Monthly Archives: June 2022

Airliner catches fire after crash landing

At least 4 injured in the mishap at Miami International Airport

At least four people have been injured after a civilian passenger liner crash-landed and caught fire at the Miami International Airport in Florida on Tuesday evening. There were 126 people on board the Red Air flight 203 from Santo Domingo, local media reported.

The MD80 passenger jet ended up skidding off the runway, destroying a small building and a communications tower before catching fire. Preliminary reports suggest something may have gone wrong with the landing gear.

The incident happened at 5:30pm local time. Fire crews responded to the incident and were able to quickly put out the fire, which broke out on the right wing of the plane after the crash. However, two runways on the south side of the airport remain closed.

The plane was safely evacuated. Of the 125 passengers and 11 crew on board, four people suffered minor injuries. Two or three of them were transported to an area hospital, according to reports.

RedAir, based in the Dominican Republic, is a low-cost carrier founded in late 2021. On Monday, the company announced it would add 20 more weekly flights to the US, including three daily trips between Miami and Santo Domingo, starting on July 25.

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Pentagon report details plans for assault Starships

The US military wants to use Elon Musk’s spaceships to deploy a “quick reaction force”

Landing a rescue force at a US embassy in Africa threatened by a Benghazi-style siege is just one of the potential military uses for Elon Musk’s Starship vessels, according to an internal military report made public on Monday. The document pertains to the 2020 cooperative agreement between SpaceX and the US Transportation Command (TRANSCOM), but remains a wish list as the Starships are nowhere near ready for actual operations.

That TRANSCOM had partnered with SpaceX back in October 2020 was public knowledge, as the US military actually announced it at the time. Officially, the Defense Department wanted the capability to move the equivalent of a C-17 payload – just under 80 tons, or a single M1 Abrams tank – “anywhere on the globe in less than an hour.” 

As it turns out, the Pentagon had additional ambitions, according to the “midterm report” on the program obtained by the Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and published on Monday.

A fleet of military Starships could provide “an alternative method for logistics delivery” in the Pacific, or deliver “a collection of shelters, vehicles, construction equipment and other gear” anywhere in the globe on short notice, so the US Air Force could stand up an airbase.

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FILE PHOTO. A prototype of SpaceX's Starship spacecraft. ©REUTERS / Callaghan O'Hare
Weapons dropped from orbit anywhere on Earth within an hour? DoD asks SpaceX to prove it’s viable

The third imagined scenario, titled “Embassy Support,” envisions “rapid theater direct delivery capability” from the US to an embassy in Africa, potentially involving a “quick reaction force.” The mere demonstration of such ability “could deter non-state actors from aggressive acts toward the US,” the military said.

While the report itself does not make such a comparison, the scenario overlaps quite a bit with the attack on the US compound in Benghazi, Libya – where an ambassador and three security contractors were killed on September 11, 2012 as they waited for a rescue force that never came.

While SpaceX has not commented on the story, TRANSCOM spokesperson John Ross told the Intercept the military believes a rocket-deployed rapid reaction force would be “possible within the next 5-10 years.”

The Starship is still in its experimental phase. The first-ever successful landing of a prototype only took place in May 2021, after a series of tests that ended in fiery explosions. In addition to technical challenges, Musk is also dealing with the federal bureaucracy and the process of getting permits for launching tests from the SpaceX facility in southern Texas. 

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave SpaceX preliminary environmental approval last week, but to get the full approval license the company will need to prepare “a historical context report … of the Mexican War” and fulfill 74 other demands, according to National Geographic. Even then, the FAA license would cover only ten launches a year. Moreover, the authorities are concerned SpaceX lacks “a strong safety culture,” according to a FAA report leaked in June 2021.

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Syria: Guterres underlines ‘moral imperative’ to continue cross-border aid operation from Türkiye

With humanitarian needs in Syria at their highest levels since the start of the civil war more than 11 years ago, UN Secretary-General António Guterres appealed on Monday for the Security Council to renew a resolution on delivering lifesaving aid to millions in northwest Syria, through cross-border operations from neighbouring Türkiye. 

Read the full story, “Syria: Guterres underlines ‘moral imperative’ to continue cross-border aid operation from Türkiye”, on globalissues.org →

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