"How to Stop Crashing Marine Aircraft"
(See R. Hendrick, pp. 22-25, July 2005; J. Ford, pp. 6-10, August 2005; M. Woods, pp. 68-70 September 2005 Proceedings)
Lieutenant General Michael A. Hough, U.S. Marine Corps, Deputy Commandant, Aviation-Major Hendrick offers several constructive recommendations for enhancing the culture of Marine aviation as it pertains to aviation safety. These recommendations, considered individually, have merit. Unfortunately, considered together the recommendations are not consonant with expeditionary warfare. Determined to improve our safety record, we have undertaken several initiatives outlined in the Commandant's policy directive last September [2004] to help reduce aviation mishaps and preserve our aircrew and aircraft to fight our nation's battles.
Collateral duties are a necessary part of our expeditionary nature. Because of its efficiencies, an aviation combat element is extremely agile in supporting the Marine air ground task force wherever it might deploy. A key strength of the Marine Corps is our ability to accomplish the six functions of Marine aviation with minimal manpower. An additional positive result of these duties is that they serve to round out the experience of a Marine officer as he or she progresses toward potential leadership positions at the squadron, group, and even higher levels. Collateral duties will continue to play a critical role in Marine aviation. This does not mean that we cast a blind eye to the issue where it has verified impacts on operations. We are reviewing options to alleviate some of the manpower shortfalls that have been identified in single seat communities.
When the primary causal factors of aviation mishaps are mechanical, we develop and implement better aircraft and/or maintenance practices. When the primary causes point toward the introduction of newer aircraft systems or the existence of emerging threats, we adjust our training, tactics, and procedures. However, the majority of our mishaps in recent years have occurred during training, with a large proportion having supervisory error as one of the casual factors. Improving accountability through personal and collective leadership is the real issue that must be addressed.
We are addressing leadership through two separate yet complementary processes in Marine Aviation. The first process simply involves promoting basic leadership at all levels of command that instills a sense of urgency toward and ownership of a stronger safety record. From the greenest pilot at the Fleet Replacement Squadron (FRS) to the Silver Eagle at Headquarters Marine Corps, all aviators are well indoctrinated on their obligations to their country, their families, and their fellow Marines to safely fly and maintain aircraft. This is not a novel leadership concept-it has been a part of Marine aviation since its inception. Nevertheless, maintaining accountability through leadership does not justify fostering a culture of "zero defects." It means setting the standard and holding accountable those who violate it. During my tenure as Deputy Commandant for Aviation (DC/A), I have never hesitated to convene a Flight Status Selection Board following a Field Flight Performance Board that identified aviators who strayed from the standard.
The second concurrent process is the series of recent ongoing initiatives designed and instituted by HQMC to assist leaders in their pursuit of safety. We have established a Marine air group/squadron commanding officer (CO) course that provides slated aviation commanders a detailed update on orders, directives, and policies with respect to training, readiness, maintenance, and safety. Initiated last fall, this course is attended by all future COs of flying squadrons prior to assuming their commands. We have also instituted the Aviation Command Preparation Program, which requires the assignment of slated leaders to their respective wings six months prior to command in order to regain their flight proficiency. Within 14 days of a Marine Air Wing Commanding General's endorsement of a Class A or B mishap report, I now require the responsible commanding general, group commander, and squadron commanding officer to brief me on mishap causal factors, corrective actions, and the status of those actions. A final leadership tool that is now incorporated fleet-wide is the HQMC monthly operational risk management status report. This report spans all active and reserve squadrons and provides greater visibility throughout Marine Aviation as to which units are in compliance with applicable orders and policies.
We instituted initiatives that are facilitating operational safety improvements across all aviation units:
The Training and Readiness (T&R) manual and the Flying Hour Program (FHP) have been completely revised, standardizing commander responsibilities, sortie based training program (SBTP) reporting and FHP reporting throughout the Marine Corps. This program has clarified a disjointed and outdated system, thereby easing the squadrons' administrative burden.
