Accident investigators determined that insufficient airspeed led to a stall that caused the crash of an MC-12 aircraft 110 miles northeast of Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, on April 27, announced Air Combat Command officials. The crash took the lives of the four aircrew members: Capt. Brandon L. Cyr, 28, of Woodbridge, Va.; Capt. Reid K. Nishizuka, 30, of Kailua, Hawaii; SSgt. Richard A. Dickson, 24, of Rancho Cordova, Calif.; and SSgt. Daniel N. Fannin, 30, of Morehead, Ky. The stall occurred while the MC-12 was in a climbing left turn, according to ACC’s Oct. 25 release, which cites the results of the accident investigation board report. The crew was unable to recover from the spiral that resulted from the stall and subsequent spin, states the release. The crew was attempting to climb to an altitude with better visibility after encountering exceedingly cloudy conditions. The MC-12 was assigned to Kandahar’s 361st Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron. Valued at $19.8 million, the airplane was destroyed in the mishap. (AIB report; caution, large-sized file.)
The Defense Innovation Unit is gearing up for the first flight of its commercially developed hypersonic testbed as soon as the end of February—part of a larger project to quickly increase the cadence of the Pentagon’s hypersonic flight testing and field advanced, high-speed systems and components at scale.
