Latest news with #pilotrescue
The Guardian
23-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Ukraine war briefing: Mirage fighter jet crashes after pilot ejects due to technical fault
A Mirage 2000 fighter jet supplied to Ukraine from France crashed on Tuesday after an equipment failure, with the pilot ejecting safely, Ukraine's military said. It was the first loss of a Mirage since Ukraine started receiving them this year. 'Equipment failure occurred, which the pilot reported to the flight controller,' said a military statement. 'The pilot then acted competently, as is expected in crisis situations, and successfully ejected. A rescue crew found the pilot in a stable condition. There were no casualties on the ground.' Ukrainian news reports said the crash was in the Volyn oblast of north-western Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has approved a contentious bill weakening Ukraine's anti-corruption bodies, according to reports, hours after the first serious protests against his government took place in Kyiv. Luke Harding reports from the Ukrainian capital that the Verkhovna Rada passed the controversial bill, which critics say allows political interference and is a major step backwards in the fight against corruption. About 1,500 protesters gathered next to Zelenskyy's presidential administration complex shouting 'Shame' and 'Veto the law' while waving banners. There were protests in other large cities including Dnipro, Lviv and Odesa. Russian authorities have systematically involved children in the design and testing of drones for the war through nationwide competitions that begin with innocent-seeming video games and end up with the most talented students headhunted by defence companies, an investigation by the exiled Russian news outlet the Insider has found. The Insider spoke with three teenage finalists from the competition working on drone technology, who explained how it worked and detailed how they were fully aware of the military application of certain projects but were encouraged to hide it. Sanctioning Russian oil to end the Ukraine war is a 'very real possibility', the US energy secretary, Chris Wright, said on Fox News on Tuesday. Donald Trump has spoken of 100% tariffs on buyers of Russian oil and other sanctions if Moscow does not agree to a major peace agreement with Ukraine, giving a 50-day deadline that ends in early September. Trump, though, has also continually extended, reset or failed to honour deadlines – starting with his unmet promise to end the war in 24 hours – and placed low expectations on Russia's behaviour. Ukraine's former defence minister and current secretary of the security council, Rustem Umerov, will head Kyiv's delegation in talks that Ukraine has offered to hold with Russia on Wednesday in Istanbul. The Kremlin has said only that it hoped talks can be held 'this week'. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has said Kyiv is ready to 'secure the release of our people from captivity and return abducted children, to stop the killings, and to prepare a leaders' meeting'. A Russian drone and missile salvo on Ukraine killed a 10-year-old boy in the eastern frontline city of Kramatorsk, and wounded more than a dozen people across the country on Tuesday, Kyiv's authorities said. A Ukrainian drone strike on a bus in the Russian-occupied part of the Kherson region killed three people and wounded another three, a Moscow-installed official said. One man died in Russia's western border Belgorod region after a Ukrainian attack, according to the local governor. Howard Phillips, 65, has been found guilty of assisting a foreign intelligence service after handing over personal details of the then British defence secretary, Grant Shapps, to two undercover officers who posed as Russian agents. Phillips, from Harlow in Essex, handed a USB stick containing details relating to Shapps, including his home address and the location of his private plane, to one of the officers, the trial heard. Phillips was arrested in May 2024 and charged under the National Security Act. He had written to the Russian embassy offering his services. He is due to be sentenced in the autumn.
CBC
25-05-2025
- General
- CBC
New RCAF plane completes 1st operational parachute rescue deep in B.C. mountains
Members of the Royal Canadian Air Force are celebrating the successful rescue of a pilot who crashed deep in the mountains north of Prince George, B.C. The mission involved Canada's newest fixed-wing search-and-rescue aircraft. The CC-295 Kingfisher carried out its first operational parachute jump on Wednesday after only three weeks on the job. The air force says the Kingfisher, which is based out of Canadian Forces Base Comox on Vancouver Island, is specifically designed for search-and-rescue operations, and comes equipped with sensors that allow crews to locate people or objects from more than 40 kilometres away, even in low-light conditions. "The modernization on this plane is night and day compared to what we used to fly previously," said Capt. Greg Harris, who piloted the Kingfisher during the mission. The aircraft officially went into operation on May 1, Harris said, and completed its first operational jump Wednesday to help save a civilian pilot who had crashed near Mount Kinney. Harris said the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Victoria notified them at around 1:30 p.m. of a spot beacon being activated by a single-passenger airplane, indicating a crash. An RCMP helicopter reached the crash site, approximately 130 kilometres northeast of Prince George, and recovered the injured pilot. Search-and-rescue technicians then parachuted out of the Kingfisher, approximately 10 kilometres south of where the plane crashed, and established a temporary care site. RCMP then took the injured pilot to the SAR technicians. They stabilized the patient, who was then picked up by a CH-149 Cormorant helicopter and flown to Prince George for treatment. 'Ended up being pretty challenging' Harris credited his colleagues for handling challenging terrain and bad weather. "You never know what you're going to get, and it's never simple," he said. "There's always variables that come up that you weren't thinking were going to come up. So it ended up being pretty challenging." Master Cpl. Alain Goguen was among the SAR technicians who parachuted out of the plane carrying medical equipment and other gear. Goguen said the technology on the Kingfisher helped them assess where they were going to land, saving them precious minutes in a mission where time was of the essence. Harris said with stormy weather looming, they were minutes away from not being able to have the SAR technicians jump, and the injured pilot would have had to wait "a substantial time." He said he and his colleagues were thrilled to play a role in getting the pilot to safety, working closely with RCMP and the crew of the CH-149 Cormorant. He added that the mission allowed them to test their new aircraft in a real-life situation. "A lot of time these situations where airplanes crashed, the outcome is often not a good one, so the fact that the first operational jump of the Kingfisher was so successful and the outcome was so positive, it led to a pretty jubilant base here," Harris said. Goguen described the rescue in more straightforward terms.
