Safety Program or a Safe Program?

The point at which your safety program becomes irrelevant

There is a huge difference between having a safety program and operating safely.  The difference can mean life or death.  A few examples:

1. September 18th, 2008.  An Army National Guard helicopter crosses from Kuwait into southern Iraq for the first time since arriving in country for a nine month tour.  The organization at all levels has school trained safety officers, trained at the Army Safety Center at Fort Rucker, which believes (and practices) that enough micromanagement can achieve a zero accident rate in the Army.  There are safety conferences, safety meetings, safety councils, safety surveys, safety briefings, risk assessments, and safety is preached and drilled constantly during a months-long train up for the deployment.

But that evening, it doesn't matter, as inexperienced pilots take off in marginal weather into the dark featureless desert. Within minutes after crossing into country, the third aircraft in the formation, Red River 44, crashes into the desert floor at 130 knots, killing the crew and passengers.

2. April 20th, 2010.  BP has a great safety program, if not a great safety record.  Contract employees are subject to intensive interviews before being allowed to work for BP.  Many of these third party providers fail to live up to BP's safety standards.  New arrivals at BP facilities are shaken down for contraband.  Passengers must be escorted by approved escort personnel to aircraft that are shut down, no hot refueling, no hot passenger loading.  Safety is practiced well past the point of operational intrusion.  There are safety audits and safety consultants and safety inspections and safety meetings and long safety conventions, and awards and accolades given to the safest of the safe operators.

But that evening, it doesn't matter, as the Deepwater Horizon crew, recipients of a recent safety award, bypass all manner of established protocols downhole and cause a blowout that kills 11, and an epic oil spill that the domestic offshore drilling industry will take years to recover from.

3. Ongoing.  A major provider of worldwide offshore helicopter services hosts an expanding safety department that issues frequent safety alerts on such imperative workplace dangers as:

a. People walking into trailer hitches in the parking lot at company headquarters.
b. People walking into filing cabinets at company headquarters.
c. People injuring themselves standing up from chairs at company headquarters.

4. Have you taken a state approved Defensive Driving Course lately?  Enough said.

It is a given that people will often brush safety concerns aside in favor of getting the job done, absent any controls.  It is also a given that safety programs are often born out of industrial accidents, that the rules are written in blood, and that THE PROGRAM IS PUT IN PLACE LARGELY TO COVER MANAGEMENT'S REAR END AFTER AN ACCIDENT.  Later, the overly restrictive new programs are at least partially ignored on the line, and the process repeats itself, sometimes at the cost of many lives.

So what exactly can be done?  How can a safety program be engineered so that it actually makes a difference and a meaningful connection between the program and the employees?  A few ideas from the field:

1. The safety department must be trusted and respected both up and down.  Safety must report directly to top management so as to minimize political interference, and personnel on the line must be able to bring their concerns to the safety department where they will be given a fair hearing, without fear of retribution.  The moment that the line perceives that the safety department is blowing off their concerns, or worse, is a hit man for management, the safety department will have forever lost the cooperation of the line.  Moreover, if the line is engaged in operating, maintaining, and fueling aircraft in harsh conditions worldwide and your safety department is primarily focused on office hazards... your safety program has become a JOKE.

2. The safety department needs to be out in the field.  Often the best thing that safety personnel can do is push back from the desk and get out in the field to beat the bushes for potential problems.  Not with a checklist and a charter to document the sins of the field, but to talk to people and to understand that they alone do not understand the whole picture.  They might be surprised to find out that they can learn more in one afternoon of walking around than they would on several out of state safety conferences where they hobnob with equally clueless safety program managers from across the industry.

3. Standards must be enforced.  Much as I hate to admit it, the proliferation of exceedance monitoring and tracking equipment in the industry has had a dramatic effect on standardization.  What that means is that if you have a little box in the aircraft that is tracking everything you are doing, and management can see what you are doing any any given time... guess what?  People will behave better.  They won't like the intrusiveness, but they will behave better, because they really won't have a choice.  What management ultimately does with this data is a whole nuther topic, and one that will set the tone for the acceptance of the program, grudging or otherwise.

Ideally, if the line and safety work well together, the majority of threats will be identified and managed.  There will always be unsafe people, unsafe acts, and stupid policies, and they will all have to be dealt with.  But no one at any level should ever confuse a safety PROGRAM with a SAFE program.

One day in JROTC class

Iran... another country that allows hijabs in uniform

Instructor: Today, young JROTC cadets, we will be discussing Army Regulation 670-1, Wear and Appearance of Army Uniforms and Insignia.  As stated in paragraph 1-1, this regulation "prescribes the authorization for wear, composition, and classification of uniforms, and the occasions for wearing all personal (clothing bag issue), optional, and commonly worn organizational Army uniforms. It also prescribes the awards, insignia, and accouterments authorized for wear on the uniform, and how these items are worn."  

It is important to keep in mind that according to paragraph 1-7, "The Army is a uniformed service where discipline is judged, in part, by the manner in which a soldier wears a prescribed uniform, as well as by the individual’s personal appearance."

