Solar-powered aircraft completes cross-US journey

A one-of-a-kind solar-powered aircraft completed a two-month journey across the United States at just after 11pm EDT Saturday evening (3am GMT Sunday) when it landed at New York's JFK Airport.

The landing came several hours earlier than planned because of a tear that developed Saturday afternoon in the delicate wing of the aircraft. The tear didn't put the craft in immediate danger, but did prompt the flight crew to curtail the flight originally scheduled to end at 2am local time on Sunday. The early landing closed a runway at JFK, causing delays to some outgoing commercial flights, and also meant pilot André Borschberg didn't get to achieve his wish to fly around the Statue of Liberty in the plane.

Solar Impulse has the wingspan of a jumbo jet but weighs about the same as a family car. Coated with solar panels, the Swiss plane flies can theoretically stay aloft indefinitely, but its 35 mile per hour cruising speed means the entire trip would take many days to complete. So, to give the pilot a break, the aircraft flew in six stages, taking off in the early morning and landing late at night.

It embarked on the seven-city trip at dawn on May 3 when it soared into the sky above Silicon Valley from Moffett Field. From there, it flew to Phoenix, Dallas, St. Louis and Washington, D.C., from where it departed early Saturday morning.

The journey provided the team with valuable data on how the aircraft performs in several types of climate, particularly those not found in Europe.

"We had all these tornadoes in Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri," said Borschberg in an interview with IDG News Service on Saturday morning. He was speaking via satellite phone from the cockpit of the aircraft as it circled above the New Jersey shoreline to the south of New York.

"It was not easy to find a way through this difficult weather. I think we learned a lot on how to operate in a windy environment as well. That was part of the goal of this flight across America," he said.

(See the entire interview on YouTube.)

Borschberg said the Solar Impulse team also learned something when the plane was left outside overnight in Cincinnati, rather than being kept inside the protective inflatable hangar that has followed it across the U.S.

"It was very foggy the following morning, we had quite a lot of condensation water everywhere. It really showed us a couple of weaknesses we had that will be modified in the next airplane," he said.

Preparations for that next airplane are already underway and it faces a much greater challenge: to fly around the globe powered by nothing but the Sun.

The team hopes to attempt that flight sometime in 2015.

The round-the-world aircraft is already being designed and one of the biggest changes will be to the facilities offered for the pilot.

"Our challenge now, having a sustainable airplane, is to develop a sustainable pilot," said Borschberg. "We're constructing a second airplane in Switzerland, which will be completely different from this perspective. Different cockpit, different instruments, different support for the pilot enabling him to fly many days and many nights. So that's a very important step. That's the first airplane that has an almost unlimited endurance."

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U.S. watchdog raps Pentagon for buying aircraft for Afghan unit

WASHINGTON - A government watchdog criticized the Pentagon on Friday for forging ahead with controversial helicopter purchases from a Russian arms dealer despite warnings the Afghan special forces unit due to receive the aircraft could not fly or maintain them.

The watchdog - the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction - urged the Pentagon to suspend the $553 million Russian arms deal as well as a $218 million contract for 18 planes from a U.S. firm until plans were in place to fully recruit and train the Afghan special forces unit.

The Pentagon was already under fire for agreeing this month to buy 30 additional Mi-17 helicopters from the Russian arms dealer, Rosoboronexport. That company is a major supplier of weapons to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is battling rebels trying to overthrow his government.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded this month that Assad's forces have used chemical weapons, and the White House announced on June 13 that President Barack Obama had decided to provide direct military assistance to the Syrian opposition. The Pentagon announced the helicopter purchase five days later.

John Sopko, the special inspector general, noted in a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that the Army entered into the new purchase agreement even though the Pentagon had a draft report from SIGAR recommending that aircraft purchases for the Afghan unit be suspended.

"We maintain that moving forward with the acquisition of these aircraft is imprudent," Sopko said in the letter.

The helicopter purchases are a difficult issue for the Pentagon. Defense officials say the Mi-17 is the best choice for Afghanistan because the aircraft handles the terrain and climate well and Afghan pilots, air crews and maintenance workers have dealt with the craft since the 1980s.

While U.S.-made helicopters would be a more sophisticated purchase, they are sensitive to Afghanistan's extreme conditions and require more specialized maintenance and longer training to master, they said.

Shifting the Afghan military to a significantly different aircraft would require completely retraining the fliers and maintenance workers, delaying the effort to build the country's helicopter capacity by about three years, said Lieutenant Colonel Jim Gregory.

The special inspector general, in its investigation of the aircraft sales, found that the Afghan Special Mission Wing, which will support counterterrorism and counternarcotics operations, had only 180 personnel earlier this year, less than a quarter of the 860 people envisioned for the force by July 2015.

Control of the force initially was to be split between the Afghan Interior and Defense ministries, and tensions between the departments was hampering recruitment, the report said. A memorandum of understanding shifting control to the Defense Ministry has been drafted but remains unsigned, it said.

The inspector general recommended aircraft purchases for the unit be suspended until the memorandum is signed transferring command and control of the unit to the Defense Ministry.

His office also recommended a series of other steps, including tying acquisition and delivery of new aircraft to completion of personnel and other milestones and developing plans for transferring maintenance and logistics to the Afghans.

The Pentagon and NATO training mission in Afghanistan rejected the request to suspend the aircraft contracts, saying it would delay efforts to build the unit into a capable force. They agreed to SIGAR's other recommendations.

The Pentagon began buying helicopters for Afghan forces from Rosoboronexport in May 2011, when it agreed to purchase 21. Last year it exercised an option to buy an additional 12, bringing the total to 33.

Including the new contract this month, the Pentagon has spent more than $1 billion on helicopters and related maintenance and service with the Russian firm.

The arms deals with Rosoboronexport have outraged some U.S. lawmakers. Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, who sponsored a ban on such purchases, said it was "simply outrageous" for the United States to be buying weapons from Assad's top arms supplier.

Congress barred purchases from Rosoboronexport in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, but officials said the Pentagon used 2012 funding to pay for the 30 helicopters purchased this month.

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