Latest news with #Mingus
Business Insider
14-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Air defenders like the Patriot soldiers who shot down Iranian missiles are becoming a 'new tip of the spear,' Army secretary says
Air defenders are becoming some of the US Army's most in-demand soldiers, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll said. After Patriot crews intercepted Iran's missile attack on a US base in Qatar last month, Driscoll said that air defenders are in some ways becoming the Army's "new tip of the spear," a phrase that is typically used for troops like special operators. In a recent interview with Business Insider, Driscoll and Gen. James Rainey, the commanding general overseeing Army Futures Command, said Army leadership has seen a strong demand signal in recent conflicts. Integrated air and missile defenses are " one of the most demanded and deployed capabilities we as an Army have," the Army secretary said. "We have been stressing those units for a long time." He added that the demand signal will only increase, noting that Army leadership "likes to refer to them as, in some ways, the new tip of the spear." The phrase often refers to elite, forward-deployed forces, like special operations forces like the Green Berets, Delta Force, or Rangers, because these forces are often deployed ahead of conventional forces and lead operations or shape the battlefield for strategic impact. It is not typically applied to defensive assets. Air and missile defenses are critical for blunting strikes and threatening enemy airpower. Recruiting more soldiers for air defense battalions in 2026 and fielding additional Patriots and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems are priorities for the Army. A need for more Patriots The Army has 15 Patriot battalions, Gen. James Mingus, vice chief of staff of the Army, said at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event last week, although one is undergoing a major revamp. Three are deployed to the Indo-Pacific and one is in Europe. One Patriot in US Central Command has been there, Mingus said, for close to 500 days. The rest are service retained, or unassigned. Mingus described the Patriot battalions as "a very stressed force element," and said the Army was aware it had to grow its number of systems, with plans to increase to 18 battalions, not including one going to Guam as part of the Guam Defense System. The Army is also stockpiling munitions critical to this air defense mission. In its 2026 budget proposal, the service requested to quadruple its Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missile. The Army has previously spoken about the need to increase the magazine depth for its munitions given the potential for a protracted conflict to chew through critical weapon stockpiles. Recent reporting suggested US Patriot interceptor stockpiles could be critically low. The Army's big plans to dramatically increase its stockpile include a request for $1.3 billion in extra funding. A high-risk situation could demand numerous interceptors. Recently, Patriot missile batteries were used to shield the US military's Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar from Iranian ballistic missiles launched in retaliation for US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine described the intercepts as "a lot of metal flying around." The top general said it was believed to be "the largest single Patriot engagement in US military history." The Pentagon acknowledged last week, as a satellite image showing damage at the base surfaced, that one enemy missile got through, causing "minimal damage to equipment and structures on the base." The rest of over a dozen missiles fired are said to have been intercepted. Driscoll told BI that the soldiers involved in those air defense operations demonstrated "incredible bravery and an ability to stand back and do their job under immense stress." M1M-104 Patriots are sophisticated surface-to-air missile defense platforms that long had mixed reviews but have been invaluable for Ukraine, which received the systems from the US and has been employing them against Russian missile and drone strikes. Ukraine has requested more of these systems and the interceptors, calling them critical for keeping civilian centers and cities safe. Weapons to Ukraine There's been recent confusion about whether the US intends to provide more Patriot interceptors to Ukraine. Earlier this month, the White House said a decision had been made to pause ammunition delivery to Ukraine amid concerns about American stockpiles decreasing, with reports identifying Patriots as one of the capabilities being halted, specifically much-needed interceptor missiles. The shipment had been promised by the Biden administration. Last week, President Donald Trump reversed the pause, telling reporters he didn't know who approved it. The Pentagon then said it would send additional defensive weapons to Ukraine. In an interview, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the initial decision to pause the shipment "unfortunately was mischaracterized. It was a pause pending review on a handful of specific type munitions." Trump said over the weekend that the US would be sending Patriots to Ukraine but that " the European Union is paying for it." "We're not paying anything for it, but we will send it," he said. The president didn't specify how many systems or interceptors would be included or when Ukraine might receive the weapons. Speaking at the White House Monday alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the president said that a deal was in the works to move Patriots out of NATO countries into Ukraine. The US would then backfill the lost capability. "A couple of the countries that have Patriots are going to swap over, and we'll replace the Patriots," Trump said. Patriots are made by US defense firms RTX and Lockheed Martin, both of which are working to expand essential production.
