David Learmount/LONDON
Military flight safety is a complex subject and possibly more so in peacetime than in war. The US Air Force, for one, boasts that it recorded its safest ever year during the Gulf War. Developing practices which bring the highest levels of military flight safety all of the time, therefore, involves being good at safety in times of peace. Today, some air force leaders are questioning whether the martial culture, which exists to enforce discipline, can have a negative effect on flight safety.
Those engaged in domestic wars (like Afghanistan) or long-term unrest (like the parties involved in the Kurdish conflict) admit to having lost seven aircraft to unfriendly fire during 1997. That is scarcely a flight safety issue. Most "attrition" - an expression which is unique to the military - occurs in peacetime, however. A glance at the 1997 military accidents listing (see P41), however, makes clear the fact that, where causes are known, many events have the same mundane causes as civilian accidents.
Peacetime brings particular risks, as the Russian air force is finding out, because the economic constraints can mean that pilots get insufficient flying practice. Western European air force chiefs note that, in exercises carried out in association with eastern European air forces, the work-up period has to be carefully paced because, although the pilots' initial training has clearly been good, they desperately need flying and mission practice.
At the end of 1997 motivated by two Russian military transport aircraft crashes, which had little to do with lack of flying practice, however, commander in chief Gen Piotr Deinekin grounded everything except "-those directly connected with combat duty". In one of the crashes, an Antonov An-124 suffered the disastrous failure of three of its four engines just after take-off owing to the use of summer fuel during winter. In the other, bad visibility and poor pilot/air traffic control communication resulted in a landing An-12 colliding with a taxiing Aeroflot Mil Mi-8 helicopter, killing all on board the Mi-8. Both of these events fall into the category of "avoidable accidents".
In February this year there was an avoidable accident which embodies several of the latent dangers to which the military is particularly vulnerable. This was the event in which the crew of a US Marine Corps Grumman E-6B Prowler crew broke every rule in the book for the sake of some exciting flying, according to Italian and US military authorities involved in the continuing inquiry. The crew dived the aircraft into a valley near Cavalese, northern Italy, hitting wires carrying a cable-car full of skiers. The cables, which the crew had apparently not seen, were severed and all 20 people in the cable car fell to their deaths. The badly damaged aircraft, deployed for duties in Bosnia, limped back to Aviano.
The kind of person participating in military frontline operations, almost by definition, likes excitement, although a balanced personality is also critical. These characteristics are supposed to be chosen at selection and confirmed in early service. Disciplined training from parade ground to flying training and, eventually, on the squadron, is designed to keep enthusiasm alive while ensuring it is strictly mission-focused.
To back it all up, there is military law and the court martial. The prime reason for the latter, however, is to reinforce discipline under wartime stresses when decisions have to be made quickly, and personnel might have to be ordered to take actions which are likely to cost them their lives. Military law and rules, however, cannot prevent accidents, and thinking now is beginning to question whether brandishing the stick of traditional military discipline has, on balance, a negative effect on peacetime flight safety. Events like those at Cavalese cannot be prevented by rules, law, or the threat of retribution alone.
Military discipline takes a "blame and punish" approach, and military culture reflects this. Most good military leaders, however, are fully aware of the difference between the self-discipline inculcated by a good training and a strong organisational culture, and discipline resulting from the martial law "blame and punish" system. The problem is that, because the martial system exists in peacetime (and must do), its mechanisms kick in automatically as soon as a mistake is made or a misdemeanour committed, and there is little that can be done to stop the system once its processes are active.
In most of the world, a "blame culture" still exists in airlines also, although it is now under attack for causing people to cover up mistakes, rather than reporting them as events which may be symptoms of a systemic weakness which could be corrected.
NO BLAME SYSTEM
The Royal Air Force is ending its first year of a unique experiment with a new safety reporting philosophy, which it calls Human Factors Open Reporting (HFOR). The RAF's Inspector of Flight Safety Air Commodore Euan Black calls it "a sea change in open and honest reporting". It is a "no blame" system which does not replace the RAF's confidential direct occurrence reporting (CONDOR) system, he explains, but complements it. The CONDOR system allows personnel to report direct to the inspector, and if the reporter has appended his name, the inspector is the only person who will ever see it. By its nature, however, Black says, anonymous or confidential reporting limits what can be done with the information supplied, because fast, specific corrective action could lead to identification of the reporter.
Information supplied under the HFOR system, however, allows quick reaction which is specific to the problem revealed, and can help to build a database which may detect system faults before they become critical. The essential "don't shoot the messenger" culture which the HFOR system embodies "-will not change the [blame] culture overnight", says Black, explaining that he sees it as "a long-term initiative". It will gain people's trust, however, says Black, pointing out that it has already seen some successes at station level, where procedures have been improved following HFOR reports. "The reason it has worked is that the CAS [Chief of the Air Staff] has signed up to it - it has come from the top," explains Black.
The RAF, like the USAF, has been able to declare its second best safety year ever in 1997, if aircraft write-offs are taken as the sole measure. Black says that safety has reached a fairly level plateau, however, and is unlikely to get better without "initiatives". One answer, Black maintains, is "-to concentrate more on finding out why people do what they do". He reveals that the UK Defence Evaluation and Research Agency has been commissioned to analyse a decade of accidents to better understand their human factors aspects.
Meanwhile, improved techniques and technology are being implemented, including conspicuity livery for aircraft and the onboard collision warning system (CWS) "-which has to deal with the lower predictability of military flying", as Black puts it. A CWS prototype is now installed in a Panavia Tornado, and a production version will be fitted to Eurofighter EF2000s. Ultimately, Black forecasts, CWS will be retrofitted to all RAF aircraft.
People are still the key, however, and a military safety culture which brings the best out of them rather than beats the best into them is likely to be the greater success.
Source: Flight International