Domingo Rosillo: Key West celebrates centennial Cuba flight

www.past-to-present.com

MiamiHerald.com

cartelerafamiliar.blogspot.com

KEY WEST, Fla. -- Exactly 100 years after making the first successful flight between Key West and Havana, Cuba, aviation pioneer Domingo Rosillo del Toro is being honored.

Rosillo's son Albert Rosillo and other family members unveiled a bust of the pilot Friday at Key West International Airport.

The unveiling marked the 100th anniversary of a May 17, 1913, race between Domingo Rosillo and Agustin Parla to be the first pilot to accomplish the 90-mile open-water crossing between Key West and Cuba.

Rosillo triumphed after Parla encountered mechanical problems, reportedly landing in about two hours.

Seven years later, a fledgling Key West airline launched the United States' first scheduled international airmail and passenger service. In 1927, the island was the birthplace of Pan American World Airways.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/17/3402890/key-west-celebrates-centennial.html#storylink=cpy

When war is desk job, drone pilots burn out

nbcnews

Nidhi Subbaraman 

Driving a war drone is a stressful business. Shifts up to 12 hours long are stretches of dullness, watching and waiting, interrupted by flashes of intense activity in which pilots must make life-or-death decisions. Not their own life or death, however.

U.S. Air Force/ A pilot trainee flies an MQ-1 Predator simulator

Pilots may be thousands of miles away from the flying weapons system they're operating. They often head home at the end of the day, as if returning from any other office job, maybe picking up milk on the way. But while at work, their drones' onboard cameras put them in a unique position to watch people being killed and injured as a direct result of their actions.

As psychologists learn more about the mental scarring warfare leaves on drone pilots — caused by long shift hours, isolation, witnessing casualties and those Jekyll-and-Hyde days split between battlefield and home — experts from within the U.S. Air Force are calling for a review of drone pilot selection.

Brad Hoagland, an Air Force colonel and visiting researcher at the Brookings Institution, and a fighter-jet pilot and operations commander of 23 years himself, believes that drone pilots could be picked better, and that existing selection techniques are due to be updated now that the service has accumulated almost a decade of research into the psychological characteristics of drone pilots.

"The thrill of taking off from a runway, flying a mission and then coming back and landing at the end of the mission — that’s very exciting," he told NBC News. "But I think that’s a different type of person who can do that, than someone who is maybe wired to fly an unmanned system from a console 7,000 miles away. It’s a different psychological makeup requirement to execute the mission."

Right stuff, wrong stuff"I think we are still trying to figure out exactly what the 'right stuff' is," Wayne Chappelle, a clinical psychologist consulting for Air Force Medical at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, told NBC News. "We have a general idea ... but I certainly think we're probably more aware of what the wrong stuff is versus the right stuff."

The trouble is that spotting the known positive attributes in up-and-coming drone pilots is harder than spotting the negative attributes. To begin with, Chappelle drew up a portrait of the ideal drone pilot from the recorded testimony of 82 drone pilots and their supervisors in a 2011 report.

Good drone pilots, according to Chappelle's findings, have excellent memory for pictures and sounds. They are bombarded with sounds and images from multiple screens through their long shifts, but parse that data quickly, cutting through the noise. They're multitaskers and collaborators.

"These guys are very smart, very bright in a wide range of areas. They are emotionally resilient and highly stress tolerant and very motivated," Chappelle said.

People who have a history of abuse or dependence on alcohol, drugs or other substances, anxiety or depression, and cognitive impairments such as learning disabilities tend to make bad drone pilots.

Although the strengths of a drone pilot differ from the strengths of a manned fighter pilot, Chappelle said the psychological screening protocol for both is the same — and hasn't changed in a decade. "We're still looking at ways to improve and expand upon the screening procedures."

In his research, Hoagland has found that washout rates among undergraduate pilot trainees headed to crafts like the F-16 are traditionally about 10 to 15 percent. But drone pilot trainees exit at 30 percent (though that's down from 45 percent a few years ago). Pilots may drop out, but more often, they fail to meet some flight or academic criteria along the way, Hoagland said.

And when they do graduate, they receive mental health diagnoses at a rate on par with pilots who fly in aircraft, and at much higher rates than other non-pilot Air Force personnel, according to a February 2013 report by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center.

