Education and Research

“Research is seeing what everybody else has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought.”

Albert Szent-Györgyi

The modern cockpit environment is not good for humans. It contributes to a very broad range of negative physiological effects (from relatively innocuous things like an offspring gender asymmetry favoring daughters, to cancer, spatial disorientation, and other forms of cognitive impairment). The effect is far more pronounced in stealth aircraft for a variety of technical reasons and any research on it threatens the cell phone industry (which has a very powerful lobby). It also applies to the Havanna Syndrome which is only now finally being reported in the open. While the government has known about it for years it was classified, and sadly, mostly ignored because a few strong personalities had associated it with conspiracy theories and alien research nuts.

Since this page is currently under development, I’ll continue to work on updating it with increasingly complicated information on the different sources of cockpit radiation (both ionizing and non-ionizing), quantum tunneling, tautomeric mutations, and a whole lot more. However, in the meantime please feel free to checkout the checklist, brochure, YouTube video, and the references below for more information on a few important topics that I will elaborate more on in the future.

ACES & Eights Aircrew Cancer Checklist

ACES and Eights Brochure

Brochure05

Brochure05_Inside

YouTube Video on the Modern Cockpit Environment

“Cockpit Radiation and the Human Weapon System” presentation given to the Society of Experimental Test Pilots (SETP) in 2022.

Reference Articles and Related Websites

Reference 1: Summary of 2020 H.R. 5858, Military Pilots Cancer Incidence Study Act with language on this topic where we finally got some high-level attention for the effort. Summary of 2022 H.R. 7524, Aviator Cancer Examination Study (ACES) Act which is more positive movement on this important issue. This was due in large part to the advocacy of the Red River Valley Fighter Pilot’s Association. Also please check out their fantastic page on Aviator Cancer.


Reference 2: Summary of some of the work motivated by my 2018 SETP discussions with Air Force officials and it represents the first positive step since the inclusion of the NDAA and the Impact of Cockpit Electro-Magnetics on Aircrew Neurology (ICEMAN) effort from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that I started while a Program Manager.


Reference 3: Summary of Cancer Incidence and Mortality 2022 study results published in the Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine even if performed with very old data (from Vietnam-era aircraft)…this was the study referenced in Article 2 but needs to be re-performed with 5th generation aircraft and current pilots.


Reference 4: Summary of the ICEMAN program I started while I was at DARPA.


Reference 5: Summary of the Havanna Syndrome which is finally available in the open.


Reference 6: Summary of Tautomerism in AT and GC base pairs of DNA which is one possible source of non-ionizing radiation influence from the cockpit environment. Much more to follow on this in the future but this is a nice primer.

“No research without action, no action without research.”

KURT LEWIN

While these all may not seem connected they most definitely are and I’ll continue to update the descriptions in this section.

Fight’s On!

Dan “Animal” Javorsek, President