressman was asking.

More than coveralls

TIAX LLC of Lexington, Mass., is getting the $99.4 million to design, develop and test the flight suit — coveralls and protective gear integrated into a single ensemble — that company officials insist will be more comfortable and less costly to buy and maintain than the current system developed in the 1950s and updated with new fabric developed during the Vietnam-era.

The current system, used by nearly all of the 2,700 pilots who fly high-performance aircraft, consists of several pieces that must be worn on top of the Air Force’s iconic green coveralls — an anti-G suit, an anti-exposure suit for flying over cold water, flotation devices, thermal protection and altitude protection, for example.

F-22 pilots are the exception. They have their own gear because of the extreme forces the aircraft can endure while performing tight turns and steep climbs and descents at supersonic speeds.

The number of pieces in the suit increased as aircraft became more sophisticated, but most were not designed to work with each other, according to a statement from Air Force headquarters in the Pentagon.

“The current ensemble is multi-layered, bulky, induces heat stress, and poorly integrated,” the statement reads. “Subcomponents are incompatible with others, limiting aircrew capability and performance.”

The net result: Existing gear endangers pilots, says retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula, a former F-15 fighter pilot and Air Force intelligence chief who now works as a national security and intelligence consultant.

Pilots can black out — suffering what doctors call G-induced loss of consciousness — when performing extreme maneuvers in which they experience high G forces. One G is equal to the force of gravity; fighter aircraft can require pilots to withstand as many as 9 Gs, or nine times the force of gravity.

“If you are under a lot of stress, you are dehydrated … you can lose control of the aircraft and die as a result,” Deptula said.

Case in point: 2nd Lt. David J. Mitchell blacked out during a simulated dogfight and crashed his F-16 near Luke Air Force Base, Ariz, in March 2008, dying instantly. He was 26.

Although it’s impossible to put a price on a human life, there are also tangible costs involved.

Mitchell’s Falcon cost $22 million. An F-35 runs about $130 million. Losing one of each fighter would cost the Air Force $52 million more than the contract for the new coveralls and protective gear, which TIAX is calling the Integrated Air Crew Ensemble.

“We’re trying to integrate everything as much a possible,” said Carl Medeiros, who’s overseeing the uniform project at Air Force Materiel Command’s Human Systems Division, in a November interview with Air Force Times, shortly after TIAX was awarded the contract.

A young upstart

Kinzinger is the 33-year-old son of an elementary schoolteacher and the former head of two faith-based organizations who won his first elected office — a county board seat — as a college sophomore.

A student at Illinois State University, Kinzinger went head-to-head with a three-term Democratic incumbent and came out on top, according to his official biography. A fiscal conservative even then, he fought pay raises for elected officials and taxes on Internet businesses.

Kinzinger ran for re-election and won by a landslide, then served just one year of his second term before leaving office to join the Air Force, his biography says.

In November 2003, Kinzinger earned a commission as a second lieutenant and entered flight school. He has served with Air Force Special Operations Command, Air Combat Command, Air Mobility Command and the Air National Guard.

Kinzinger has been awarded six Air Medals for flying combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2007, he received the Airman’s Medal for saving a young woman in Milwaukee from an attacker.

Walking down the street with a date, Kinzinger saw a knife-wielding man chasing the woman, who was already bleeding heavily. Kinzinger wrestled the attacker to the ground and held him until help arrived.

Kinzinger resumed his political career in 2010, trouncing the Democratic incumbent in Illinois’ 11th House district. Less than a year after being elected, he has established himself as a rising star in conservative circles. Time magazine last year put Kinzinger on its “Top 40 under 40” list.

One subject Kinzinger has embraced is defense. He has repeatedly told voters and House colleagues that his service gives him a unique understanding of what airmen want and need.

Being a budget hawk, though, Kinzinger unabashedly calls on his colleagues to differentiate between want and need — and one program he says the Air Force doesn’t need is a new flight suit.

In response to questions from Air Force Times, Kinzinger issued a statement similar to comments he made during testimony at House budget hearings.

“While the goal of increased comfort and integrated protection for the pilot is laudable,” Kinzinger said in the statement, “I don’t believe that this is urgently needed by the Air Force, particularly in this budget environment.”

Budget analyst Mark Gunzinger, a former B-52 pilot now with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, disagrees.

“This does not appear to be a matter of comfort,” said Gunzinger. “It’s a question of providing aircrews with the equipment they need to operate effectively in a wide range of environments, some of which are likely to be quite extreme.”

Aircrew members numbering some 30,000 — from pilots and airborne linguists to loadmasters and boom operators — will wear the green coveralls several more years, Highley said. But Schwartz “supports the research and development program” for the streamlined gear for fighter and bomber aircrews. Helicopter and transport versions are also being developed.

Deptula, the retired three-star, fully backs Schwartz’s position.

“If [a new flight suit] saves one life — and the probability is very high that it will — it’s worth the investment,” he said. “The chief has it right on this investment.”