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SHAW Viper Crash


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Although the pilot's name hasn't been officially announced, there is a Facebook post from his wife being shared across social media.

I won't include any details until the USAF publicizes his name, but I hope she can find peace...

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Heartbreaking. Losing two of our talented and heroic young men is not a trend, and I'm not saying it is.

However, I hope the investigations for these two most recent incidents start at day 1 of UPT and examines each and every training event of the syllabus, every break in training, and every hour they flew or didn't fly an actual aircraft.

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13 hours ago, torqued said:

I hope the investigations for these two most recent incidents start at day 1 of UPT and examines each and every training event of the syllabus, every break in training, and every hour they flew or didn't fly an actual aircraft.

What do you know or suspect that is driving this statement?  Just an overall observation on UPT training?  
Do you also mean to include FTU syllabus training?

Edited by HuggyU2
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12 minutes ago, HuggyU2 said:

What do you know or suspect that is driving this statement?  Just an overall observation on UPT training?  
Do you also mean to include FTU syllabi’s training?

Absolutely, include all of the training. There is definitely a perception now that the desire to push dudes through AETC to units could be a contributing factor in these incidents.

Heartbreaking 🥃

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Absolutely, include all of the training. There is definitely a perception now that the desire to push dudes through AETC to units could be a contributing factor in these incidents.
Heartbreaking 🥃


I’m all for taking a critical look at the training pipeline, but let’s take a step back from the ‘jump to conclusions’ game and see what the actual causes are of this rash of fighter accidents. Mechanical failure, maintenance practices, weather, human factors, or training could all be possible factors. Let’s give the investigating teams time to do their job and then address their findings with the proper focus and effort.
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11 hours ago, HuggyU2 said:

What do you know or suspect that is driving this statement?  Just an overall observation on UPT training?  
Do you also mean to include FTU syllabus training?

I was venting out of frustration after some text convos with friends who are still in. Shouldn't have posted that in this thread. I'm recently retired and my assessments aren't as relevant as I'd like to think.

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We have lost a lot of fighters in a couple months.  The trend alone should give all pilots a serious self-examination as to how ready you are for the next flight regardless of the cause of the mishaps.  I'm sure some safety guys could pull some data, but I can't remember a worse 4-5 month period in my career.  A correlation of mishaps with the speeding up of the pipeline would be worth looking at as well.

 

Prayers for this pilot's family and friends.

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FWIW the leading edge of new UPT syllabus dudes have only been hitting IFF and the b courses in the last year or so. I’ve seen a lot of posts putting blame on the cut hours and VR/UPTN however I don’t think there’s many WM out there now that are products of those.

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B courses have been cut down for years, and yes, the general product has lagged behind preceding years. Lots of kicking the can down the road to the CAF. So, it’s the entire AETC pipeline that’s a problem, not just one part. It’s also not as much the tactical employment part that is concerning, it’s the general airmanship that’s alarming (decision making, risk mitigation, SA, basic flying tasks like instrument approaches, etc.) As I’ve said before, the naturally strong swimmers persevere and overcome quickly, but the average guys lag the fight and it takes way too many “concerning” flight hours until you have a reasonable amount of faith they’re not going to kill themselves or someone else. This is a common viewpoint amongst the experienced members in the CAF. I’m not speculating on what happened at SW or LN, but I won’t be surprised if this type of stuff is a CF, yet is summarily ignored and swept under the rug by “leadership.”

Now for you ACC (that’s right, you’re not innocent in this), the quality/quantity of training is bullshit. When I was a LT-young Capt in the viper, I got about 269 hrs/yr in training (not accounting for any combat hours). I now see the same aged guys (who have had alarmingly less AETC training than I got) get 40-50% less flying. Our sims are also dumpster fires. The mission complexity and difficulty has increased significantly over this same time period. You want us to do something well beyond combing the desert (and not finding shit), get fucked! Organize, train, and equip...how do you think you’re doing ACC? Maybe some serious introspection is on order.

And I haven’t even had my first beer today...time to go fish and lower my blood pressure.

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(“You’re cool” directed at the bros executing the training mission)

 

Edited by brabus
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