NBC News has requested to interview a pilot or pilot instructor at the Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, where drone pilots are trained, but to date the Air Force has declined the request without further explanation.

Testing, testing
In an upcoming report headed to the Pentagon, Hoagland will suggest some fixes for his higher-ups to consider.

For one, though the Air Force has a test called the Pilot Candidate Scoring Method, not all pilot candidates — of drones or manned craft — are given the exam. (The Air Force Academy, for example, only recently started administering it, and only on an "experimental" basis.)

"I can't believe we as an Air Force haven't standardized this," Hoagland says. Once everyone's taking the test, and baseline scores are set, those scores can be mined for indicators as to who might be better suited to fly an F-16 and who might be destined for a drone. "It's a common sense approach."

Also, though it's been standard procedure to assess concentration, attention, psychomotor skills as part of the Medical Flight Screening-Neurosychiatric test in pre-screened pilots-to-be, that information is not used in the selection process. Tests do weed out the medically and psychologically unfit — Hoagland thinks it would be an easy next step to ask: "Is this person suited for an unmanned or manned system?"

The coming swarm
As the Air Force's drone program grows, so does the importance of pilot selection. What started in 2004 as five drone combat patrols — four aircraft each — will to swell to 65 patrols by 2014. By 2010, Predators had logged more than a million combat hours, more than any other military bird. And today's population of 1,300 combat drone pilots will be joined by 500 more in the next few years.

And as autonomous systems evolve, the capabilities of unmanned craft will, too. The Air Force will shift to a system with multiple vehicles flown in tandem, answering to a single pilot. These "swarm" handlers will have more complex tasks heaped on them earlier in their career.

"In terms of who we need to have, I think we're on a learning curve there," Anthony Tvaryanas, a doctor of aerospace medicine and technical advisor with the 711th Human Systems Integration Directorate at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, told NBC News.

"If [a pilot is] operating a swarm, what are you looking for in that person? I don't think anyone's looking into those concepts," Tvaryanas said.

"As we get from a pilot in an airplane to a pilot outside the airplane to a pilot controlling 100 airplanes, I think we're approaching the limits of what [prior experience and studies] can inform us. There's a need to look back at training," he added.

quittingtomorrow

U.S. Launches Drone from Aircraft Carrier for First Time

ExtraWorldNews 

breitbart

(AP) - A drone the size of a fighter jet took off from the deck of an American aircraft carrier for the first time Tuesday in a test flight that could eventually open the way for the U.S. to launch unmanned aircraft from just about any place in the world.

The X-47B is the first drone designed to take off and land on a carrier, meaning the U.S. military would not need permission from other countries to use their bases.

"As our access to overseas ports, forward operating locations and airspace is diminished around the world, the value of the aircraft carrier and the air wing becomes more and more important," Rear Adm. Ted Branch, commander of Naval Air Forces Atlantic, said after the flight off the Virginia coast. "So today is history."

The move to expand the capabilities of the nation's drones comes amid growing criticism of America's use of Predators and Reapers to gather intelligence and carry out lethal missile attacks against terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.

Critics in the U.S. and abroad have charged that drone strikes cause widespread civilian deaths and are conducted with inadequate oversight.

Still, defense analysts say drones are the future of warfare.

The new Joint Strike Fighter jet "might be the last manned fighter the U.S. ever builds. They're so expensive, they're so complex, and you put a human at risk every time it takes off from a carrier," said James Lewis, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"This is the next generation of military technology _ the unmanned vehicles, the unmanned submersibles, the unmanned aircraft. This will be the future of warfare, and it will be a warfare that is a little less risky for humans but maybe a little more effective when it comes to delivering weapons and effect."

While the X-47B isn't intended for operational use, it will help Navy officials develop future carrier-based drones. Those drones could begin operating by 2020, according to Rear Adm. Mat Winter, the Navy's program executive officer for unmanned aviation and strike weapons.

The X-47B is far bigger than the Predator, has three times the range and can be programmed to carry out missions with no human intervention, the Navy said.

