Study points to lack of training among reasons for aviation mishaps

Northwest Florida Daily News (Fort Walton Beach)

Dec. 8--WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A number of military aviation units across Northwest Florida were consulted for a report on military aviation safety that found, among other things, inadequate training for pilots, other aircrew members and maintenance personnel are contributing to the large number of noncombat military aviation mishaps.

The report also identified a high operational tempo, and uncertainties in connection with government funding of the military, as factors in the mishaps.

Between 2013 and 2018, there were more than 6,000 mishaps during U.S. military aviation training or routine operations, claiming the lives of almost 200 service members and civilians, destroying more than 150 aircraft and causing more than $9 billion in damages, according to the National Commission on Military Aviation Safety (NCMAS), which released its report earlier this month.

The commission, created by Congress in the National Defense Authorization Act for the 2019 fiscal year, comprised eight people, each with extensive military, government, and/or private-sector business experience. The commission was charged with examining past aviation mishaps and making recommendations to the president, Congress and the Department of Defense for improving military aviation safety and readiness.

Specifically, the NCMAS included two retired four-star military aviators, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board and director of safety and survivability for the Navy; a former secretary of the Army who subsequently served as a member of Congress, an engineer turned CEO for major aircraft manufacturers, a White House deputy chief of staff who served four presidents and a former Navy helicopter pilot who oversaw Air Force One and Marine One.

As a result of the timeline for its work, the commission did not specifically consider the two military aircraft crashes this year at Eglin Air Force Base. The crashes, within days of each other in May, destroyed an F-22 Raptor fighter jet and an F-35 fighter jet, but both pilots ejected safely from their aircraft.

Also not part of the commission's considerations was the October crash of a turboprop T-6B Texan II training plane from Naval Air Station Whiting Field. That aircraft went down in a residential area in Magnolia Springs, Alabama, claiming the lives of a Navy flight instructor and a Coast Guard aviation student.

There were no injuries on the ground in connection with any of the three local military crashes this year.

Official reports on the crashes of the F-22 and the T-6B Texan II still are being prepared, but an Air Force Accident Investigation Board report on the F-35 crash reached conclusions similar to some of the views expressed in the NCMAS report. For instance, the accident report noted a maintenance issue with the pilot's helmet flight data system, and differences between the simulator and the actual aircraft, as contributing factors in the crash.

And while the three crashes fell outside of the specific report dates, there were a number of local mishaps during the study period. For example, in August 2018, the nose gear of an F-35 collapsed during landing at Eglin AFB. Also at Eglin, a 2015 incident involving a C-130 gunship rendered the airframe a write-off. And in 2014, a fire broke out aboard an F-35 during takeoff, but the pilot was able to abort the takeoff and escape from the aircraft.

The local aviation units whose personnel contributed to the NCMAS study included the 33rd Fighter Wing at Eglin Air Force Base. The F-35 that crashed in May was part of the wing's 58th Fighter Squadron.

Also part of the NCMAS study were a number of units at Naval Air Station Pensacola. The 479th Flying Training Group, Training Air Wing Six, the Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training and the Naval Aviation Safety School were included in the study's work.

The NCMAS report, which runs more than 70 pages, and includes lengthy additional appendices, was focused in part on a single question posed to pilots and maintenance personnel.

That question, "What do you think will cause the next aviation mishap?" was, according to the report, posed to "thousands of pilots and maintainers ... during visits to military flightlines."

What was striking, the commission noted, is that answers to that question centered on just seven issues -- "insufficient flight hours, decreasing proficiency levels, inadequate training programs, excessive administrative duties, inconsistent funding, risky maintenance practices, and a relentless operations tempo."

Interestingly, the relentless operational tempo had been noted in a separate and unrelated recent study by U.S. Special Operations Command, which oversees all of America's special operations military personnel, as a problem within its ranks.

"The central finding of the SOCOM comprehensive review was that we have systematically overvalued operational activity at the detriment of deliberate leader development and force-generation-type activity," Lt. Gen. Jim Slife, commander of the Hurlburt Field-based Air Force Special Operations Command, said in a recent interview with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "... (W)e had created an environment where our units were so busy getting ready for the next thing that they weren't paying attention to basic blocking and tackling."

The NCMAS also pointed to Congress as the source of a problem contributing to military aviation mishaps. The ongoing inability of Congress to adopt spending bills in advance of the Oct. 1 start of the federal fiscal year, instead relying on "continuing resolutions" to keep the government -- and, thus, the military -- running for short periods of time at the previous fiscal year's funding levels -- "is especially pernicious to military aviation safety," according to the NCMAS report.

U.S. military operations have been funded with continuing resolutions for more than a dozen years in recent history, according to the NCMAS. That's true for the current fiscal year, for which none of the 12 federal appropriations bills were enacted by Oct. 1. The continuing resolution now funding the government is in place only through Friday.

Congress is preparing to vote this week on the defense appropriations bill, but the threat of a presidential veto is looming, as President Donald Trump balks at a provision that would strip the names of Confederate military leaders from U.S. military bases. Trump also has insisted that a law stripping tech companies of a shield against liability for posts on social media platforms be made a part of the defense bill.

In the meantime, the NCMAS report insists that late funding means that military aviation units "simply cannot make up for lost training and deferred maintenance. Late funding, no matter the amount, cannot reverse the impact of months of insufficient flying hours, missing parts, and deferred maintenance."

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