Bell 525 Relentless back in the air a year after deadly crash

file photo by Steve Douglass 

AIN ONLINE: Today, a year and a day after the fatal crash of its first prototype, Bell Helicopter resumed the flight test program of its model 525 Relentless super-medium twin after receiving experimental certificate renewal from the FAA.

“Today we have resumed a key element of the Bell 525 program,” said Bell CEO Mitch Snyder. “Bell Helicopter has worked with the National Transportation Safety Board and FAA since the accident and we are confident in the resumption of flight test activity.” Snyder said Bell remains on track to certify the 525 in 2018. The 525 features fly-by-wire flight controls and the Garmin G5000H touchscreen-controlled avionics system. The flight test program had been stood down since the fatal crash of 525 flight test vehicle 1 (FTV-1) last July 6th.

Neither of the remaining two test aircraft had engaged in ground runs during the standdown. Two more test aircraft are being built at Bell's plant in Amarillo, Texas. One of those new aircraft is expected to fly this year and the other early next year.

The NTSB has yet to issue its final report on the FTV-1 accident. That aircraft was conducting tests near Vne speeds when the main rotor rpm dropped off and the main rotors departed the normal rotation plane and struck both the tailboom and the nose during the in-flight break-up sequence that destroyed the helicopter, according to the NTSB. A Bell executive told AIN last year that the company was making unspecified modifications to the remaining test aircraft in the wake of the accident.

file photo 

According to FlightRadar24, the helicopter was traveling 199 knots (about 229 mph) at an altitude of 1,975 feet immediately before the crash. Throughout its one-hour test flight, radar data shows the helicopter increased and decreased speed several times.

Bell Helicopter had hoped to complete the certification process for the 525 in 2017, but the crash has delayed certification as well as first deliveries to customers.

“We do remain committed to the 525 program and will work to ensure the aircraft will be a safe, reliable and high-performance helicopter,” said Textron chief executive Scott Donnelly last week. Textron owns Bell Helicopter.

NYTIMES: In North Korea, ‘Surgical Strike’ Could Spin Into ‘Worst Kind of Fighting

NYT: 

SEOUL, South Korea — The standoff over North Korea’s nuclear program has long been shaped by the view that the United States has no viable military option to destroy it. Any attempt to do so, many say, would provoke a brutal counterattack against South Korea too bloody and damaging to risk.

That remains a major constraint on the Trump administration’s response even as North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, approaches his goal of a nuclear arsenal capable of striking the United States. On Tuesday, the North appeared to cross a new threshold, testing a weapon that it described as an intercontinental ballistic missile and that analysts said could potentially hit Alaska.

Over the years, as it does for potential crises around the world, the Pentagon has drafted and refined multiple war plans, including an enormous retaliatory invasion and limited pre-emptive attacks, and it holds annual military exercises with South Korean forces based on them.

But the military options are more grim than ever.

Even the most limited strike risks staggering casualties, because North Korea could retaliate with the thousands of artillery pieces it has positioned along its border with the South. Though the arsenal is of limited range and could be destroyed in days, the United States defense secretary, Jim Mattis, recently warned that if North Korea used it, it “would be probably the worst kind of fighting in most people’s lifetimes.”

READ MORE AT NYTIMES

Drone crashes in Sierra Nevada moutains

A U.S. Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk crashed near Mount Whitney in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountain range at approximately 1:45 p.m. PST yesterday.

No injuries or deaths were reported.

The remotely piloted aircraft was assigned to 12th Reconnaissance Squadron at Beale Air Force Base, California, and was on a routine flight from Edwards Air Force Base en route to its home station when it crashed.

The incident is currently under investigation.

Is Lockheed's NGAD concept the "Dorito" we photographed over Amarillo, Texas?

This author  can't help but feel a bit of vindication when I saw Lockheed Skunkworks latest update rendition of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) aircraft and it looks a heck of a lot like the mystery "Dorito" our group saw and photographed a few years ago which made national headlines.

The subsequent hub-bub, denials and disinformation put out by the war machine only helped reinforce the idea that what we witnessed was something hush-hush.

I took a lot of heat over this sighting and the photographs which were published in Aviation Week & Space Technology Magazine with some internet trolls accusing me of faking the photos and lying and falsifying recorded communications to back up the supposedly hoaxed sighting.

Not to mention it was followed by a very expensive (to the American taxpayer) stunt by the Air Force in what amounted to a dog and pony show - flying three B-2s at low level over Amarillo so they could try and make us doubt what we saw and then officially state (unsolicited mind you) that "B-2s flew over Amarillo." but somehow leaving out the part that it was a month later.

So - from the latest released renditions it looks like the planform of the NGAD matches what we saw. My guess is what we photographed could have been prototypes or technology demonstrators constructed to prove the technology woks.

Still - my enthusiasm is tempered until I'm invited to the roll-out and only then will I truly get to say "I told you it was real."

LINKS: 

MYSTERY AIRCRAFT OVER AMARILLO 

B-2s over Amarillo 

TROLLS

YOU TUBE WFAA VIDEO

Charges filed against federal contractor who leaked NSA materials to the media

(CNN)

The Justice Department announced charges Monday against a federal contractor with Top Secret security clearance, after she allegedly leaked classified information to an online media outlet.
Reality Leigh Winner, 25, a contractor with Pluribus International Corporation in Georgia, is accused of "removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet," according to a federal complaint.

CNN is told by sources that the document Winner allegedly leaked is the same one used as the basis for the article published Monday by The Intercept, detailing a classified National Security Agency memo. The NSA report, dated May 5, provides details of a 2016 Russian military intelligence cyberattack on a US voting software supplier, though there is no evidence that any votes were affected by the hack.

A US official confirmed to CNN that The Intercept's document is a genuine, classified NSA document.

US intelligence officials tell CNN that the information has not changed the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, which found: "Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple US state or local electoral boards. DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying."
Prosecutors say when confronted with the allegations, Winner admitted to intentionally leaking the classified document -- and she was arrested June 3 in Augusta, Georgia.

An internal audit revealed Winner was one of six people who printed the document, but the only one who had email contact with the news outlet, according to the complaint. It further states that the intelligence agency was subsequently contacted by the news outlet on May 30 regarding an upcoming story, saying it was in possession of what appeared to be a classified document.

"Releasing classified material without authorization threatens our nation's security and undermines public faith in government. People who are trusted with classified information and pledge to protect it must be held accountable when they violate that obligation," Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in a statement Monday.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions also slammed leaks last month in the wake of the Manchester attacks, saying: "We have already initiated appropriate steps to address these rampant leaks that undermine our national security."

READ MORE AT CNN