While the X-47B isn't a stealth aircraft, it was designed with the low profile of one. That will help in the development of future stealth drones, which would be valuable as the military changes its focus from the Middle East to the Pacific, where a number of countries' air defenses are a lot stronger than Afghanistan's.

"Unmanned systems would be the likely choice in a theater or an environment that was highly defended or dangerous where we wouldn't want to send manned aircraft," Branch said.

During Tuesday's flight, the X-47B used a steam catapult to launch, just as traditional Navy warplanes do. The unarmed aircraft then landed at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland.

The next critical test for the tailless plane will come this summer, when it attempts to land on a moving aircraft carrier, one of the most difficult tasks for Navy pilots.

Earlier this month, the X-47B successfully landed at the air station using a tailhook to catch a cable and bring it to a quick stop, just as planes setting down on carriers have to do.

The X-47B has a wingspan of about 62 feet and weighs 14,000 pounds, versus nearly 49 feet and about 1,100 pounds for the Predator.

While Predators are typically piloted via remote control by someone in the U.S., the X-47B relies only on computer programs to tell it where to fly unless a human operator needs to step in. Eventually, one person may be able to control multiple unmanned aircraft at once, Branch said.

The group Human Rights Watch said it is troubled by what it described as a trend toward the development of fully autonomous weapons that can choose and fire upon targets with no human intervention.

"We're saying you must have meaningful human control over key battlefield decisions of who lives and who dies. That should not be left up to the weapons system itself," said Steve Goose, director of the arms division at Human Rights Watch.

Developed by Northrop Grumman under a 2007 contract at a cost of $1.4 billion, the X-47B is capable of carrying weapons and providing around-the-clock intelligence, surveillance and targeting, according to the Navy, which has been giving updates on the project over the past few years.

The X-47B can reach an altitude of more than 40,000 feet and has a range of more than 2,100 nautical miles, versus 675 for the Predator. The Navy plans to show the drone can be refueled in flight, which would give it even greater range.

17 Air Force officers stripped of authority to launch nuclear missiles

Security Clearance

www.usaukonline.com

By Barbara Starr

In an unprecedented action, an Air Force commander has stripped 17 of his officers of their authority to control and launch nuclear missiles.
The 17 are being sent to undergo 60 to 90 days of intensive refresher training on how to do their jobs. The action comes after their unit performed poorly on an inspection and one officer was investigated for potential compromise of nuclear launch codes, according to Lt. Col. John Dorrian, an Air Force spokesman.
The story was first reported by The Associated Press.
The action was taken by the deputy commander of the 91st Operations Group, Lt. Col. Jay Folds, whose officers run launch control centers for the Minuteman III nuclear missiles from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota.
Folds announced the action in an emotionally charged April e-mail to his unit, saying in part, "Did you know that we, as an operations group, have fallen - and its it time to stand ourselves back up?"
In that e-mail, Folds says, "We're discovering such rot in the crew force," while they are on alert status - standing watch over the nuclear force - that the unit is accepting of violations of weapons safety rules, and code compromises.
In words not often used by military officers, Folds told his troops to "crush any rules violators" and said, "We are, in fact, in a crisis right now."
CNN obtained a copy of the e-mail, which was also first obtained by the AP.
Dorrian confirmed that Folds was referring to a potential deliberate violation of Air Force rules regarding nuclear launch codes and the failure of his troops to report when they see potential violations.
The Air Force action affects only the 17 personnel deemed to need the training; others remain on duty.
The unit underwent a regular comprehensive inspection in March, according to Dorrian. The inspection consisted of an evaluation of 22 tasks. At the time, the unit was announced as having passed with a 'satisfactory" rating, which is third on a scale of five.
But on one of the 22 tasks involving launch operations, it was rated "marginal" which is one step above "unsatisfactory." Dorrian called it the equivalent of a "D" grade.
Then the incident of potential compromise of launch codes occurred. Dorrian said the investigation found no compromise, but did find the codes were "potentially handled improperly," by one officer, who is now facing discipline. All of this then led to Folds' e-mail and action, according to Dorrian.
Dorrian noted that while some in the Air Force might view Folds' e-mail as "emotional," his actions are fully supported at the highest levels of the Air Force. In other portions of his e-mail Folds told his unit:
– "Turn off the TVs."
– "Clean your patches, uniforms and get your hair cut."
– "Bring to my attention immediately any officer who bad mouths a senior officer."
While some nuclear officers are sent for retraining every year, this is the most extensive action taken to date, Dorrian confirmed. It comes after a 2008 Pentagon report was sharply critical of the Air Force for not focusing on the post-Cold War nuclear mission, and for a bomber that, in a flight over multiple states, carried nuclear-tipped missiles without the Air Force realizing it.

