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

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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.