A C-17 Globemaster crew diverted to locate a crashed Army UH-60 helicopter during a routine training sortie from JB Charleston, S.C., earlier this month. “Around the time of the incident, we had just completed our airdrop training and were preparing to land to pick up our passengers” at an auxiliary strip, said 17th Airlift Squadron pilot Maj. Matthew Scheulen, in a release. “Columbia Approach Control gave us an immediate vector to his last known position,” and after bout 40 minutes, the C-17 crew located the helo. “From overhead, it looked like the helicopter hit quite hard” but it wasn’t on fire, Scheulen said. The South Carolina Army National Guard dispatched a second UH-60 to recover the crew, all of whom survived the Dec. 3 crash. “Even without any truly formal training for something like this we came up with a plan and executed it well,” he added.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this week released strategies meant to focus the Pentagon’s “alphabet soup” of innovation organizations and proliferate artificial intelligence—moves that experts say could provide the structure needed to make the military’s efforts to integrate and field new technology more effective.