World's first carbon fibre helicopter crashes and sinks in Auckland harbour

ITN

Search for human remains at 9/11 plane debris site in NYC begins

usnews

By Shimon Prokupecz, NBCNewYork.com

Workers for the New York City medical examiner's office have begun sifting soil for possible human remains at a site near the World Trade Center where a chunk of airplane debris believed to have come from one of the 9/11 hijacked jetliners was found.

The aircraft part has been identified as a piece from a 767 wing, officials said Monday. NBC 4 New York, which first reported the finding in an alley near ground zero last week, has also learned the answer to the mystery of a rope that was found intertwined in the part — according to a law enforcement official, a detective who responded to the original call about the part last week tried to move it with a rope.

Authorities on Friday had said the rope might have indicated the part was lowered into the alley, but have since interviewed everyone who had contact with the part last week and have now answered that question. The official tells NBC 4 New York that the detective found the rope nearby and was trying to move the part to find a serial number or other identifying mark.

The NYPD also said Monday that a Boeing technician has confirmed that the 5-foot part is a trailing edge flap actuation support structure.

"It is believed to be from one of the two aircraft destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, but it could not be determined which one," NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said.

On Sept. 11, American Airlines flight 11 hit the north tower at 8:46 a.m., and United flight 175 hit the south tower at 9:03 a.m. A FEMA graphic below shows that all the other plane parts in the immediate area were from flight 175.

Police and officials from the city medical examiner's office were on scene Monday preparing to sift the soil under the part for lost human remains. Officials said the part will be removed later in the week when that process is complete.

The part was found wedged between two buildings in a very narrow alley only about 18 inches wide between the rear of 50 Murray St. and back of 51 Park Place, the site where a mosque and community center has been proposed three blocks from ground zero.

The part bears a "Boeing" stamp, followed by a series of numbers.

The NYPD said the landing gear was found after surveyors hired by the property owner inspecting the rear of 51 Park Place called police on Wednesday. 

Most of the rubble from the 9/11 attack was cleared from the 16-acre site by the spring of 2002. Other debris, including human remains, has been found scattered outside the site, including on a rooftop and in a manhole, in years since.

Part of 9/11 Plane Landing Gear Discovered in Lower Manhattan

By Sandy Fitzgerald/ newsmax

(AP/New York City Police Department)

Investigator are still trying to learn how a piece of landing gear from one of the jets that crashed into the World Trade Center almost 12 years ago ended up lodged near the site of planned Islamic community center blocks away in Manhattan.

Surveyors inspecting a site between 51 Park Place – where the much -protested community center is to be housed – and 50 Murray Street discovered the large piece of metal debris. An inspector for the crew, which was hired by the owner of 51 Park Place, was on the roof of the building when he noticed the debris and called 911.

Police secured the debris, which remains lodged between the two buildings, and marked the location, about three blocks away from “ground zero” with tape as a crime scene. A member of the NYPD's aviation unit confirmed that the serial number linked the item to one of the planes used in the attack.

Sharif El-Gamal, president of property owners Soho Properties, said the company is working with the police and the city to ensure the landing gear – marked clearly with the word “Boeing” and numbers – “is removed with care as quickly and effectively as possible."

The landing gear stirred emotions among New Yorkers.

Ilila Tahlov, a hairdresser at a shop near the Park Place building, told the New York Daily News that the discovery brought painful memories.

“It all came back,” she said.

But others were skeptical about the debris suddenly showing up.

“I don’t believe it for one minute,” said Adam Leitman Bailey, who represents El-Gamal. “I think this is a prank, and there’s no way this all of a sudden showed up. It’s hard to believe they now have found evidence that wasn’t put there recently.”