Furthermore, we will discuss important items such as a recent change to the regulation by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta authorizing wear of hijabs in formation...

Cadet Jones: Huh?

Instructor: Did you have something for the class, Cadet Jones?

Cadet Jones: I'm reading a little further down in paragraph 1-7, where it says "Personnel will not wear religious headgear in place of military headgear when military headgear is required (outdoors, or indoors when required for duties or ceremonies)."  What part of 670-1 has been repealed exactly?  Are we upholding uniform standards or not?

Instructor: Cadet Jones, there are also regulations regarding insubordination if you'd like me to bring you up to speed on them.  What exactly do you not understand about the regulation?

Cadet Jones: Well... could I wear a visible cross on my uniform?

Instructor: No!  From paragraph 1-7b(1)(a) clearly states "a religious item worn on a chain may not be visible when worn with the utility, service, dress, or mess uniforms".

Cadet Jones: Do I have the option of wearing no headgear in formation?

Instructor: Of course not.  Read down to paragraph 1-10, where the regulation specifies that "soldiers will wear headgear with the Army uniform, except under the following circumstances" and then goes on to list the specific circumstances, such as when you are in a vehicle or indoors.  But in a formation, you are expected to be in uniform.

Cadet Jones: A parade to me sounds like a formation where a uniform appearance is the standard... didn't this whole thing get started when CAIR wrote Panetta to complain that a Muslim student was not allowed to wear a hijab in a parade because her commander actually ENFORCED AR 670-1 as written?  I mean, I can't carry an umbrella with my uniform but since CAIR made some noise the whole uniform policy changes for a kid who wants to wear a hijab under the guise of religious freedom?

Instructor: You are too hung up on the letter of the law.  Other things are much more important than regulations and standards in today's Army.  Like diversity!  After all, the Chief of Staff GEN Casey said right after the Fort Hood shootings "What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here".  

Cadet Jones: Sir, I'm only 15, but why is the Army tripping over itself trying to accommodate the religious preferences of the same group who kill us for religious reasons?  This is diversity for its own sake and its insane!! You are allegedly teaching us to become leaders... and from the first introduction to the military you are sending junior leaders the message that you can change long standing regulations at the whim of agitators and victim organizations outside the military!!!

Instructor: Cadet, I caution you against insubordination once more...

Cadet Jones: I can't believe how f___ed up the priorities are, and from the highest levels in the military!!!  I thought the military was about discipline and regulations, and people have to rise to the standard!!! Je__s Ch__t this is gay...

Instructor: WHAT did you say?

Cadet Jones: Oh, the profanity?  I'm sorry, sir, I got a little carried away...

Instructor: NO, not THAT...

Cadet Jones: Oh, the Lord's name in vain... my bad.

Instructor: NO!!!! You made a slur against gays!!! Sergeant!! Call security!!!

fade to black....

Ode to a full timer

Attention to orders:

The Active Guard and Reserve Medal of Honor is presented to MAJ Smedlap.

For exceptionally meritorious service on Saturday afternoon at drill.

Saturday afternoon, clipboard in hand, MAJ Smedlap was conducting an inspection of a hand grenade class in the armory, when without warning, a live grenade landed at his feet.

Without a moment's hesitation and with complete disregard for the safety of others, MAJ Smedlap threw the closest m day soldier, PFC Snuffy, on top of the grenade and exited the area in a rapid fashion so as not to mess up his uniform.

Following the explosion and only after verifying the coast was clear and no further grenades would land at his feet, MAJ Smedlap organized a detail of m day soldiers to clean up the armory and tend to the survivors.  His rapid actions resulted in a minimum of effort required of anyone on full time status having to spend any part of their four day work week cleaning up m dayer's messes.

MAJ Smedlap's actions resulted in an additional full time PFC slot becoming available in the unit, as well as the preservation of the integrity of the command structure of the unit, the continuity of everyone's full time jobs, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, his retirement package.

MAJ Smedlap's actions are in keeping with the greatest traditions of the cool guys in full time jobs, the active guard and reserve system, and the US Army.

Small hooah.

Pilot Joke

One day a long, long time ago, there was a pilot who WASN'T full of it.

But that was only one pilot, and just for one day.

And that was a long, long time ago.

Change you can believe in

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this picture will not need much introduction.  This is an aerial shot of one section of Fourchon, Louisiana, drilling central for the Gulf of Mexico, taken on the 27th of October, 2011, over a year after the gulf was long since cleaned up.  


Boats.  Parked.  Everywhere.  In better days, these boats would be out supporting drilling operations and only in port to load and unload.  Unfortunately, this has been the scene since shortly after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.  Followed by an initial uptick in business for Deepwater Horizon response, and followed by a very long and ongoing period of governmental interference with drilling operations in the gulf.  


This is the "boot on the neck", the "boot on the throat", and the tough talking administration judging "whose ass to kick".  Unfortunately, the rest of the industry, and particularly the third party providers like these boat companies are still feeling the pain, and do not factor into the new jobs bill or the 99%.  


By the way, BP just got a new permit to drill in the gulf.  Better luck next time, guys.  