CBC
14-06-2025
- Health
- CBC
His dog suffocated in a chip bag, and he wants to prevent other pet deaths
Social Sharing When Ian Reid left an open chip bag on his TV stand, he didn't expect to return home to find his beloved dog Mingus dead, with the bag almost vacuum-sealed to his muzzle. The dog was found behind a chair with the chip bag up over his neck, tightly clinging to his face. "He was motionless and cold," Reid said. The incident was devastating to the retired surgeon in Indian Harbour, N.S., and left him with profound feelings of guilt. When Reid took Mingus to his regular veterinarian clinic to be cremated, the vets were shocked at how the dog died. "None of the vets were aware of the lethal hazard that the bags present," he said. Reid says residual food left in the chip bag was enough of an enticement for the dog to put his nose deep in the bag. By the time a dog has breathed in all the oxygen, they can't get the bag off their head. Reid wants other dog owners to be aware of the risk of food packaging. "These [deaths] are preventable. And it's tragic and it's sudden and dramatic and a terrible thing as a pet owner and terrible thing for a pet to go through it," he said. Bonnie Harlan experienced something very similar just before Christmas in 2011. Harlan came home to find her rescue dog, Blue, dead with food packaging suctioned around his face. It was so tight, she couldn't pull it off on her own. She then called her vet, who explained how to do dog CPR before he rushed over to her home, but it was too late. "It only takes three to five minutes, so you don't have a lot of time when that happens." This prompted her to found the non-profit, Prevent Pet Suffocation. In the years since Blue's death, she's found many vets still don't know about the risk of food packaging. Harlan lives in Texas but says she receives thousands of messages from people around the world every year. "That's the thing. This is international. There's food bags everywhere." Maggie Brown-Bury is a small animal veterinarian who works in Newfoundland and Labrador and sits on the executive council of the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association. She said she hasn't experienced any pet deaths in connection to chip bags, but she said if you search for chip bags in the association's online network, you do get quite a few hits. "It is one of the sort of more common accidental tragedies we will see." Although chip bag risk isn't directly addressed in vet schools, Brown-Bury says it is talked about in a more broad way. "The issue of chip bags of course is the suffocation and lack of oxygen and that is something we touch on specifically, just not necessarily going through all the potential ways it could happen." Her sentiments were echoed by Marti Hopson, a veterinarian and lecturer at the Atlantic Veterinarian College on P.E.I. Hopson says at vet colleges, future vets learn how to talk to their clients about hazards in general and tell clients that living with a pet is like living with a toddler: Anything you see in your environment could be a risk to them. "I think that the way to do that might be through public campaigns like the Preventing Pets from Suffocation campaign that's happening on social media and that does take a long time to spread." Goal to raise awareness On Harlan's website, she lists ways people can protect pets from this kind of harm. One of them is to cut the food packaging up so there are no closed pieces that could become sealed around an animals face. Reid and Harlan have reached out to organizations like Frito Lay, to ask if they would put a warning on their chip bags. CBC News reached out to Frito Lay, but they did not respond to the request for comment. Reid hopes his story can prevent other pet owners from going through what he did. "I think that the key thing is prevention and knowledge and if this information can be made available through veterinarians, through word of mouth, through general pet owner knowledge and through warnings on these bags, that will go a long way to prevent the hundreds of dogs in particular that suffocate every year."