El-Gamal, though, said Bailey does not have the authority to speak for him, and that his company is “cooperating fully with the appropriate authorities to make sure this piece of evidence is removed with care as quickly and effectively as possible.”

The piece of landing gear, wedged one story above ground, is about 5 feet high and 3 feet wide.
Van Vanable, a former One World Trade Center ironworker, said he is amazed by the discovery.

“I was part of the cleanup,” he said. “It’s still devastating to think about — how people suffered from then to now.”

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the police are also exploring the possibility that the gear was lowered to the spot, as there was a rope found intertwined in the part, the New York Post reported. But he called the part a “historic artifact,” noting that “it brings back terrible memories from anyone who was here or anyone who was involved in that event.

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newswidget/plane-sept-11-manhattan/2013/04/26/id/501618?promo_code=10E2C-1&utm_source=10E2Canadafreepress&utm_medium=nmwidget&utm_campaign=widgetphase1#ixzz2RhmSXod1

 

FAA Sequester: Is Obama Intentionally Delaying Flights to Teach America a Lesson?

Pajamasmedia

AMERICAN AIRLINES GROUNDS ALL OF ITS FLIGHTS UNTIL 5 P.M. ET OVER COMPUTER PROBLEMS

Fox News

American Airlines flights across the country are grounded because of computer problems.
American asked the Federal Aviation Administration to halt its flights until 5 p.m. EDT. Flights on regional affiliate American Eagle heading to Dallas, Chicago or New York's LaGuardia Airport have been stopped until 3:30 p.m. EDT.
Some passengers are stuck on planes while others can't make reservations.
Passengers are using social media to flood the airline with complaints.
American Airlines spokesman Kent Powell said Tuesday that the airline is trying to resolve the issues as quickly as it can.
On Twitter, American is sending out apologies but not offering customers much information about when the problem will be fixed.

US Black Hawk Chopper Crashes Near N. Korea Border

breitbart

A US military helicopter crashed Tuesday near the North Korean border, a South Korean defence official said, with no reported casualties.

The helicopter, identified by the Yonhap news agency as a UH-60 Black Hawk, came down in Cheolwon county, which touches on the border with North Korea, a defence ministry spokesman told AFP. 

Rusia y Cuba comenzarán la construcción de un nuevo aeropuerto internacional en La Habana

Base aérea militar de San Antonio de los Banos/ Google Earth

EUROPA PRESS

   Rusia y Cuba comenzarán la construcción de un nuevo aeropuerto internacional en la capital cubana, La Habana, según ha informado este lunes la agencia estatal rusa RIA Novosti.

   El proyecto se puso en marcha durante la visita del primer ministro ruso, Dimitri Medvedev, a Cuba el pasado febrero. El aeropuerto se construirá en la base aérea militar de San Antonio de los Banos, situada a unos 30 kilómetros de la capital cubana y a 10 del aeropuerto internacional José Martí, el principal del país. La base aérea se construyó entre 1970 y 1980 con ayuda de la Unión Soviética

   En noviembre, el ministro de Industria y Comercio ruso, Denis Mantourov, anunció que el programa de cooperación entre Rusia y Cuba, que finaliza en 2020, incluye la creación de un centro de transportes y la fundación de una compañía aérea ruso-cubana, que aseguraría los vuelos en el interior de Cuba y los vuelos desde La Habana hacia los países de América latina e incluso América del norte.

   El número de turistas rusos hacia los países latinoamericanos está en constante aumento. En 2012, unos 87.000 ciudadanos rusos visitaron Cuba, un 10,8 por ciento más que durante el 2011.

Bali jet skids into ocean, splits in two

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"From the AIRCAT Files" - Dr. Richard Haines Testimony

csetiweb

Dr. Haines has been a NASA research scientist since the mid 1960's. He has worked on the Gemini, Apollo and Skylab programs as well as several others. Over the past 30 years, Dr. Haines has compiled over 3,000 cases of unusual visual and radar sightings of unexplained aerial phenomena -- known as the AIRCAT files.

"Spacecraft over Mexico" -- Air Traffic Controller Enrique Kolbeck Testimony

csetiweb

Mr. Enrique Kolbeck is a senior Air Traffic Controller at Mexico City International Airport. In his testimony he speaks about the frequent UFO sightings seen at the airport visually and on radar. They are clocked at tremendous speeds and making almost instantaneous hairpin turns. Of the 140 air traffic controllers at the airport, he estimates that over 50 have seen this phenomenon.