Old procurement joke...

A good plan with funding is a DREAM.  


A good plan without funding is a HALLUCINATION.  


Funding without a good plan is a NIGHTMARE.  

Why helicopters?

Helicopter lease rates in the Gulf of Mexico can easily run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars a MONTH, with added surcharges for fuel, extra hours, and night flights... how can anyone afford to pay such rates, and why does everybody seem to travel by helicopter in the gulf?  


1. Particularly in support of drilling operations, time is money. A deepwater drilling rig may lease for over $500K/day, and if the drilling project is held up for a day because the rig needs a part or a specialized contractor to move forward, the added expense for helicopter support is a mere rounding error in the drilling budget, which is in the multi millions for each well drilled.  


This brings up an interesting point.  If oil companies are making those obscene profits, do you imagine that any of those profits are rolled into further exploration, which is obscenely expensive?  And do you think that each time they drill a hole that they actually HIT something that gives them a big payoff?  Sometimes. And sometimes they're just out several million for a dry hole.  It happens.  


2. Drilling and production operations are quite geographically dispersed even in the Gulf of Mexico, and the tendency is to move toward deeper water, further and further out.  If you have twenty or thirty people spread out at various locations up to 150 miles offshore, a relatively fast crew boat (20 knots or so) can take 18 hours to do a crew change, while a couple of helicopters can pull the same crew change before lunch gets cold.  A large drilling operation can easily have 80-100 people on board one rig.  Figure in additional overtime costs for paying your outgoing crews for the delay, and the high rates for third party contractors waiting on transportation, and the helicopter again begins to look like a pretty good deal.  


3. Some deepwater exploration projects are served by increasingly larger and more expensive aircraft such as the Sikorsky S-92, which sells for around $20 million per copy.  There are reasons for this too, and reasons that companies are willing to pay a premium for such aircraft.  


One is that newer and more capable aircraft are safer, with additional power and up to date survivability equipment if the worst happens and the helicopter does go down.  Top tier companies are willing to pay a premium for the safety of their people, mindful of the costs of cutting corners and the price of liability and lawsuits.   


The second is a function of distance offshore.  The FAA limits a two-pilot crew to ten hours of flight time per day.  If a round trip to a location 250 miles offshore takes 4 flight hours, then you get two trips per day, per helicopter, period.  


So the ONLY way to increase your throughput of people in and out of your deepwater properties is to use faster aircraft (more flight time per day) or bigger aircraft (more seats on each flight).  


And now you know. 

Another pilot joke...

What's the difference between a pizza and a copilot?


The pizza can feed a family of four.  

The One Moose Airplane

A cautionary tale in aircraft overloading and customer pressure. 


Not a true story, but it happens every day...


Once there was an Alaskan Bush Pilot who flew hunters in his floatplane on contract to remote locations.  He was hired by two hunters who he flew to a remote lake and agreed to return in three days to pick them up.  The pilot warned the hunters in no uncertain terms that he only had a ONE MOOSE AIRCRAFT, and no matter how many moose they bagged on their hunting trip, they could only load ONE MOOSE aboard the aircraft for the return trip.  


As scheduled, three days later, the bush pilot returned to the lake and was chagrined to find that the hunters had bagged TWO moose, and were adamant about wanting to take both of them on the airplane.  


The pilot explained that it was a one moose aircraft, and one moose was all it could carry.  


The hunters countered that both moose were field dressed, and kind of scrawny, and therefore added up to maybe 1.25 moose at best.  


The pilot didn't buy it, and launched into a long boring diatribe about aircraft weight and balance, Federal Aviation Regulations, risking his license and livelihood, etc. etc.  


The hunters mentioned that one of them knew a pilot once who had a completely different interpretation of federal law as it applied to moose carriage, and that the game wardens really didn't care anyway, so what was the big deal?  


Growing increasingly irritated as this stalemate was delaying his already packed charter schedule, the pilot stated that if they wanted to go out, they were going with one moose, and no more than one moose, end of discussion.  


The hunters began to openly speculate on the condition of the aircraft, the payment arrangement for the flight, the reasons that the pilot was still single, and moreover, stated that the previous year, on the same lake, with the same type aircraft, another pilot had flown out with two moose on their previous trip, and what exactly was his problem anyway?  


Gritting his teeth, the pilot agreed to carry the two moose, as the sun was beginning to go down and it was pointless to argue any longer.  As the moose were loaded, the floatplane nearly swamped its floats from the weight of the two moose.  


Configuring the floatplane for a maximum performance takeoff, the pilot water taxied to the far end of the lake and performed the best takeoff he could muster with all the power the airplane had.  Performance was weaker than expected and at the far end of the lake, he was forced to bank around trees as he squeezed every ounce of performance out of the floatplane that he could.  Engine straining and wings bending, it appeared that they might make it, but the two moose were too much.  The airplane settled into the trees, chopping off first the tops of trees, then small branches, then larger branches, then finally somersaulting into the undergrowth in an ugly wreck.  