Business Insider
24-05-2025
- Automotive
- Business Insider
See the MV-75 tiltrotor set to be the US Army's next premier air assault vehicle and replace the UH-60 Black Hawk
It flies like a helicopter, cruises like a plane, and could redefine how the US Army fights wars within the next decade. The Army chose the Bell V-280 Valor as its next-generation assault aircraft, designed to fly longer and faster than current rotorcraft. Officially designated the MV-75, the Army is betting on the Bell tiltrotor to modernize its aging fleet of military helicopters. For nearly 50 years, the UH-60 Black Hawk has been the Army's airborne workhorse. The Army plans to continue flying the Black Hawk for the next several years as it fast-tracks the rollout of the new tiltrotor replacement fleet in the 2030s. Bell V-280 Valor Developed by Bell Textron, a Texas-based aerospace company, the V-280 was designed with "transformational increases in speed, range, and maneuverability," the Army said in a 2020 release. Propelled by two Rolls-Royce turboshaft engines, the V-280's tiltrotor design allows the aircraft to take off and land vertically like a helicopter and fly like an airplane, like the Bell Boeing MV-22 Osprey. In order to be a contender for the Army's Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, the competing aircraft were required to cruise at speeds of up to 322 miles per hour — nearly twice as fast as the Black Hawk's cruising speed of 174 mph. The aircraft was expected to carry up to 14 fully equipped passengers or accommodate external payloads of up to 10,000 pounds. The FLRAA also had to be able to operate at 6,000 feet in temperatures up to 95 degrees Fahrenheit and fly at least 1,700 nautical miles without refueling. A 'leap ahead' Gen. James Mingus, the Army's vice chief of staff, described the MV-75 as a "leap ahead in technology and capability." "It delivers operational reach that alters how we close with the enemy," Mingus said at the Army Aviation Association of America conference on May 14. "It brings the right combination of speed, payload, and survivability we've never had in one aircraft." The concept is that each MV-75 can rush over a dozen heavily loaded troopers onto assault missions that can catch an enemy off guard. Next-generation military helicopters Bell's V-280 Valor was selected in 2022 as the Army's Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, chosen over the Sikorsky-Boeing Defiant X. The FLRAA is part of the Army's broader effort to modernize its aerial fleet, known as Future Vertical Lift. The Army also planned to develop a new armed scout helicopter known as the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, but the program was canceled earlier this year to prioritize the fielding of the MV-75. The Army is "not just committed to the programme, but how we do it faster as well," Mingus said. Multimission Vertical Takeoff The "M" in the aircraft's designation refers to its multimission purpose, and the "V" represents its vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) capability. While the MV-75 design has yet to be finalized, the future tiltrotor is expected to have a baseline variant that will incorporate features to adapt it to special operations. After entering the engineering and manufacturing stage last year, Bell is under contract to build six prototypes of the MV-75. The Texas-based aerospace company projects to complete its first flight in 2026 and low-rate initial production in 2028. The aircraft is slated to be delivered to the Army around 2030. 'Rapid response and enhanced maneuverability' The next-generation aircraft is expected to serve on missions involving vertical lift, air assault, maritime interdiction, medical evacuation, combat search and rescue, humanitarian relief, and tactical resupply. 101st Airborne Division The 101st Airborne Division, the only Army division specializing in air assault operations, is set to be the first frontline unit to field the MV-75. For nearly six decades, the unit's Combat Aviation Brigade has been operating assault helicopters, such as AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters, UH-60M Black Hawk utility helicopters, and CH-47F Chinook heavy-lift helicopters. "The 101st flies into real-world contested environments, across wide terrain, often without the luxury of fixed support infrastructure," Mingus said. "They need speed, endurance, and reliability." Preparing for a fight in the Pacific The modernization of the Army's aerial fleet comes as the US military prepares for a potential conflict with China. The long-range mobility of the Army's future aircraft fleet is essential for the vast Pacific theater, consisting of island chains separated by long distances and limited Army infrastructure in the region. The Future Vertical Lift initiative is also focused on enhancing survivability against Chinese and Russian air defenses by equipping future aircraft with high-speed capabilities and reduced radar signatures. Autonomous and semi-autonomous flight Amid the Pentagon's push for AI use within its ranks, the Army is also looking to integrate autonomous and semi-autonomous flight technology into its systems, including the MV-75. "The Army wants to make sure that aircraft can be unmanned," Textron CEO Scott Donnelly said during an earnings call in April. In December 2019, the V-280 Valor successfully completed an autonomous test flight at the company's research center in Arlington, Texas, though two pilots remained onboard to intervene if necessary.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
New US Army helo engine lifts off, but may be headed for cancellation