Drones crash (a lot) but the military's safety lessons may help civilians

NBCNews

National Transportation Safety Board

The remains of a Predator B "Reaper" drone, sprinkled across the Arizona mountainside near Nogales, in this April 2006 photo released by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Around 9:30 on the night of May 1, 2011, an Air Force Predator that had been in the air for 18 hours suddenly hurtled towards the ground at 400 feet per minute, crashing near a U.S. base at Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

The soldiers who brought the craft back to camp had to cut off its wings so it would fit in their vehicles. Cause of crash? Engine failure, clogged oil filter.

Five years earlier, over American soil, a similar incident occurred. A Department of Homeland Security drone on a routine border patrol was destroyed after nosediving into hilly scrubland near Nogales, Ariz. Investigations revealed a number of causes: pilot errors, display failures, poor design.

Big drones actually crash a lot. Official statistics on large unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) accident rates vary, but drones are 30 to 300 times more likely to crash than small civil aircrafts, according to one estimate. According to a 2005 Department of Defense report, every 100,000 flight hours saw 191 AAI Shadow UAVs destroyed or in need of drastic repairs, compared to just four manned F-16s.

Drones suffer from the usual aircraft mechanical and pilot failures, but they also grapple with uniquely drone-ish issues: They're harder to launch and land, and lost communication links pose a problem. But as drones spend more time aloft, operators and craft manufacturers have had a chance to find and iron out kinks in the machinery. Most drones today are of the larger military variety, but that'll change. In 2015, regulators will begin granting permits to a wider array of small drone operators in U.S. airspace. Fortunately, they'll have detailed obituaries of hundreds of lost UAVs to help inform their safety guidelines.

Why do they fail?
Because they don't carry a human life, drones are sometimes pushed harder than piloted planes. In one instance, a Reaper drone was running perilously low on fuel as it neared its destination, but controllers felt that the target was important enough to sacrifice a drone. So they kept going, Peter Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute told NBC News, citing a private Air Force briefing.

In another instance, a drone ran out of missiles. "But they really wanted the target, so they turned that system into a kamikaze," Singer said.

Like manned aircrafts, UAVs can run out of fuel or encounter mechanical failures, John Hansman, an aviation researcher at MIT, told NBC News. Though such problems aren't drone specific, they are significant — a DoD survey showed that 57 percent of accidents until 2005 were caused by flight control issues or engine or transmission problems.

National Transportation and Safety Board

Another 2006 photo of the downed Predator from Nogales, Ariz.

The same DoD survey said 14 percent of failures involved lost communication links. "Even if things move at the speed of light over fiber optics, there’s still a delay," Singer told NBC News.

It's getting better
These days, takeoffs and landings are controlled by a local crew within sight of the craft, while in-air maneuvers are controlled by mission control at a base in the U.S. To help drone pilots, researchers like MIT's Missy Cummings and Raza Waraich are studying ways to develop control systems and environments in which drone operators can operate more efficiently.

The unmanned craft are getting smarter, too. AeroVironment's small military drones can return to their launch point or land at a safe spot if their communication link falls silent, company spokesman Steve Gatlin told NBC News.

A tall tree or hill can interrupt the link, so some AeroVironment drones are programmed to climb in altitude and reestablish that link. If General Atomics' Predator or Grey Eagle UAVs lose contact, they can navigate to different air space and try connecting again. If that doesn't work, the crafts navigate back to the operating base. The Grey Eagle can even land itself.

Air Force stats reflect these improvements. In 2005, for every 100,000 hours of flight time, 22 drones cost the Air Force $2 million or more (each!). By 2012, that number fell to 3.5 per 100,000-hour interval, Air Force Safety Center spokesperson Masao Doi told NBC News via email. According to General Atomics, the original Predator now encounters 8.5 mishaps every 100,000 flight hours.

What about smaller flying robots?
The military tends to fly big UAVs, but the drones that may soon dot the skies over local municipalities are smaller, weighing under 55 lbs. For now, safety data on civil drones is scarce, Gerald Dillingham, a civil aviation expert at the Government Accountability Office told NBC News.

