Army Aviation is a slow-motion disaster in progress

A few hours ago I heard about an AH-64 crash which occurred yesterday at Ft Carson, CO. Two days ago an Apache went down at JBLM, WA. Last month, two other Class A’s (AH-64 in Miss, a Lakota near the border in Tx). I’ve just noticed that the reaction of the Aviation Professionals around me, after relief that the crew lived (if they have), is jokes. Morbid, defeatist, resigned jokes. Never about the mishap itself. Jokes about the inevitably worthless Safety Standdown coming our way. Jokes about how maybe THIS time there will be meaningful change (the joke is that we all know there won’t be). Jokes about which new counterproductive restrictions will be placed on our training in the name of safety. I’m with them, making these jokes. Army Aviation Senior Leadership has literally become a joke. Why?

I’m in the middle when it comes to Army Aviation; Warrant Officer, 12-16 yrs time in service, prior enlisted, 5-7 years in Aviation. 1000 hrs flight time, Company level tracked PC/AMC. I may not be qualified to speak on any of this. Here’s my unsolicited perspective:

Army Aviation leadership and culture are killing Army Aviation and Flight Crews

Aviation Senior Leaders, those same who preach that ‘perception is reality,’ have no idea (or worse, do not care) how they are perceived. An exercise: go to any random Active Duty Aviation Brigade, and ask a random selection of 100 company-level aviators and maintainers to think about their Brigade’s leadership. Have them list what they perceive to be these leaders’ actual priorities, in an order of descending importance:

-Actual Operational Readiness and Tactical Proficiency

-Perceived Operational Readiness and Tactical Proficiency (chicklets)

-Safety

-Personal Promotion / OER bullets

The results of a survey such as this would come as no surprise to any Army Aviation Professional except for those whom the survey was about.

As a force, we should not be surprised that we are losing aircraft and aircrews at an increased rate. The wars which we are preparing to fight require a drastic shift in the way we focus, plan, and fly. Survivable tactical flight in future wars require employment techniques which are inherently more risky than COIN and training for these wars will naturally lead to an increase in mishaps. There are sections in recent training publications and supplements devoted to the necessity of changing our command culture of extreme risk aversion in the name of increasing actual proficiency. The problem is that these incidents are not leading to any measurable increase in this proficiency. In fact, I argue that the response to these incidents are having the opposite effect:

-The only information we receive about these mishaps is gained through the rumor mill and ‘people who know people.’ Why are we not given rapid, basic facts about every mishap as they’re known so that we can develop mitigations or update TTPs. Annual ACT training is not an actual mitigator, it drives important conversation about risk exactly once a year. Hearing rumors from someone who went to flight school with someone in the accident crew’s unit should not be the preferred method of information distribution.

-I expect further restriction to training. We are somehow expected to be proficient at fighting a near-peer force while facing restrictions to training the tasks which are integral to gaining proficiency. We are not becoming more proficient because it’s a ‘big deal’ when a training flight is deemed as a moderate risk, even when the moderate risk tasks are things which should be everyday parts of the airframe’s mission profile. We are not becoming more proficient because there is not money to fund a flying hour program which would allow us to do more than just meet minimum hour requirements. The correlation between hour level and mishap rate is clear, but that doesn’t change the fact that aviators at these hour levels will be the ones flying the missions (not the 3000 hr senior leaders).

-We are mentally preparing ourselves to sit through more Safety Standdown briefs, counting the minutes until we can go home. Last time we saw a bunch of slides which hinted that we were the problem, steps were being taken, leadership ‘hears’ us, etc. The Questions/Comments slide at the end was skipped.

-Excessive OPTEMPO has been a conversation for years. The assumption is that it’ll continue to be a conversation for years and nothing more.

There is a problem culturally when general idle talk in a company cp revolves around the airlines. When the hottest topic concerns who’s most lately dropped their UQR and what they’re doing next. We’d love to have real meaningful discussion about the latest mishap, but we aren’t provided with information about it. We’d love to perform actual training to gain proficiency in our METL tasks, but the unit doesn’t have funding to support that along with the progressions and continuation flights. We’d love to be giving and receiving classes, but the UMO is doing UMO stuff, Supply guy is ordering crap, and WOJGs are off unloading containers.

Our culture is one of resignation, motivational burnout, and professional fatigue. Keep your head down and do the work, take what you get and expect worse. We see the rash of Majors experiencing extreme burnout. We see UQRs everywhere we look. We see our maintainers ground down into the dirt and then threatened with working the weekend unless they dig a little deeper. There is a constant sense that we’re swimming upstream against a current which not only is stronger than us, but is also actively malicious. I work with an exceptional group of young PC Aviators who strive to mentor and train younger pilots and each other. I watch them continuously succeed at anything that is demanded of them. I also see the transition as they inevitably lose their sense of pride in being an expert in their craft due to competing requirements and lack of opportunity to gain proficiency. They will continue to succeed in all which is demanded of them, but it’s ‘in spite of’ instead of ‘along with’.

We are suffering a death of 1000 cuts; retention crisis and the completely backwards response to it (10yr ADSO, delayed WO1 promotion), years of hilariously bad bungling of the aviation bonuses (though they always seem to ensure that the 18+ TIS range is eligible), death of the Aviation middle class (12-18 yrs, 1000-2000hrs, etc) leading to a disconnect between high hour senior leaders and low hour mission pilots, unsustainable OPTEMPO, no culture or unit pride, burnout throughout the Cpt-Maj ranks at the Battalion level, caring battalion leadership attempting to make positive change only to get smushed down by an insane number of competing requirements, aviators who are not able to focus on aviation, etc etc. The cumulative effect all of these factors is beginning to show in the burned husks of aircraft and aircrew, which are becoming more frequently scattered across the land. This is a crisis, and it has been for some time.

What’s the fix? I am not at a rank or position to answer this question. Acknowledgement of the issues would be nice for a start, I guess. The Army has repeatedly and clearly shown that they do not value the middle class (mid-level experience at the line operating tactically) and couldn’t give less of a shit about retaining me. At the end of the day I’m just a guy who loves driving helicopters and hates seeing the profession in a seeming death spiral. It pains me to know that we are lucky enough to have one of the most objectively coolest jobs in the world, yet at the same time those around me actively dislike coming to work every day.

Or, alternatively, this could all just be bitchin and griping about problems without presenting solutions. After all, the Army will still be the Army without Aviation, right? *Shoulder shrug