NASHVILLE, Tenn. − For the first time, the Army's UH-60M Black Hawk utility helicopter lifted off the ground into a hover at a Sikorsky test facility, powered by the improved turbine engine that has been in development since the mid-2000s, according to the service's program executive officer for aviation. But as the Improved Turbine Engine Program leaps that hurdle toward the finish line, the effort is in jeopardy as the service looks to cut large programs to make way for the pursuit of what it sees as higher priorities amid the need to cut its budget by 8% as directed by the defense secretary. Army Vice Chief of Staff, Gen. James Mingus told reporters at the Army Aviation Association of America confab here that the service is waiting to see where it lands with the fiscal 2026 budget. Officials are trying to gauge how much flexibility the service has in the budget reconciliation process to fully understand if it can afford to pay for ITEP. 'The future of ITEP is largely going to depend on where all these things land inside the '26 budget,' Mingus said. Currently, there is no funding planned to move the program from development into production. Amid mixed messages on the engine's fate over the past several weeks, following the release of an Army directive outlining sweeping change to the service dubbed by the service secretary as the Army Transformation Initiative, Army aviation leaders are working on various potential paths for the engine. Options include outright cancellation, a continuation of the development program followed by its closeout, or a decision to proceed into production. 'We have two weeks, and now there are several programs named, you know, each of them come with a set of courses of action that we have been working on to make sure that we can meet Army senior leaders' intent,' Brig. Gen. David Phillips, the Army's program executive officer for aviation, told reporters May 15 at the Army Aviation Association of America. The ITEP program kicked off in a competition 15 years ago to replace the engines in both the UH-60 and the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter. But the engine effort has been plagued by various delays across its life as the service wrestled with funding, development strategies and a protest from the Advanced Turbine Engine Company – a Honeywell and Pratt & Whitney team, which competed against General Electric's aerospace division to build the engine for the Army. More recently, the engine was hit with more delays due to technical issues as well as the coronavirus pandemic, which caused supply chain problems. When GE won the contract, it touted a plan to move more quickly, but that window to accelerate closed and the Army subsequently predicted a two-year delay getting the T901 engine into the UH-60 Black Hawk, the first aircraft in the current fleet to receive the new tech. The Army was able to garner some important data when it chose to integrate the ITEP onto two competitive prototypes for the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft. The companies in that competition – Bell and Sikorsky – had both received the engines and were installing them when the service decided to cancel the FARA program early last year. When the service canceled the FARA pursuit, it also delayed a production decision for the ITEP engine by three years. Sikorsky had taken advantage of fiscal 2024 FARA program funding before the Army officially closed the program at the end of the year to run tests of the ITEP in the prototype, ahead of integrating the engine into the UH-60, in order to drive down risk. The company received the first ITEP engines for the Black Hawk last fall and began ground runs earlier this year. 'We're currently still under contract to execute the program we were for ITEP,' Rich Benton, Sikorsky's head, told Defense News in an interview at the AAAA event. 'There's still budget in 2025 to continue that work. Will there be budget in the future years or not? You know, that's up to the Army and the [congressional] appropriators,' he said. 'The budget we have today, we'll get the Black Hawk in the air,' he said in a May 14 interview. 'How much flying and how much data we get from that will be up to the Army,' Benton said. 'We're looking at a path ahead in real time on the options and the options could be finish [integration], because there's not just the aircraft integration going on, but there's also the engine qualification testing that is going on in test stands,' Phillips said. 'We've had engines in test stands now for several years gathering low altitude, high altitude, low performance, high performance data. All of that data is very rich and informing the path ahead.' Additionally, the Army continues to have discussions with its joint partners regarding their interest in the engine and how they might integrate it onto their aircraft and a potential path forward there, according to Phillips. And foreign partners have also asked the same question about how they could potentially move forward with the ITEP engine as well. 'We're presenting all those, on how we could get Army senior leaders to meet their intent but get the most out of the dollars that we've invested in the program,' he said. Overall, the Army has spent over an estimated $1.5 billion over the past two decades on ITEP and its precursor development. The service had spent approximately $720 million on the program by 2016. The Army's contracts to competitors in 2016 totaled $256 million and the service awarded a $517 million contract for the engineering and manufacturing development phase to GE in 2019. What is under consideration for a different path to modernize the Black Hawk and Apache's engines, if the Army chooses to end the ITEP program prior to production, is unclear. 'If I had to decide today, hey, if that engine isn't going to be available in the future, what would I do differently? Integrate a different engine? I would quickly pivot to the engine the [Special Operations forces] flies. The SOF flies with a more powerful engine,' Benton said. 'Today it's been integrated in Black Hawk, it has been demonstrated. It is available today, so there would be commonality that would provide some more capability than I have today, [but] not as much as ITEP.' The Army is 'always looking at new ways to provide more performance to the aircraft, whether it's making components lighter, whether it's adding more power, whether it's adding additional fuel consumption capabilities,' Phillips said, 'We always look at that and I think we'll continue to look at that regardless of the outcome.'