In preparation for a more drone-friendly U.S. airspace, the Federal Aviation Administration is working with the DoD. They signed an agreement in 2011, in which the DoD agreed to share military drone data on safety with the civilian regulatory agency.

Meanwhile, the FAA has begun collecting accident reports from companies that apply to test their drones domestically, and will set up six test sites within the U.S. to help establish the airworthiness of smaller UAVs.

"It’s still not black and white," Dillingham said about applying data from military crashes to civilian safety concerns. However, "I do still say that some information is a lot better than no information."

Wright brothers flew 2 years after Gustav Whitehead, researcher claims

 Fox News

Aviation Pioneer Whitehead with daughter Rose in front of his "No. 21". In the foreground is his self-built gas pressure motor. (Flight Historical Research Foundation Gustav Weisskopf)

Were we wrong about the Wright Brothers?
That's the shocking claim by Australian aviation historian John Brown, who told FoxNews.com he has photographic proof that German immigrant Gustav Whitehead flew over Connecticut in 1901 -- Orville and Wilbur were second.
“Two years, four months, and three days before the Wright brothers, somebody else flew first,” Brown said via phone from Germany. "It’s really a radical revision of the history of aviation."

'Two years, four months, and three days before the Wright brothers, somebody else flew first.'

- Australian aviation historian John Brown

Even “Jane’s: All the World’s Aircraft” -- widely considered the essential bible of flight -- has acknowledged Whitehead's achievement and Brown's research. With the headline "justice delayed is justice denied," editor-in-chief Paul Jackson wrote about the early aviator's story for the overview to the newly released 100th edition of the reference guide, published online on Saturday.
“Today, it seems impossible that a vast cache of documentary evidence ... can be overlooked by the world at large,” he wrote.
The Wright brothers soared into history books on Dec. 17, 1903, following their historic, 852-foot, 59-second flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina -- an achievement for which the duo are widely described as being “first in flight.” But historians have long known that others were working on a variety of flying machines, including a fellow U.S. resident, German immigrant Gustav Whitehead (born Weisskopf).
Whitehead flew early in the morning of Aug. 14, 1901, Brown said. His winged, bird-like plane was called  No. 21, or "The Condor"; with wooden wheels and canvas wings stretched taut across bat-like wooden arms, it rose over the darkened streets of Bridgeport, Conn., and covered an estimated 1.5 miles at a height of 50 feet, he said.
Whitehead brought the chief editor of the Bridgeport Herald to witness the event, which led to a news article for the paper and a photo of the historic event -- a photo that, unfortunately for history, turned out to be awfully blurry.
“There were four journalists who saw the photo back in the early 1900s. They saw it up close, the real-life version. I have to use their eyes to be able to see it,” Brown, who has cultivated a vast crop of information on Whitehead, told FoxNews.com.

What happened to Whitehead?

  * Patent problems. Orville and Wilbur filed a patent as well as numerous injunctions against other early pioneers, Brown said.   * Criminal associates. Whitehead disastrously picked a convicted criminal to help commercialize the technology. He was locked from his own factory.   * The Smithsonian. Jackson wrote that the Institute obtained Wright Flyer No. 1 from Orville only after agreeing not to state that any earlier aircraft was capable of carrying a man under its own power, something Jakab called a misunderstanding of a feud between Orville and the Smithsonian. "On the surface, yes this agreement does exist … and the agreement has never been secret," he told FoxNews.com.

