First, we had way too many helicopter accidents; now we are colliding jets in midair?!?
Maybe they should not take everyone that wants to fly a plane, and maybe we should be taking the women out of the military! The abilityy seems to have plummeted. How I wish we had the pilots that we had in the past; they seemed vastly more competent.
I agree!
“In our 1996 review,\2 we reported that DOD aviation safety had
improved significantly over the previous two decades. Between fiscal
year 1975 and 1995, for example, the annual number of Class A mishaps
decreased from 309 to 76, while the number of fatalities decreased
from 285 to 85. During this period, Class A mishaps per 100,000
flying hours, referred to as the mishap rate, also decreased from
about 4.3 to 1.5. The value of Class A losses during the early 1990s
ranged from a high of about $1.6 billion in fiscal year 1993 to a low
of $1.2 billion in fiscal year 1994.”
Pull your head out, they don’t take everyone that wants to be a pilot. I am one of those. I didn’t qualify so I went 12C, then 31B.
Having these guys overhead whether its a helo or plane, tends to cease the bad guys bullets from coming in my direction. If you haven’t been in that situation, then I really don’t want to hear your bs about “what is going on with our military”.
Military pilots are top notch.
I have far more confidence flying at 300 feet in a military aircraft than I have flying at 30,000 feet in a commercial aircraft.
Our military has an amazing safety record. They fly fast, low and close, yet they have very few accidents.
It isn't civil aviation. These guys are always pushing the envelope, and they have to train much as they will fight...or the training will not be worth diddley squat.
There are going to be accidents.
I think the applicants are pretty well screened, but compare military combat flying vs. civil aviation to NASCAR vs. driving on the street, and you have a fair analogy.
NASCAR drivers are 'screened', Drive a specialized, high performance vehicle which costs multiples of the mom-and-pop version, and have more (hopefully for mom and pop) wrecks. Just part of running hard.
I wonder if you have any concept of what it takes to be a pilot in today’s military? First, they by no means “take everyone that wants to fly a plane”. There aren’t that many pilot slots in the first place, and there are probably thousands applying for every slot - there were when I was active duty, at any rate. The Air Force is much smaller now, however, so it may even be worse than back then.
Fast reflexes, excellent vision, excellent awareness of your position in three dimensions, and dozens or even hundreds of factors, and still the only way to find out who is a good pilot is to put them in aircraft and let them fly.
We started Red Flag because our folks in ‘Nam noticed that most of our losses were among people who hadn’t survived their first ten combat missions. We fly exercises like this one in Alaska to try to get them through that first ten missions before they go into real combat — it still isn’t the same thing, but it has helped. Also, the pilots you refer to flew much slower, lower-performance aircraft than the F-15 and F-16. There is less margin for competence there. The pilots of the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s would be lost in the newer jets.
And those aren’t the most modern birds in the air, either. I first worked on F-16’s and F-15’s in the late 70’s or early 80’s, those birds were designed in the late 60’s or early 70’s.
My favorite aircraft was the F-4D, but those are hopelessly outclassed by the newer jets. Once the pilots get trained up, the new birds will own the skys.
I once had a pilot from the Illinois ANG bring a strip of gun camera film into my lab and ask for a print from any one frame of the strip; he had an F-15 under the reticle for 7 seconds. That is FOREVER in a dogfight. He was flying an F-100. Major, 4000 hours in the airframe, 2 tours in ‘Nam. Against a 1st Lt. What do you want to bet that LT is a MUCH better pilot now, if he lived?
One of the helicopters was forced to land near my place a couple weeks ago due to some indicator firing off for no apparent reason.