May 2001 - Safety in Transformation

by Maj. Gen. Anthony Jones

We are an army in transformation, and the leadership within Army aviation is prepared to move us from the legacy force, through the interim, to the objective force. Much remains to be done, and many critical decisions that will define what we will look like and how we will fight remain to be made.

                Even so, it is not too early to take a look at safety in transformation. Will we continue to integrate safety into our training and operations in the same way we always have? With the changes in our organizational design, doctrine and materiel advances we will require new approaches, a significant departure from "business as usual."

                Before we address the future we need to remember a couple of things about what safety is and what it is not. We need to think about safety, not as something we do, but rather how we do something. Safety is not a task we accomplish much as we do any other task. It is rather how we accomplish all our assigned tasks.  We need to think of safety, not so much as a priority, but as a precondition - not what we do, but how we do it.

                The manner in which the safety imperative is applied and integrated into the Army aviation organization of the future will remain the same - by the application of risk management into all training and operations, including combat. Risk management will still be the principal means by which we reduce accidents, because it remains the most effective means of balancing the often competing imperatives of potential benefit (mission accomplishment) and potential loss (accident risk or tactical risk).

                We should begin with the premise that we need to improve, at every level, our skill, knowledge and expertise in applying the risk-management process to all operations. This is true even if we were not an army in transformation. That we are in transformation simply makes our improvement more urgent.

                The bulk of that improvement will come in the leader-development courses in the schoolhouse. This means we must go beyond the lecture and require leader students to use and demonstrate their understanding of the risk-management process throughout the course. When these leaders graduate, they are expected to mentor their subordinates at the unit level in the application of risk management in everyday operations. We are doing that in aviation.

The biggest difference will be in the first and most important step in the risk-management process - hazard identification. It is the most important step for the same reason that the foundation of a multi-story building is the most important - it is the step on which all other steps are based.

                Hazard identification is also the most difficult step, because the page is blank. When we identify hazards associated with a mission or operation we rely heavily, as we should, on previously identified hazards for similar operations. As we move toward the objective force, wherein we will be executing new missions in new ways with a different kind of organization in advanced aircraft, it becomes a lot more difficult to identify all the hazards these changes will introduce. We all know and appreciate that risk is always elevated when change is introduced into the equation. The risk is increased even more when many changes are introduced. Hazard identification will be key to good risk management in the objective force.

                Even though many definitive decisions have yet to be made about what the objective force will look like, we can and should be thinking about the kinds of hazards it will introduce, because hazard identification and control begin long before the mission is received. It even begins before the aircraft is built. Beginning at the drawing board, and continuing today, system safety working groups were identifying hazards in the Comanche and designing/devising controls for them. Risk management is similarly integrated into our training and doctrine publications. Hazard identification and control are an integral part of developing every ATM and ARTEP task. At the operational level, leaders are left to identify and control those hazards specific to the mission.

                Some of the issues related to safety in transformation are more obvious. For example, the increased use of unmanned platforms will present new challenges to commanders, aircrews and the total force. Specifically, there will be new hazards associated with executing missions with different types of combat systems. Doctrine development is an iterative process, and a lot of what we learn is learned by doing, because all hazards are very difficult to identify before the fact, especially in new processes and new organizations.

                Our advanced aircraft will surely introduce unexpected hazards, because we will be doing things in a different way. For example, we will have glass cockpits capable of providing pilots with enormous amounts of information. There is no doubt that this is a good thing, but does it present hidden hazards? Inasmuch as it introduces change, there will certainly be new hazards. For example, while glass cockpits provide much more immediately available information to pilots, they could also cause more "head-down" time for inexperienced crewmembers. Aircrew coordination dynamics probably will change. Crew communications may even decrease, but that isn't a bad thing if it's for the right reasons.

                The Aviation Safety Investment Strategies Team (ASIST) accomplished a 100-percent analysis of all aviation Class A through Class - flight accidents for a five-year period. From their analysis, the ASIST developed a list of recommended safety investment strategies that addressed all doctrine, training, leader development, organizations and materiel (DTLOM) domains.  Many of these recommendations will be incorporated into the Aviation Modernization Plan. The ASIST effort will continue to be updated with fresh data and will thus continue to be a valuable contributor in our continuing efforts to reduce aviation accidents in the future.

                Aviation safety is a function of competent, confident and experienced crews. The safety and readiness of our units will be enhanced with the transition of flight school to the Flight School XXI concept. Those who have gone through the pilot program have made RL1 in five aircraft rides, a quantum improvement over the 90 days it normally takes to achieve the same level of readiness in our current system. Safety is inextricably tied to readiness, and the closer we can get to providing a fully qualified aviator to the field out of flight school, the more likely we are to reduce our aviation accident rates.

                The systems are in place to ensure that safety is fully integrated into all we do in Army aviation. As long as we continue to operate as risk-managing leaders and soldiers, we will be ready to execute our missions safely.

MG Anthony R. Jones is commanding general of the U.S. Army Aviation Center at Fort Rucker, Ala., and chief of the aviation branch. LTC Paul Cain is a British Army aviator and flight surgeon currently on exchange with the Aircrew Protection Division of the U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory at Fort Rucker.