Ed Rasimus wrote in message . ..
On 30 Jun 2004 23:21:24 -0700, (Tuollaf43) wrote:

Ed Rasimus wrote in message . ..

You guys must be marketing wrong. The danger is what makes fighter
pilots so damned attractive.

umm, I thought it was the large heads and child like personality


Big watches and small watchamacallits.

LOL! You are all right Ramisus. (For a fighter puke).


You don't need to propagandize, simply
issue a large life insurance policy to each aviator.

scratchs head How does that help? In India the tendency is to mate
for life. Being a widow with a large chunk of cash is not an
attractive option.

Being a widow with a large chunk of cash is quite attractive in some
cultures. In fact, it even makes the widow a lot more
attractive--witness Theresa Heinz-Kerry.

With that kind of cash it would be attractive in _any_ culture. But
kinda hard to russle up that kind of policy for Joe Airman.

BTW, Have you perused the Kalam Committee Report on Air Safety for
instance? 1836875 hours for the whole airfleet in seven years with 194
accidents and 154 writeoffs.

Interesting that you say that and then below you discount that sort of
stat as being inappropriately skewed toward long duration heavies.

I do believe that they are inappropriately skewed. But I quoted them
to show that some statistics in hours are available - if you look for
them. I dont see the dichotomy.

Statistics in hours, even when available, if they d on't demonstrate
something relevant aren't meaningful. Add airlift, tanker, trainer and
bomber hours to fighter stats in the USAF and you'll get some
remarkable safety stats. But worthless.

The fact is that the relevant stats are accidents/100k flight hours
and they must be tied to aircraft type.

Tied to aircraft type is obvious. But why necessarily measured in
fight hours? Why are per sortie figures irrelevant?

Because sortie length varies. In most fighter units an ACM/BFM sortie
can run 0.9 hours. An A/G range sortie can be 1.5 and a X-country or
deployment sortie may be 4, 5 or more hours long.

OK. Similarly for 100 hours flown you can have a variable number of
sorties flown - 200 half hour ones or 25 four hour ones and those in
between.

I genuinely fail to understand why one metric is indisputably superior
to the other.

When we deal with fighter types, however, if your accidents are taking
place during takeoff and landing, you really need to address your
training progams--initial training, not operational. (Maybe that
relates to the Hawk program?)

Yes again. A disproportionately large number of accidents involve
Mongols and the MOFTUs; not the line squadrons or during primary
training on subsonic jets.

And I am sure that I dont need to tell you the kind of training any
Air Force does in "peace time" and the kind it does when hostilities
are "imminent" and how that difference impacts on safety.

Whoa. Bad assumption there. If an AF's peace time training isn't done
in consideration of hostilities ALWAYS being imminent, it is wasted
jet fuel. Train like you fight. "Everything else is rubbish." (Sorry
Baron, couldn't resist.)

I am making no assumptions. Just mentioning a real world fact. The
theory is that you work as hard in peace time as when you are when the
**** is about to hit the fan. In practise this rarely happens. For
instance safety concerns are relaxed in latter cases and you tend to
get, uh, more 'realistic' training.

The USAF/USN learned that lesson well. The introduction of Red Flag,
DACT/ACMI, realistic EW training and instrumented ranges has been a
giant step in achieving preparedness. If you aren't training for war,
you aren't training.

Since the USAF is involved in real shooting wars nearly all the time
the distinction between peace time training and under warlike
conditions might be moot for them. For most other air forces that
distinction is real, with real impact on training.


Operational aircraft tend to be lost in the high performance portions
of the mission---mid-airs in A/A; ground strikes in low-level nav;
ordnance delivery issues such as release failures, weapon malfunctions
and frag hits; departures from controlled flight; and structural
failure due to exceeding operating limitations.

Or bird ingestion when you fly from heavily populated areas with low
public sanitation. Or using a thoroughbred mach two interceptor for
CAS with rocket pods or worse NOE flying with CBUs.

You're talking to the wrong guy about "thoroughbred mach two" types
flying CAS with rockets, or LL with CBU's and iron. Been there done
that in F-105s and F-4Es. Both M-2 high altitude systems, both down in
the mud delivering the mail.

On the contrary if you have done that then I think that I am talking
to the right guy. You would know how it is.

Or are you suggesting that using them makes no difference from a
safety point of view?


If your force is regularly doing one mission with an inappropriate
platform, it's time to reshape the force or the mission.

The mission _has_ to be done. And you cant replace half your fleet
overnight (purely fiscal reasons). That is the crux of the problem
facing the IAF.

Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8