It was a horrific scene.  Moose meat hung from low branches, the smell of jet fuel mixed with the smell of fresh cut pine and fresh cut aluminum.  Mercifully, the pilot and hunters were knocked unconscious but not killed.  


Half an hour later, one hunter, waking up from his stupor, yelled out to the other hunter "where are we?"


The second hunter, looking around to gain his bearings, said "I think we're about a hundred yards from where we ended up last year".  

Blood, dust, and beatdowns

It was a dark and stormy night.  

But not really... it more like your average dusty afternoon, with rapidly decreasing visibility.  Weather in Iraq seemed to be either wide open VFR conditions, or widespread areas of blowing dust, with no in between.  This afternoon was definitely more the latter.  

I was the Air Mission commander of a two UH-60 Blackhawk MEDEVAC team on second up duty.  A call came in, and it fell into second up's lap.  A wounded soldier was going into surgery, could we take a shipment of blood to the hospital in Tikrit, around a 40 minute flight north?  Certainly we could... but with the dust getting worse, and nightfall rapidly approaching, we would have the weather to fly OUT during the day, but not the weather to come BACK after it got dark.  Did battalion understand that by sending us on this mission that they were effectively throwing away their second up crew, we asked?


"Check the weather when you get there" was the answer from battalion.  In other words, maybe the weather that has been deteriorating all day will be better in 40 minutes, after it gets dark!  


No matter the idiocy of higher command... wounded GIs, we launch.  We did, and dropped the blood at the Tikrit hospital shortly thereafter.  Not surprisingly, the dust had gotten much worse, night was falling, and we were stuck on base in Tikrit for an undetermined period of time.  We refueled and parked at our sister MEDEVAC unit on the airfield, who were kind enough to have us over for dinner in their unit's dining facility tucked into their hangar, and also let us use their phones.  Now we just had to wait for the weather to clear, which was not realistically expected until the next morning.  


But with nothing to do but wait out the weather, and freed from our second up duties, we elected to hop the bus to the Post Exchange.  At this point, I became just a dumb W2 along for the ride. Since we were on the ground now, I was relieved of any mission responsibilities, and command was relinquished to the senior officer on the ground, in this case our captain and Platoon Leader.  


This is where things got interesting.  Since we had departed our own base in such a hurry and expected to be back right away, several of us had no headgear or reflective belts on our person (mistake #1).  While you can get away with this on an airfield where nobody wears headgear, being "out of uniform" without your reflective belt is a most heinous sin on a base in Iraq full of bored sergeants major.  If you think that such infractions would not be prosecuted because you are in a "combat zone", trust me, enforcement of uniform standards is as stupid in a mature theater overseas as on a stateside parade ground, if not more so.  


So being a band of brothers who would all go down together, we ALL took off our headgear and reflective belts and boarded the bus to the PX, hopeful that we would not be caught (mistake #2).  


The PX at Tikrit was wonderful and featured many outside vendors for watches, electronics, and souvenir items that we could not find at our own base.  We planned to meet up in the courtyard outside in an hour or so, after our coffee, shopping options, and petty cash were exhausted, before returning to the airfield to wait out the weather.  


But when I rounded the corner to meet our captain and lieutenant, I was horrified to see them, hatless and reflective belt-less, speaking to a Command Sergeant Major right in front of the PX.  Not only a CSM, but the DIVISION CSM in charge of the entire installation, and doubtless taking them to task on being a bunch of slob aviators out of uniform... a CSM's dream.  


This is where things got strange.  


When they explained the whole story of how we came to the base on the blood mission, the CSM was taken aback, as he had just come from the hospital where he had visited the very soldier who was in need of the blood.  Even stranger, he had a nephew who was currently in our very own guard unit.  Now the CSM who was going to hang us out to dry for being out of uniform suddenly changed his tune and asked we eight slob guard aviators if we would accompany him to the boxing smoker at the base gym, which had just started.  


Who were we to refuse?  Our new friend the CSM commandeered a vehicle or two from around the PX and we were off to the boxing smoker as division's guests.  


Once again, at the entrance to the event, mature theater problems cropped up again.  We had plastic bags from the PX in hand, another heinous sin.  Plastic bags are banned from any dining facilities, recreation centers, and the like, which no doubt saves thousands of lives if not providing job security for a bunch of bored SGMs and security details.  Welcome to today's Army, where everyone is required to carry at least one semi automatic weapon with ammo, but where plastic bags are viewed as a threat.  


The crew chief with me, a rather large guy, simply stuffed a souvenir decorative dagger in his cargo pocket, stuffed a souvenir plate down the front of his pants, discarded the plastic bag, and walked right in.  Security seemed satisfied.  Things just got stranger and stranger.  


 Arriving ringside, the CSM continued his hospitality by throwing several division staff types out of their ringside seats and replacing them with our flight crews.  By now my head had pretty much spun out of control from the changes in our fate over the last few hours.  


