re: USAF Instructor Pilot Passed Away This Morning Due to Ejection Seat Malfunction

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I’ve heard from a source who is a pilot in the army that they are getting slashed on their budget and have not been doing routine PMs and maintenance.

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This is not the case in the AF. MX personnel are very well funded and QC is over the top. AF MX folks are primadonnas, and have a higher opinion of themselves than Maverick in Top Gun, all this in addition to be being the whiniest bunch you've ever seen.

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From the report:

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Eric Schwegler, G3 director at the Army Combat Readiness Center, told Defense News that mishaps are far more common at “the lowest level, when you’ve got maybe an E-5 [the lowest rank as a noncommissioned officer] in charge.

“[What] we see time and time again is they underestimate the risk or the risk changes,” he added.

As a result, inexperienced crews were “out-driving their headlights, out-training the experience that was in their force at whatever level,” Maj. Gen. Mac McCurry, commander of the Army Aviation Center of Excellence at Fort Novosel, Alabama, told Defense News last month.”



So you have E-5s deciding on what the training is going to be for the entire flight crew and they are underestimating the risk.

Never mind that with the 160th crash in the Med the entire NCO corp and most of the warrants were opposed to flying that night because of the extreme darkness and how flat the Med was that night. The perception on where the water was ended up being near zero.

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I did 32 years AF, but I'm not very familiar with Army culture. I find it very hard to believe that E5/E6s are overruling, or making decisions without concurrence from, WOs and Commissioned Officers.

Pilots rule the airframe, so I can't believe a E5 is ordering a WO to fly a mission when the WO thinks it's too dangerous.

I'd be interested in hearing from a current Army SNCO on this subject.

The AF doesn't have WOs and enlisted have very little decision making authority (even at the E9 level), officers make these calls, day-to-day, in the AF.

It sounds to me like this is an attempt to shift the blame down to the lowest level, which is becoming the norm.

I certainly defer to currently serving Army SNCOs, WOs and Officers on this matter.

I thought that modern ejection systems would move the pilot far enough away for the chute to open. Was this model one of those and it just malfunctioned?

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Nah man, I read the Army’s report. It’s not the lack of funding, being under manned, the extreme pace of flight ops, or lack of maintenance. It’s the bad judgement of the junior NCO ranks, in particular the E-5s and 6s making bad decisions to fly. That is literally in the Army’s report, it pissed me off like nothing else.

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This sounds like the military equivalent of Steve Jobs telling iPhone users with bad reception “ You’re holding it wrong”.

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I’ve heard from a source who is a pilot in the army that they are getting slashed on their budget and have not been doing routine PMs and maintenance.

Not saying this is the case, but that’s what’s behind a lot of army choppers malfunctioning lately

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I don’t believe that. No one is going to short the aircraft maintenance. They would ground aircraft before doing that.

As said, an ejection is still an extremely high G and high risk maneuver. Even if the pilot did everything correctly it would be easy for him to land on something on the ground that could kill him like the tail of another aircraft.