Osprey vs. Harrier

"Fred J. McCall" wrote:

Iain Rae wrote:

:Fred J. McCall wrote:
: Iain Rae wrote:
:
:snip
:
: : So the game is to just keep changing the statement when the preceding
: : one proves up wrong?
: :well, the statement was
: :"It's a training problem - marines don't have to take perisher."
: :
: :you're the one who limited it to pilots.
:
: Your maintenance grunts go through that?
:
:No, neither do our pilots, it's a submarine commanders course. FFS go
ut and try to buy yourself a sense of humour and then read the
:submersible harrier threads.

Go read them yourself. You'll find my name. I just don't
automatically remember nicknames for YOUR training.

: : Yeah, that shows a lot of intellectual integrity....
: :
: :Well, if that's how you want to tar yourself go ahead.
:
: Somehow, I knew you'd try this sort of trolling misdirection from your
: own behaviour. Either address the real issue or shut up.
:
: AV-8 has 4 times the major accident rate of the other fixed wing
: aircraft the Marines fly (the F/A-18) in US service. The human error
: rate is over twice as large, and the catastrophic mechanical failure
: rate is EIGHT times as large. Now, the mechanical rate shouldn't come
: as a surprise to anyone with two neurons to rub together, given that
: the AV-8 is older technology, more mechanically complex to begin with,
: and only has a single engine so any engine failure pretty much toasts
: you. The human error rate also shouldn't come as a huge surprise to
: anyone with two neurons to slap wetly together, since vertical landing
: is obviously difficult.
:
: Then comes you. So, tell me - just how is the statement that the AV-8
: is the most dangerous aircraft currently in US service incorrect (or
: even surprising) given the preceding?
:
:It's not. I never claimed otherwise, clearly though from the article
:human error also applies to the ground crew, not just the pilots. And
:the article seems to imply that this is above the norm. To add to your
:list of reasons above I'd imagine that an aircraft which is being
:maintained out of rough forward bases is going to have a higher level of
:ground crew ****ups than one which is based on a carrier or at a base.

Except, despite the ability, most AV-8s in US service aren't "being
maintained out of rough forward bases" most of the time.

: So, what's the accident rate (under the same criteria used in the US)
: for the Harrier in British service? No fair comparing apples and
: aardvarks; you have to use the same criteria.
:
:The only info I have is for all RAF harrier types (GR7 and T10) from
:1988 to 2001 which lists the damage rate per 10,000 hours at 1.17.

Ok. First scale it to 100,000 hours, which is how we measure them.
That gets you to 11.7, which is not appreciably different than the
12/100,000 hours that we're seeing on the Harrier.

:The figures are for "damaged beyond local repair" or "loss of aircraft",
:there's no monetary value attached .

Now add in those accidents which caused sufficient damage to qualify
as Class A but did not involve the loss of the aircraft (the value of
which is well over the limits of Class A). It looks to me like the
Class A accident rate for the Harrier in British service is *HIGHER*
than that for the aircraft in US service.

Still not quite the same thing, since the numbers largely represent
different Marks of Harrier, but indicative that in general this
aircraft has a much higher major accident rate than is usual.

:For comparison the Jaguar is listed at 1.13 and the GR1/GR4 is listed
:at 0.65.

Either you folks are operating some fairly dangerous aircraft or else
you have a training problem.

The Brit attack a/c spend a lot more time at low level than we do.

Scaled back to 10,000 operational hour
rates and assuming Class A equates with 'loss of aircraft' (which
isn't quite true - rates would be lower under 'loss of aircraft'
criteria), various US types in our service would have the rates below:

AV-8B - 1.2
F/A-18 - 0.3
F-16 - 0.35
F-15 - 0.5

If you want to go by European loss rate per 10,000 hours, for
'fighters' (various aircraft types, of course) the data for 2000 looks
like:

USAFE - 0.54 (all F-15s)
Britain - 0.15
Czech - 8.0
France - 0.29
Greece - 1.0
Italy - 0.5
Poland - 0.75
Romania - 1.5
Spain - 0.48
Turkey - 0.71

Everyone else had 0 (and the Germans and Israelis didn't report number
of hours flown, so nobody knows what their rates are). It's of note
that Britain, France, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Turkey are reporting
an order of magnitude more flying hours than the others, so a single
crash for the US in Europe would jump the rate a lot more - if you're
under 100,000 flight hours, the statistics may not even out for any
given year.

Do the above rates include the navies of those countries? If so, both Italy and
Spain operate the AV-8B+.

Guy