DAVID LEARMOUNT / LONDON
Unlike civil aviation, there cannot be international standards for military flying - so is operating combat aircraft getting safer?
Military air arms trying to operate safely in peacetime have a complex task. It is far harder to reduce safety differentials between air forces than it is between airlines. Civil air transport has the International Civil Aviation Organisation to set global standards and recommended practices and is commercially pressurised into being safe, but there can never be international military standards.
Air forces and air arms can - and do - take part in multi-national safety forums where they can exchange experiences and ideas, and see what systems work for other organisations. But good intentions can come to nothing through underfunding and being at the mercy of political decision making. This can destroy the efforts of service personnel and ruin morale.
India's air force suffered 27 losses and accidents in 2000, and 30 in 1999. In the past three years the air force has lost nearly 60 Mikoyan MiG fighters, as well as more than 10 other types including helicopters, with over 20 pilots losing their lives.
No other air force appears to have a problem on this scale, but India - with the world's fourth largest air force - has been living with statistics like this for more than a decade.
Now India's auditor general has, for the second time since 1998, identified as the cause the constantly broken funding promises in every corner of air force life. From pilot training to failures to deliver planned upgrades for navigation and attack systems on strike aircraft, breaking faith with the service in this way affects all its operations.
Following the auditor's analysis, members of India's parliament have been calling for the government to rectify a longstanding cause of fleet attrition and pilot loss - the lack of advanced training aircraft for young fighter pilots. They must convert onto high-performance MiG-21s straight from basic trainers like the Hindustan Aeronautics Kiran or the PZL Iskra. A year ago, India was "in the final stages" of haggling over the price of BAE Systems Hawk advanced jet trainers (AJT) (Flight International, 26 September-2 October 2000). This year the negotiations continue. India is eyeing the lower-priced Russian RSK MiG-AT - $5 million cheaper than the Hawk - but this option would further delay delivery by three years compared with the Hawk.
Other causes
The lack of an AJT, however, is not the only cause of aircraft losses, according to Indian air force engineers. Ageing aircraft and parts shortages have led to many engine and structural failures, they say.
Some governments are frank about their lack of faith in their own country's military safety. In Malaysia, the government, having bought a Bombardier Global Express executive jet for its ministers' travel, answered opposition criticisms about "wasting" government money by explaining that travel in its military VIP transport aircraft - a Dassault Falcon 900 - was unacceptably risky. Deputy finance minister Shafie Mohamed Salieh said that the military had suffered frequent accidents and lost 29 pilots in the last decade because of technical problems, bad weather and pilot errors. But there was no mention of a plan to overcome the military's safety problems.
Meanwhile, the UK's Royal Air Force reported its safest operational year ever in 2000, with no fatalities. A BAE Systems Hawk and a Sepecat Jaguar both suffered serious birdstrikes but the pilots ejected safely, and two Jaguars operating together collided but the aircraft landed without further incident. Apart from the birdstrike events, the only other write-off was a Westland Puma which hit the ground hard during a training exercise in Yorkshire. Again, there were no fatalities. The RAF's Inspector of Flight Safety, Air Cdre Ray Dixon, says that, with an accident rate of 0.09 per 10,000 flying hours, the service has improved markedly over the years and is probably "close to the glass floor".
Nevertheless, many safety plans have either been put into action or are under development. One of the developing systems is the flight safety information management system (FSIMS), a database of accidents, incidents and reported malfunctions. These can be reported from any area of operations including the hangar and the flightline as well as airborne events.
Once up and running, the FSIMS will store new reports as well as all the data now kept in an old-fashioned card index system. The RAF will then have a formidable ability for system performance analysis which it has never had before. Dixon says that although the service has looked at off-the-shelf systems in use with both airlines and other military services, it could not find one which could be adapted to its own criteria, so it is working with contractors to develop a tailor-made solution. The earliest he expects to see FSIMS operational is 18 months to two years from now.
When FSIMS is up and running, Dixon expects incidents to be reported more often because reporting will be more likely to have some effect. Meanwhile the no-blame Human Factors Open Reporting system (HFOR), only a few years old, is already causing more people to report mistakes they make. The number of reports is increasing, says Dixon, because people can see the value which emerges from the reports that others file. It is impossible to quantify HFOR's net benefit in terms of reduced incidents or accidents, he says, but reports are often filed about things which can easily be rectified, so that reduces frustration and improves morale. "It supplies good information direct to your own command chain," Dixon explains. HFOR is a specific human factors addition to the RAF's more traditional, all-purpose confidential reporting system, Condor.
Diagnostic systems
All these systems are reactive, Dixon points out, but the service is working progressively to become more proactive, especially with the installation in aircraft of diagnostic or monitoring systems. These include quick access recorders (QARs) in fixed wing aircraft and health and usage monitoring systems (HUMS) in the helicopter fleet. QARs are already fitted to the Panavia Tornado interdictor/strike and Lockheed TriStar tanker fleets, and are ready-fitted to all new aircraft like Eurofighter and the Boeing C-17 heavy transport aircraft. All the new helicopters are delivered with HUMS, including the Boeing Chinook HC3, the Westland Apache AH1, and the AgustaWestland Merlin, and retrofits are under way or planned throughout the rest of the fleet.
Considering the cost and danger of birdstrikes - which caused two of the aircraft losses this year - particularly from flocks of large migratory birds, the RAF is preparing to put on trial a specialist ground-based radar which can detect flocks. Bases like RAF Kinloss, Scotland, have a particular problem with flocking birds, and being able to report their position and movement to aircrew before take-off or when they are in the airfield vicinity could save equipment and even lives.
This year's theme at the European Air Forces Flight Safety Committee (AFFSCE) will be collision avoidance systems. Dixon, the committee's chairman, says that some new systems aimed at creating better "conspicuity" - such as high intensity lights and specially developed colour schemes for aircraft - are not as effective as had been hoped. Besides which, paint cannot be applied without damaging some composite materials used in progressively more military aircraft.
On the benefit side, the use of transponders by more general aviation aircraft in uncontrolled training airspace is contributing to easier and more accurate radar tracking. The injection of ideas and experience at AFFSCE by European air forces and air arms, as well as observers from the rest of the world, may make the solutions easier to see.
Source: Flight International
