Editor's note: This is the first of a two-part series about the fatal accident of 1st Lt. But her friend, who was taking care of the table, slipped a napkin with Valerie's name and number to one of the loadmasters, David Schmitz. Instead, she saw him that very night on their first date, during which Schmitz was open about his aspirations. Flash forward to June 30, Valerie, who'd been David's wife for seven years by then, got a knock on the door in the middle of the night at their Sumter, South Carolina, home.
She thought her husband, a newly minted F Fighting Falcon fighter pilot, had forgotten his keys. But it was representatives from Shaw Air Force Base , David's home station, coming to tell her that he was dead. While on a nighttime training mission, Schmitz, assigned to the 77th Fighter Squadron, could not recover his F after he severely damaged the aircraft's landing gear upon touching down, striking an antenna array short of the runway.
He attempted an ill-advised cable arrest with his mangled gear, as suggested by members in the control tower, then tried to eject as his left wing hit the runway, according to an Accident Investigation Board report released in November.
Schmitz's tragic death underscores the inherent risks of fighter training. But it also casts a harsh light on the impacts of limited flight hours and insufficient training due to limited available aircraft and the demands of real-life missions. Despite the best efforts of the Air Force and Congress to understand what causes catastrophic aviation mishaps, it's clear that a lot of work remains. Schmitz's focus that night was split between two missions: He was part of a four-aircraft group conducting an air-to-air refueling from a KC Stratotanker and a suppression of enemy air defense simulation.
While it was not unusual to combine events, the Air Force said, Schmitz had no prior experience with either. Part of that training, particularly a fighter conducting air-to-air refueling, was supposed to take place before Schmitz got to Shaw.
It didn't. He was unable to successfully refuel that night, despite his attempts. Schmitz had spent just 8 hours in his jet in the 30 days before the accident, according to the accident report. And throughout his training, he had racked up only 12 night flights total in the F, with just two at Shaw. He was supposed to receive in-flight refueling experience at the B course, which was his formal training unit, but did not. The investigation stated that these factors contributed to the already complicated task of executing these events without prior experience.
As a result, a relatively routine training mission turned fatal. The investigation concluded pilots can have their first air-to-air refueling only if accomplished in a two-seater jet with an instructor present. Otherwise, daytime is preferred. Each one is tragic. We regret each one. After 17 years of running this machine at near capacity, the tank is approaching empty. That the spike began in is significant.
That was the year sequestration, the automatic budget cuts agreed to by Congress and former President Barack Obama, took effect. Then sequestration hit. Instead of a well-funded reset, each service was mandated to execute steep budget cuts. To absorb the cuts, each service had to make hard choices.
Personnel were much easier to cut than weapons programs; which often have three- or five-year spending obligations, with expensive fines for canceling. Critics say the services decided to cut people in order to protect aircraft platforms — like the F joint strike fighter — dealing a self-inflicted wound that made things worse.
A year after the sequester cuts, the global security landscape changed dramatically. In summer , Islamic State militants conquered a wide swath of Iraq and Syria. China built militarized man-made islands in the South China Sea, and Russian forces invaded the Ukrainian territory of Crimea.
Anthony Bianca, head of Marine Corps aviation plans and programs. Morale was low between and Mishaps rose 13 percent from to , and kept climbing through Notably, the number of mishaps climbed despite the fact that overall, the military flew those manned warplanes , fewer hours in than it did in In interviews, military officials acknowledged readiness was hurt by the sequester cuts, but they cautioned against tying the rise in mishaps directly to the cuts in funding.
Still, they did not have an answer for what caused the spike. Across all platforms, manned and unmanned , Class C mishaps rose from in fiscal year to 1, in fiscal year A Class C has the possibility of quickly becoming a Class A — the worst type of mishap — if a pilot has not had enough flying time to have it ingrained how to react.
Class A mishaps, across all platforms, climbed 17 percent in the same time frame, from 71 accidents per year in to 83 accidents per year in Based on a review of accident reports and open records, at least service members deaths were attributed to those Class A accidents.
All four military services have reported a rise in mishaps over the past five years. Certain airframes were hit harder than others. Mishaps rose from 80 to 90 in that same time frame. All variants of the C flew 20, fewer hours in than they did in Mishaps rose from 80 to 99 in that same time frame. Hornet mishaps rose from 19 to 31 per year in that same time frame. The less frequently a pilot flies or a maintainer works on an aircraft, the less current their skills are.
That is where experience comes into play. In the months before sequestration took effect, military leadership gave lawmakers plenty of warning on the fallout. The services responded by reducing training and exercises, then cutting the number of experienced maintainers and pilots. However, military officials made those personnel cuts without tracking what qualifications and skill sets were walking out the door.
Anyone with 15 years in service was eligible to retire with benefits, which meant the military lost upper mid-grade, highly trained personnel. The services cut more junior service members, too. As the Air Force adds more Fs to the fleet and as flight hours for fifth-generation fighters go up, including in combat, that trend could continue, he said.
But Rauch said even that may not be enough to accurately reflect the increased costs of repairing newer aircraft. There were two separate incidents at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska — one in October and another in November — in which the landing gear of Fs collapsed while landing.
Another Elmendorf F had its engine stall and was shut down in-flight in April , though it safely returned to base. Yet another F, at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia, had its engine damaged when it ingested low-observable coating material in-flight. Command officials said most of the A and F mishaps were related to gun jams, environmental damage to external pods, and a slight increase in occupational injuries.
Fighter aircraft accounted for 49 percent of all manned Class A and B mishaps in , the Safety Center said — again, partly because the advanced technologies in the fifth-generation F and F aircraft mean more mishaps rise to that level. The rotor blades and rudder sections of the aircraft were damaged. When an Osprey engine is damaged due to foreign object debris or a bird strike, for example, the Air Force swaps it out for another one, Rauch said.
Rolls Royce then goes back and repairs the damaged engine. This elevates the reported cost of repairing that mishap to the Class B level, even if it might only have been a Class C-level repair had it been fixed in a depot. Although the F Fighting Falcon, C Hercules, C variants and F Eagles had the highest number of Class C mishaps, they had lower per,flying-hour rates because they flew much more frequently. Class D mishaps — mostly arising from accidents on the ground — also declined from to But a sharp increase in bird strikes helped drive a 58 percent increase in Class E mishaps, from to 1, Bird strikes, which increased from in to in , accounted for 33 percent of all manned Class E mishaps.
Ospreys had the highest combined rate of Class A and B mishaps in fiscal According to the database provided by the Air Force, a pylon on the F was jettisoned and damaged during an operations check on the ground. No one was injured, and the aircraft itself was not damaged. In the years that followed, thousands of experienced aviators and maintainers left military service for commercial aviation despite being offered sizable retention bonuses to stay.
They are tired and are crying for help. The response is shut up and color. That stuff leads to the burnout and distraction while flying. New pilots recruited to backfill the aviation ranks pay the price too, because they receive fewer training flight hours and have fewer experienced instructor pilots available to teach them, the report found.
Despite increased funding over the last several years, few pilots are getting the flight hours required to stay proficient, they told the commissioners. Instead, the military services are relying heavily on waivers for those requirements. In interviews with reporters in during a spate of crashes, former Defense Secretary James Mattis cautioned it would take years to see improvements.
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