The boxing smoker did not disappoint.  The gym was packed with soldiers and the smoke of a thousand cigars and cigarettes, and before we even got in the parking lot, the first among the vanquished competitors were being carried out past us to waiting ambulances.  This was the first boxing match I had ever attended, and apparently that was the case for a lot of the guys fighting too.  The arena was dark, the music was loud, and the reactions of these guys as they actually got hit, HARD, for the first time was priceless.  I don't think any fight went longer than three rounds, and knockdowns and knockouts in the first round were common.  After a fight or two, it was apparent that the high speed infantry types, waving their unit guidons and bringing their platoons along for moral support, did not always fare well against the hospital medics who spent the whole war inside the wire... apparently with lots more time to train.  It was an eyeful.  


After the fights wrapped up, our best friend the division CSM was kind enough to give us a lift back to the airfield, where the weather (surprise) continued to stink all night long.  After several cutoff times for weather expired, our sister MEDEVAC unit gave us some transient space to bed down for the night, which we gratefully accepted.  Very early the next morning we had a break in the weather just before dawn, and we made it back to our base just in time to cover the shift change the next morning as scheduled.  End of mission.  


There were many long and boring days and nights spent in Iraq... but that was not one of them.  

On military procurement...

V-22 Osprey

Recently I have been listening to the audio book “The Dream Machine: The Untold History of the Notorious V-22 Osprey”.  It’s an exhaustive history of the V-22 tilt-rotor program over the decades, and it got me thinking about my own time working procurements in the Army. 

Procurement in the DoD is a nasty business.  To illustrate, let us use a theoretical example of a “joint” project, meant to save the DoD money by fielding one common system to all branches; Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. 

First, someone at the Pentagon briefs a long PowerPoint show on the money spent on cutlery in DoD dining facilities, and how things can be done better and cheaper if we can all just agree on a common solution which will take us through the next four decades.  Some four star agrees, funding is slipped into a bill in congress under the radar, and the Joint Spork Office is formed and staffed at some installation, somewhere. 

Theoretical "Joint Spork"

The services all go on a long TDY somewhere, to whatever location has better hotels, to have a week’s worth of day-long meetings to determine their requirements for the new spork.  The Marines are angry that they don’t get to go because the Navy gets to represent their interests at the meeting. 

The Army wants the spork to be capable of digging a fighting position, and the field artillerymen want to be able to quickly convert it for use as a flechette in case a dining facility is overrun. 

The Navy needs a marinized version in order to use the spork while underway at sea, and to shoot it out of torpedo tubes. 

The Air Force needs it to be able to survive an ejection at 60,000 feet, and be able to cut through an aircraft fuselage for airfield rescue. 

The Marines really need the spork to have a bayonet lug, so that they might attach it to their rifles when the battle is going very badly. 

After spending all week dining out but not agreeing on much of anything, the services retire to their respective installations, fire off lots of emails, and control of the project disappears deep into their separate bureaucracies, each with wildly different priorities and processes.  Months go by between meetings, years go by before the project gets any traction.  Somehow, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines make do with legacy edition cutlery, although some cut themselves and nearly starve due to the inherent inadequacies of the low-tech fork, knife, and spoon. 

Other DoD-level bureaucracies lobby to test the new spork, shooting it, electrifying it, blowing it up, or whatever they need to do to justify the existence of their individual testing organizations, which forces unforeseen design changes and cost overruns.  More years drag by.  The spork design becomes heavier and more costly, and hardly fit to eat with. 

By and by, the Air Force goes out on their own and procures their own spork, in defiance of DoD policy and federal law, but at least they are the first to field a spork, while the joint spork languishes in the two year long operational testing phase. 

Eight years later, the joint spork is ready for production, meeting 80% of the specified requirements, and costing in the neighborhood of $150 per unit.  Meanwhile, mil-spec copies can be found on eBay for $12.  While this is meant to be a humorous example, this is exactly how we get to the legendary $600 toilet seat of DoD procurement lore. 

There are other reasons for cost overruns besides “jointness”.  Let us examine a few of them. 

Particularly in the case of high-tech and leap-ahead technologies like the V-22 (read: technologies that have not been designed yet), it is impossible to know at the outset of the project how much per airplane you are going to pay.  Aircraft invariably gain weight and lose capabilities during development as the project transitions from fanciful requirements and marketing promises to what is actually achievable in reality with a fixed budget. 

By the time it is apparent that an aircraft will not meet both its target costs nor its performance goals, enough time and money has been invested (and the contract cancellation costs are so high) that it is not financially feasible to bail out of the project.  This brings to mind the DoD truism that there are two phases of any procurement project… too early to tell, and too late to stop. 

Another procurement truism simply states: good, fast, cheap… pick two. 

If you want high quality, you can have it fast, or cheap… but not both. 

If you want it fast, you can have quality, or low cost… but not both. 

And if you want it cheap, you can do it right, or it’ll take much longer. 

Not to say that any of this is correct, but it IS the way that the DoD does business! 

Lastly, the requirements, budgets, and “want lists” of the services constantly change with the political winds, competing priorities for limited defense dollars, etc. etc.  This is where you sometimes feel sorry for the contractors.  Originally told that they will be building 2000 aircraft for three branches of service, two services will drop the aircraft completely over the decades-long development cycle, the sole remaining service will change the amount that they want to buy six times, money will too tight to fund all of the original requirements, and other requirements will be worked around and dropped at the behest of the service in order to stay somewhat on budget. 

