Photo By Gunnery Sgt. Justin Boling | Trey Daughtery, a wildlife biologist with United States Department of Agriculture...... read more read more
Subscribe
Wildlife strikes are an ever present danger to the aircraft and pilots of all the fighter attack squadrons aboard the Air Station. From deer to Canada geese, Marines and sailors have to be cautious and preemptive in dealing with the threat every day that aircraft plan to fly.
According to www.aphis.usda.gov, the United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s website, animal populations are rising and the habitat is depleting, so wildlife constantly moves looking for a better, more hospitable area. Military aircraft fly at the same altitude that many species of birds fly creating opportunities for bird strikes to occur.
“We try our best to prevent any wildlife from becoming a nuisance,” said Trey Daughtery, a wildlife biologist with the USDA’s APHIS. “To truly keep the aircraft and wildlife safe, we strive to be proactive instead of reactive.”
Daughtery has been attached to the Air Station for the last six years and has been a large part of the installation instituting a formal Bird/Wildlife Aircraft Strike Hazard program. The program calls for air operations, aviation safety and natural resource departments from a military installation to work together to solve hazards produced by wildlife.
According to www.dodpif.org, the Department of Defense Partners in Flight program website, the Federal Aviation Administration annually reports approximately 5,000 animal strikes involving military aircraft, resulting in nearly $75 million worth of damage to military aircraft each year.
On Sept. 3, an F/A-18 Hornet with Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 533 was struck by what was believed to have been a black vulture. The bird was sucked in by the vacuum created by the Hornet’s engines. The damage sustained left the aircraft on non-flight status.
“We can’t always just clean off the bird that strikes the aircraft, it must be quarantined by the BASH program officer and inspected by each maintenance section,” said Staff Sgt. Osvaldo Chincon, a quality assurance representative for VMFA(AW)-533. “Even the smallest bird that gets sucked into an engine can break fans and other important mechanisms.”
Just cleaning the animal off of the aircraft may get the aircraft back in the fight, but the application of the BASH program can actually prevent strikes from being more frequent.
“There was not an extremely accurate system in the past for dealing with animal strikes,” Chicon said. “Using the BASH program we keep detailed records and compare incidents to help stop the problem.”
According to Daughtery trend analysis is one of the best tools that personnel have to prevent strikes from occurring.
“If we know what type of bird it is and what conditions are when the strikes seem to be occurring, we can plan and solve the problem more accurately,” Daughtery said.
The past two weeks’ efforts have been made to prevent doves from staying near the runway. Daughtery placed propane cannons on the flightline to scare the doves away from grass seed and aircraft. The propane cannons are just one of the many non-lethal ways that wildlife is controlled.
“The lethal removal of any wildlife is always a last resort,” Daughtery said. “The safety of all living things is paramount in our planning.”
The USDA Wildlife Service utilizes a non-lethal harassment method, such as pyrotechnics, first to drive off unwanted animals from areas where they and people could be harmed. Wildlife that is deemed too high of a threat or is unaffected by harassment techniques are then lethally removed.
“To complete our job we are outside every working day monitoring, watching and planning,” Daughtery said. “For everyone to be safe, personnel have to stay aware of their surroundings and report all incidences of animal strikes, so they do not occur again.”
| Date Taken: | 10.01.2010 |
| Date Posted: | 10.01.2010 20:29 |
| Story ID: | 57350 |
| Location: | BEAUFORT, SC, US |
| Web Views: | 84 |
| Downloads: | 5 |
This work, BASH keeps flightline clear, by GySgt Justin Boling, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
LEAVE A COMMENT