Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the death of 1st Lieutenant David Schmitz. His ejection seat left the plane, but he did not remove it from the seat before it hit the ground.

Congress is preparing to pass legislation requiring more supervision of military jet ejection seats and pilot breathing systems to prevent further related accidents and deaths.

The final version of the National Defense Policy Act for fiscal year 2022 was passed in the House of Representatives on December 8 and awaits a vote by the Senate as soon as possible this week. The bill will require the Air Force and Navy to report the status of their ejection seats to lawmakers.

Congress wants to know how many seats are installed in each active flight base, and how many seats are exempt, and can still be used despite the need for repairs or replacement parts. It also requires greater transparency in who signs each exemption and when.

Starting no later than February 1, 2022, reports will be submitted twice a year.

This clause was made after the death of 32-year-old pilot 1st Lt. David Schmitz, who was killed in an F-16 accident in 2020 when his ejection seat malfunctioned during landing. Schmitz fled the plane, but hit the ground while still in his seat; he died immediately.

Due to a shortage of spare parts, the seat has not been repaired for three years. Military.com reported in June that despite knowing that it could be fatal, the Air Force delayed a resolution of the problem.

The Air Force primarily uses Collins Aerospace's ACES II ejection seats in most of its fighter and bomber fleets. The Navy has another version, the NACES universal ejection seat, manufactured by Martin-Baker.

Elsewhere in the bill, the House of Representatives and the Senate Armed Services Committee are pushing the Pentagon to consider and possibly adopt NASA’s recommendations on how to repair the breathing system of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is an airborne oxygen generation system manufactured by Honeywell. .

"National Defense News" reported in August that since the 2017 fiscal year, F-35 pilots have reported more than 40 physiological events, including hypoxia. Most of these occurred in the Air Force's F-35A.

NASA found that the respiratory system provided less oxygen than the pilot needed, resulting in "acute and chronic health conditions that have caused damage for days, weeks, months, or more."

The space agency recommends that the military measure the F-35's breathing indicators during flight, check the pilot's breathing ability before and after the flight, consider whether certain policies and procedures may cause problems, and collect more reports from the pilots on a regular basis.

Rachel Cohen joined the Air Force Times in March 2021 as a senior reporter. Her work has appeared in Air Force Magazine, Internal Defense, Internal Health Policy, Frederick News Post (Maryland), Washington Post, etc.