When the final bills come in and only 400 aircraft are ordered of the original 2000, every newspaper on the beltway will report how badly the project is over budget and what a piece of junk the aircraft is, and the specter of the “military industrial complex” will ride again, for a short time. 

As ugly as the process is, it is ultimately important that we suffer through this charade and fund leap-ahead technologies to maintain our military’s technological overmatch against potential enemies, because we always roll into battle with what’s on the shelf, and not what we really need.  An example from Iraq:

During the initial invasion, I know soldiers who spent seventeen months in Sadr City, working out of light HMMWV vehicles, with NO armor, and only fabric doors.  This is unforgivable in 2003, as the light armor of the HMMWV vehicles had proven to be inadequate for combat in Somalia in 1993 and even in Bosnia in the late 1990s against the land mine threat… with nobody shooting.

HMMWV without armor

By the time I arrived there for the first time in 2005 with a ground unit, IEDs were taking a heavy toll on American troops, and there was a major push to armor ALL Army ground vehicles, first with torch cut plate steel doors, and later with bolt-on armor kits.  Casualties continued to mount from IEDs, as bombs can be built faster than armored vehicles can be designed and fielded.

HMMWV with armor kit

Beginning in 2007, the MRAP family of mine-resistant vehicles began to replace armored HMMWVs, and after six years and thousands of US casualties, the US Armed Forces had a solution that was NEARLY adequate to meet the threat on the ground. 

MRAP

Why did the US not have MRAPs earlier?  They WERE in Iraq, at least since 2005.  Not with the US, but in the service of some foreign armies.  Since the first MRAP designs were of South African manufacture, and symbolic of the apartheid era in that region, most Western armies wanted nothing to do with them and would not purchase them from South Africa, regardless of operational necessity. 

And those kind of decisions, along with unbridled spending cuts, get troops KILLED.  

Buffalo MRAP in Iraq, circa 2005

Where did the marsh go?

Following the BP spill of 2010, Louisiana has fought mightily with the federal government and BP for marsh restoration funding. At first glance, it might appear that the BP spill by itself had done irreparable damage to the coastal ecosystems in Louisiana, and the damage to plant and animal life in the area of the spill is well documented. But as pointed out in a Time Magazine article, the damage done to the marsh from the BP spill is just a “sunburn on a cancer patient” relative to what both Louisiana and the federal government have been doing to the marsh for decades.

There are two major categories of marsh damage, natural and man caused.

Left to itself, marshlands will naturally subside. More on this later as we describe as how man has greatly accelerated this natural process.

Second, Louisiana has had more than its fair share of hurricanes over the past decade, which rearranges the marsh structure and pushes salt water VERY far inland. Salt water kills freshwater plants, and the marsh dies back further.

Third, and bridging the categories of natural and man caused damage, the introduction of the fur-bearing Nutria to Louisiana in the 1930s has caused significant damage to marshland, such that the state has a formal Nutria Control Program and a $4 bounty on the head of each Nutria. This is beyond what you can get for the fur and the meat, assuming you are not looking for a new recipe.

Leading the parade of man caused damage to the marsh, decades of dredging has been done throughout the marsh in order to provide access for boats, pipelines, and shallow water oil platforms. If you want to hang one on the oil companies, here it is. Dredging opens up canals that were never meant to be there, salt water and freshwater go to where they were never meant to go, and once again, the marsh dies back. 

Canals in the marsh

But possibly most egregious is the mission of the Army Corps of Engineers.  The corps has a dual mission in Louisiana, flood control and maintaining navigable waterways, meaning the Mississippi river.  Oh yeah, and environmental stewardship.  

What this translates to in reality is the corps spends untold sums of federal dollars damming up the Mississippi throughout Louisiana, to protect cities like New Orleans (below sea level and surrounded by water) and Venice (at the furthest south tip of the delta) to name only a few.  In doing so, they are fighting nature and the natural process of repairing the marsh.  Without the natural flooding of sediment over the banks of the Mississippi, the marsh can’t help but die, and the nutrient-rich silt that would normally replenish the marsh is directed off the delta and into the Gulf of Mexico, where algae blooms and fish kills are the inevitable result.  

And now the punch line. You, the taxpayer, are picking up the bill for:

- The Army Corps of Engineers, to build miles and miles of levees to protect New Orleans and every other town in Louisiana that was never meant to stay dry when the Mississippi is at flood stage;

- The Army Corps of Engineers to dredge the Mississippi in support of the Port of New Orleans, and navigation all along the southern portion of the river;

- Marsh restoration projects that would not be needed if the Mississippi were allowed to naturally flood and change course as it has since the beginning of time;

- Various scientific studies to tell us how bad all of this has been for the marsh, and... 


- Federal funding for bounty hunters to trap big furry marsh rats. 