Whitehead’s story has long been a widely known but buried fact of history, one studied at length by numerous aviation enthusiasts. Tom Crouch, who has written four books on the Wright brothers, is one of them. He remains unswayed.
"Gimme a break," Crouch told FoxNews.com. "I have not seen anything that convinced me that Whitehead got off the ground in a powered machine at all."
The problem is that the blurry original photo disappeared years ago, but numerous newspaper articles about the event are easy to track down -- many of them are linked from Brown's website. There's a copy of the Bridgeport Sunday Herald from Aug. 18, 1901, and the Washington Times from Aug. 23, 1901, for example. The site also has pictures from a German museum dedicated to Whitehead.
One image is of key interest: a 1906 photograph of an exhibit on Whitehead’s flight, taken at an aviation exhibition. The 1906 photograph shows several other photographs of the man and his flying machine -- possibly including the lost blurry original of the historic flight in 1901. Brown said he asked Bavarian police to analyze the photos seen in the 1906 image.
“The photo has been enlarged 3,500 percent,” Brown said. It validated the blurry picture, and the analysis confirms the numerous early press reports on Whitehead’s flight as well, he claims.
“He had the only monoplane. It’s a high-wing monoplane, and it has a big mast in the middle. It’s obviously his plane.”
"And it’s in the air, so it’s obviously flying," he told FoxNews.com.
Other experts remained skeptical of Brown's claims: Peter Jakab, associate director of curatorial affairs for the Smithsonian Museum, said the 1906 photograph was examined thoroughly long ago.
“I see a lot of blurriness. I don’t see a lot of airplanes,” he joked. He argues that the legacy of Orville and Wilbur's plane is more important anyway.
“It was able to evolve into something we have today. And that’s its real powerful significance -- in addition to being the first to fly,” Jakab told FoxNews.com. Crouch went so far as to call Whitehead a pretender, noting that people he worked with in later years didn't believe he had flown.
“Up until now, historians said he was a pretender, a fake and a fraud. The truth is quite the opposite,” Brown told FoxNews.com.
The German Interior minister on Tuesday awarded €9.5 million for a new museum dedicated to Whitehead, Brown noted. But first or second, that investment might be taking things too far -- even for Brown.
“[Whitehead] applied for U.S. citizenship. This is something the Americans should be celebrating more than the Germans,” he said.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/03/13/first-in-flight-wright-brothers-flew-2-years-after-gustav-whitehead/#ixzz2NRDiY2Zn

Tampa International's flights to Cuba hit political, market turbulence

Tampa Bay Times

Cuba lies just 300 miles away. It was 50 years, though, that really separated it from Tampa. ¶ That ended in 2011 when Tampa International Airport was allowed to resume commercial flights to Havana for the first time since the trade embargo took effect in 1962. ¶ The city coveted the route, which boosted the airport's international portfolio and gave hope to those who want to restore ties and trade with Cuba. In the 18 months since, more than 57,000 people have traveled from Tampa International to Cuba. Miami no longer had a monopoly on the Cuban travel market, and Tampa's 80,000 Cuban-Americans could visit family without first driving four hours south to catch a plane. ¶ The Cuba flights are considered a Tampa success story. Yet to many key players, there's been a lot of turbulence behind the scenes.

Supporters grumble that the Tampa-Cuba route needs to attract more non-Cubans. The route was also hindered by an airline price war, bureaucratic red tape and — no surprise — Cuban-American politics.

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Holder: No drone strikes on Americans in US, except in ’extraordinary circumstance’

Michael Reynolds / EPA

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder

openchannel

By Michael Isikoff
National Investigative Correspondent, NBC News

The Obama administration has no intention of carrying out drone strikes against suspected terrorists in the United States, but could use them in response to “an extraordinary circumstance” such as the 9/11 terror attacks, according to a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder obtained by NBC News.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who received the March 4 letter from Holder, called the attorney general’s refusal to rule out drone strikes in the U.S. “more than frightening.” 

The letter from Holder surfaced just as the Senate Intelligence Committee was voting 12-3 to approve White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan to be CIA director. The vote came after the White House agreed to share additional classified memos on targeted drone strikes against U.S. citizens overseas.

Paul had threatened to hold up Brennan's confirmation on the floor of the Senate if the administration did not clarify whether targeted drone strikes could be used inside the U.S.

In his letter, Holder called the question of drone strikes inside the U.S. "entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur and we hope no president will ever have to confront. … As a policy matter, moreover, we reject the use of military force where well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat."

But Holder then appeared to leave the door open to such strikes in extreme circumstances.

Read the full letter

"It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the president to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States. For example, the president could  conceivably have no choice but to authorize the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland in the circumstances of a catastrophic attack like the ones suffered on Dec. 7, 1941 and Sept. 11, 2001."

’So scary’: Midair jet scare cuts David Copperfield’s journey in half

 

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Harlem Shake dance on a plane

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