A team of airmen who fly and maintain the C-17 at Charleston AFB, S.C., pooled their expertise to reduce the number of steps the air crews must follow during pre-flight—cutting the time involved by an hour and a half, reports SSgt. April Quintanilla. The team pared down the 35 sequence of events performed by pilots to 18 steps with assistance from the aircraft’s maintainers. The team presented the revamped safety inspection checklist at a May Flight Manual Review Conference and awaits a decision in August about whether the Air Force will accept the new process and implement it at other C-17 units.
RTX’s Raytheon unit was able to “significantly” extend the range of the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile using mostly software changes in experimental tests last year, expanding the reach and lethality of the standard U.S. dogfighting weapon, company officials said Sept. 15.