One last item – earlier this year, the corps was forced to open the Morganza spillway for the first time since 1973, in order to prevent further flooding in New Orleans and other locations downstream of Morganza. Not surprisingly, the corps has known since at least the 1950s that the Mississippi has been trying to change course, straight through the spillway and into the Atchafalaya basin. But the water is needed for navigation downstream through New Orleans, and the rest, like the marsh, is history.

Stealth HELICOPTERS???

Since the successful raid on Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in early May of this year, much has been made of the mysterious “stealth helicopter” which reportedly crashed during the initial phase of the raid.  Due to the loss of one helicopter and a section of its modified tail boom falling outside the walled compound, there was plenty of news fodder that brought out numerous self-appointed aviation experts, and speculation that ranged from wild guesses to opinions that defied both physics and the physical evidence at the crash site.  With only the tail boom of the new design to look at, it appears that the regular four bladed tail rotor was replaced with a five bladed design, and a hubcap-like cover was mounted over normally exposed tail rotor linkages, which would make at least the tail rotor both quieter and stealthier.

But like “jumbo shrimp” and “military intelligence”, “stealth helicopter” is a awkward concept at best.  While it is possible to make a helicopter quieter and while its huge radar-reflecting cross section might be made smaller, helicopters in this class are still a twenty thousand pound whirling mass of rotating and vibrating parts.  All of this does not add up to a package that “can be hovering right next to you, and you wouldn’t know it”. With all apologies to Blue Thunder, Airwolf and even the Romulans, it just cannot be done.  Ditto for the claim that the helicopter “can be coming towards you, but it sounds like its moving away” and “can’t be heard until its right on top of you”.   No, no, and NO!

So what can be done to make a helicopter more stealthy?  Several things.

Quieter rotor blades, such as this “Blue Edge” blade developed by Eurocopter significantly cut down on rotor noise (listen to the noise comparison in the above link).  Low noise designs such as this are not new technology, they have been operationally employed since Vietnam. 

Both the hot exhaust and noise of engines can be suppressed somewhat through creative ducting around the intakes and exhausts. 

Sikorsky builds both the UH-60 Blackhawk series of helicopters and the now canceled RAH-66 Comanche scout helicopter, designed from the ground up to be a more stealthy design.  It is not in the economic or business interests of either the DoD or the contractor to reinvent the wheel, so you can bet that the easiest, cheapest, and quickest way to modify a UH-60 was with bolt-on panels that were remarkably similar to what was developed for the Comanche program.  In fact, in 1991 at the Paris Air Show, the Sikorsky “Fantail” design built for the Comanche was first demonstrated to the public on a S-76B, another Sikorsky helicopter, which was itself a derivative of the UH-60.  Therefore, the safest guess is that the helicopter that crashed during the raid was a modified UH-60 which would look more like a Comanche. 

UNMODIFIED UH-60 BLACKHAWK

RAH-66 COMANCHE

"STEALTH" UH-60 BLACKHAWK (ARTIST CONCEPTION)

Would these modifications make the helicopter more difficult to control, and cause the crash, as some have proposed?  Maybe.  

There is very little correlation between fixed wing aerodynamics and rotary wing aerodynamics in a hover, so comparisons between the flight characteristics of a high flying stealth airplane and a modified helicopter are mostly meaningless.  

Adding weight and changing the shape of the airframe can definitely affect flight characteristics and controllability, but its not as if this mission was not rehearsed and flown in simulators many times.  High altitude may also have been a factor, but Denver is higher than Abbottabad, and helicopters routinely operate in Afghanistan at much higher altitudes.  At the end of the day, when you are sneaking in low, in close formation, in the middle of the night, on what is possibly the biggest clandestine raid of the war, there are about five hundred ways to crash a helicopter that have nothing to do with airframe design and high altitude.  

As for the leaked explanation that the helicopter crashed because the temperature was different inside the compound, so the helicopter “couldn’t hold the hover”... I cannot locate anybody who has been flying helicopters for any length of time who has any idea what the congressman is talking about.  Perhaps it’s a aerodynamic phenomenon unique to Pakistan?

Stealth helicopter or not, was stealth really a must-have requirement for this mission?  Probably not. 

First up, Pakistan is not noted for their impenetrable air defense network.  We give their equipment and their operators far too much credit, and our own people far too little.  If Mathias Rust could land a Cessna in Red Square, having flown in from Finland, how do you like the odds of the Pakistanis vs. Task Force 160?  Backed up by the US Air Force and Navy?

Secondly, the US did not just Hail Mary two helicopters into Pakistan and hope things went well.  This was likely one of the most overplanned operations in modern warfare, with all manner of diversions, electronic jamming, and reinforcements on call for every contingency imaginable.  The fact that they were able to lose a helicopter and still execute the mission and extract in around forty minutes is testimony to the professionalism and the preparedness of the team on the mission. 

Thirdly, THE PAKISTANIS KNEW BIN LADEN WAS THERE and any Pakistani forces able to respond to an attack on the compound were either smart enough to stay away, slow enough to not make a difference, or dumb enough to not even notice. 

And lastly, the number one reason why this mission did not need a stealth helicopter… the task force extracted on Chinooks!  About as stealthy as a Greyhound bus… though not as quiet.  