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Army cuts athletic trainers from fitness teams, with medics to take up slack
The Army is cutting certified athletic trainers from the fitness training teams across the service, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Jim Mingus said Tuesday, replacing them with strength coaches. But regular medics might get extra training to deal with fitness-related injuries when the trainers are gone. The overall goal, he said, was a fitter, stronger Army. 'We will not have arrived until we have a no-neck Army,' Mingus joked. 'Everybody in the Army, their traps are going to go from the base of their head right down to their neck.' Athletic trainers are civilian specialists trained to help prevent or treat injuries that often occur during normal fitness training like weight lifting and running. To replace them, the Army says it will hire more strength coaches, fitness specialists who focus on creating and monitoring workouts but who often lack training on injury prevention. As for the injuries that athletic trainers might have helped with, soldiers will now have to go find a medic in their unit, officials said. A typical Army platoon, Mingus said, already has its own medics who are present for unit training and exercises. 'We just need to train them on how to identify and be able to do some of that treatment there,' he said. The move will effect the teams set-up in large units under the Army's holistic health and fitness program, or H2F, the Army's massive overhaul of its fitness and wellness training for soldeirs. Those teams, which are made up of about 20 people for Brigade-sized units, had been designed with seven strength and conditioning coaches and four athletic trainers. But going forward, the Army is cutting its athletic trainers and moving to 11 strength and conditioning coaches. Mingus said the units with H2F access are seeing fewer injuries, faster recovery times and better marksmanship scores. According to H2F data provided by the Army, for units with the program, they have seen a 14% decrease in musculoskeletal injuries, 23% greater Army fitness test pass rate, and 27% more soldiers qualifying as experts for rifle marksmanship. H2F was announced in 2017 as cultural shift towards improving soldiers' total wellness that goes beyond physical fitness, to include taking care of their mental health, getting enough rest, and eating well. As part of the program, the Army embedded teams within their formations to give soldiers more direct access to fitness professionals without needing to make appointments at clinics or hospitals. Those changes, first reported by came down to credentialing and budgeting issues, Mingus said. Athletic trainers are considered health providers and are overseen by the Defense Health Agency, which oversees the entire military's medical staff. But the H2F program does not include DHA positions. 'If you're in the health providing business, you have to be credentialed, licensed and overseen by DHA, which is outside the Army's control,' Mingus said at an event hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army in Washington D.C. 'We wanted to keep this as an Army program. We wanted to be able to control our teams and how they interact.' While a strength and conditioning coach focuses on improving fitness through proper technique and deliberate planning in training, an athletic trainer, or AT, is trained in the medical science of injury prevention and recovery. The strength and conditioning coaches are 'probably not going to be able to do it in treatment, which is why your medic, your battalion surgeon, your brigade surgeon — there are [occupational therapists] within a division, they need to come in and perform those functions with the strength and conditioning coach,' Mingus told Task & Purpose. 'It's just a slightly different pairing.' Mingus, a major proponent of H2F, said the Army is no longer testing the feasibility of it as a pilot, but rather sees it as an established program 'for the entire Army.' The service initially equipped 20 of its maneuver formations with H2F teams and the goal is to outfit 111 active duty brigades with their own H2F teams by the end of fiscal year 2027. The Army is using pilot teams within National Guard and Army Reserve units to determine the best configuration because their needs and training schedules are obviously different. Those H2F units might be established in 'centralized locations where soldiers can be advised by human performance subject matter experts either virtually or in person,' according to an Army release. 'It is absolutely here to stay,' Mingus said. 'The optimized human component of how you fight is actually, I think, more important than anything else that we will do. Fitter people are hard to kill. That's just fact.' Beyond the physical successes, he said the program is leading to 'many other intangibles' like soldiers experiencing less mental health crises and committing fewer 'acts of indiscipline.' Those 'intangibles' have equated to 22% lower behavioral health reports and a 502% reduction in substance abuse profiles. He said that the investment in the program — which costs roughly $3 million to stand and $2.5 million to sustain — will equate to $3 million in annual savings per formation. Mingus also said the goal is to have the program pay off for soldiers who want to have lifetime Army careers or for those who retire with enduring injuries — many of which cost the government through Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare. 'Think about the number of NCOs and senior officers that retire and their quality of life is just crap,' he said. 'We owe that to our troopers that are out there that if you want to commit to 20, 30, whatever number of years, you ought to know that you're going to go into your next life with a pretty decent quality of life.' Top enlisted leader of Air Force Special Operations Command fired amid investigation The Marine in one of the most famous recruiting commercials is now in Congress 75th Ranger Regiment wins 2025 Best Ranger Competition Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer reenlists in Marine Reserve Air Force pilots get a new way to pee at 30,000 feet