Pilot Joke

A young boy approaches an airline pilot at the terminal and says "Mister, when I grow up, I want to be an airline pilot too".  


Taking the young boy aside, the airline pilot says to him "Son, you can't do both of those, eventually you will have to choose one or the other".  

Taking care of the troops

ex·pert

[n., v. ek-spurt; adj. ek-spurt, ik-spurt]

noun

1. a person who has special skill or knowledge in some particular field; specialist; authority: a language expert.

First of all, a few basic assumptions to set the stage for this rant...

- To members of the military, WHERE YOU HAVE BEEN and WHAT YOU HAVE DONE while in the military is essential to establishing your credibility, and everything else is pretty much subordinate to this. It’s just the way they think.

- The Department of Defense is an intractable bureaucracy that wastes immense sums of taxpayer money on a daily basis without batting an eye. It is difficult to comprehend how high, wide, and deep is the fraud, waste, and abuse within the DoD. Moreover, the DoD hasn’t the slightest interest in addressing the problem or fixing it.

- The DoD is going to need to cut lots of money out of the budget very soon whether they like it or not.

- The military COULD stand to think outside the institutional box when making the aforementioned cuts.

- It MAY not send the right message to an all-volunteer force to propose deep cuts to their benefit packages in the midst of three wars.

With this in mind, it was with much distress that I read about the Defense Business Board’s plan to overhaul the military retirement system, essentially replacing the twenty year retirement with a tiered 401K type plan, and thereby saving the DoD untold sums of money… all by reneging on the cornerstone of the military benefit package, a proposed move that is sure to have a unbelievable impact on retention.

If you were to ask “have any of the knuckleheads on this board ever served in the military?” you might be on to something. The board roster reads like a who’s who list of noted academics and businesspeople without even a tangential connection to anything military, save for a handful of DoD civilians and a few who have, like the current Secretary of Defense, spent much longer in undergrad programs than in uniform.

In fact, among the 21 board members (bios are provided for 19) FIVE have served in the military. One is a retired USMC Major General, a nice start, but the remaining four have A COMBINED TOTAL OF 19 YEARS OF MILITARY EXPERIENCE, not all of it on active duty. TWO of the five have combat experience. None of them hold Chair or Vice-Chair positions. And these are the people charged with revamping the military retirement system, not one of them having a stake in the outcome.

So I ask you, would you appoint a commission of noted pastry chefs to determine how much doctors should be allowed to bill? How about a panel of rocket scientists to negotiate union benefits for plumbers?

Only if you had no earthly idea of what you were doing when you appointed the commission…

Send OUT the clowns...

A letter to Senator Mitch McConnell, KY...

Sen McConnell:

I recently read that you received a congressional inquiry regarding alleged mistreatment of Kentucky-based Reservists in the 8-229th Aviation Regiment during their pre deployment trainup for Iraq.  

As a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom with two Iraqi tours under the Texas Army National Guard, I share their sentiments and, I believe the DoD, the reserve component, and especially the soldiers and family members would benefit from a complete disbanding of the Army Reserve Training Divisions, with the trainup mission reassigned to the National Guard in the states where the units are located.  Similar trainup missions are already being performed by units such as the Combat Skills Training and Evaluation Battalion (CSTEBn) under the Texas Guard.  

Any soldier who has ever suffered through a reserve component trainup can testify to the time and money wasted by the Reserve Training Divisions dragging out three weeks of useful soldier skills training over three or four months.  The Reserve Training Divisions are jobs programs for largely useless officers and NCOs, and the missions are moved frequently from one unsuitable installation to another, in order that every installation can get a piece of the GWOT budget.  It is both shameless and obvious.  

It is particularly insulting to lock down troops (some of them Vietnam vets) for months with no civilian clothes, no alcohol, no privately owned vehicles, and little freedom, under the control of their Reserve trainers who work an eight hour shift, stay off post in a hotel, draw full per diem with benefits, and allegedly are subject to the same restrictions as the troops in training. 

In contrast, the CSTEBn under the Texas Army National Guard is a lean organization which chooses its trainers from guard veterans noted for their recent and relevant combat experience, and trains the troops what they need to know quicker and more efficiently, saving large amounts of money and time, and keeping the mission local and the money within the state.  

Moreover, the Air Guard regularly deploys airmen on a more frequent basis than the Army National Guard, with LITTLE OR NO time or money wasting trainup required.  

Finally, a personal note.  An aircraft from our sister company on my last OIF tour, Red River 44, crashed on the night of 17 September 2008 just after crossing into Iraq, due to spatial disorientation of the crew.  As a pilot who has flown in Iraq and Kuwait since 1994, I truly believe that if that crew had spent time doing USEFUL aviation training and not wasting the previous three months at Fort Sill under a Reserve Training Division, those seven men might still be with us today.  

Senator, this is a no-brainer in these days when we are looking to save the DoD money.  It can be done, it can be done smarter, and it can be done cheaper.  Shutter the Reserve Training Divisions and give the trainup mission to the states.  

Sincerely,

CW2, Retired

US Army

CF: Sen Cornyn, Sen Hutchison