A review of all Marine Aviation Tables of Organization (T/Os), both active and reserve, has been completed as of 28 July 2005. This will ensure that operating forces are structured and organized to support safe and effective operations.
Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One has successfully instituted a program of instruction within its Weapons and Tactics Instructor (WTI) Course that trains WTIs on how to embed the ORM safety process in all aspects of daily unit training. The course spans three days and instructs the WTI on the incorporation of ORM principals into training plan development, long range training factors, and daily scheduling. In addition, it provides the WTI insight into the impacts of command climate on ORM.
Marine Aviation Training Transformation defines a priority funded system that provides a systems approach to training driven curriculum to give Marine Aviation a true concurrency management process that will keep our training systems current with our aircraft. It includes the ability to rapidly update both courseware and training devices. This will allow us to move training events from the aircraft and into the simulator. Crew Resource Management (CRM) will be an integral part of this new effort. CRM will no longer be a class given once a year, but will be woven throughout the fabric of the curriculum. CRM will be evaluated in each training event and that information will be used to see trends and stop problems before they occur.
Finally, standardization and evaluation will take center stage as Aviation Training System (ATS) sites stand-up across Marine Aviation. The ATS will provide Marine air wings and groups with a cadre of instructors dedicated to standardized instruction and performance evaluation.
Marine Aviation faces dynamic times as we support combat operations while training and preparing for the next round of conflict. Operational safety is critical toward that end and our positive actions have resulted in an improved safety record. Beyond these initiatives, however, we must strive first and foremost to establish safety as a mindset. The tone of aviation safety is set from the top down-DC/A to CO to lieutenant-with all participants sharing responsibility and accountability. Safety is and will always be our leadership challenge.
"The Impending Collapse of Arab Civilization"
(See J. Lacey, pp. 24-27, September 2005 Proceedings)
Captain Richard W. Hale, U.S. Army Reserve (Retired)-I want to commend Lt. Col. Lacey. I'm only sorry he does not go far enough in defining the major problem in the Arab-and Muslim-world: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is past time for us to admit that nearly all of the Islamist terrorism, at least since World Trade Center I in 1993, can be traced to actions of the government of Saudi Arabia.
I am a retired CIA officer, but my resume includes service as a combat infantryman and Army Reserve officer. My last overseas tour was Vietnam. My time in the Middle East was long ago, the decade of the 1950's. Except for the Suez war and the first Lebanese civil war, it was a relatively quiet period, but the morass was already bubbling. I retired before the 1983 attacks on the Marines and our Beirut Embassy but I lost friends and I have been paying close attention ever since.
I must qualify my charge against the Saudi government. They did not intentionally set out to have the World Trade Center destroyed, bombs blasting innocent people from Bali to East Africa, from Madrid to London. What they did do was spend billions of dollars of oil money to establish thousands of mosques and madrassas from Jakarta to Los Angeles staffed with Wahhabi-trained clerics, products of the official, and only acceptable, form of Islam in the Kingdom.
The Saudis claim that after 9/11, and particularly after things started to go boom in their own country, that they have cracked down on the various government offices, many of the royal princes, and the wealthy businessmen who have been funding the Islamists. Not so.
If anyone wants to know the history of how the Al Saud family came to power with the aid of the Wahhabis, then by all means read Bernard Lewis (although some of his early books do not mention the Wahhabis at all). What everyone really needs to know is that Wahhabism is a perversion of Islam. They not only hate Jews and Crusaders, but Shiites, Sufis, and even Sunnis who do not subscribe to their primitive interpretation of the Koran.
Unfortunately, the Saudi Royals are riding a tiger; if they try to dismount they will be gobbled up. Our country, with its dependence on Saudi and Gulf oil, is on that same tiger, clinging desperately to the portly waist of King Abdullah. I wish I knew how both could dismount.
"Do's and Don'ts for the New Flag Aide"
(See S. Carroll and E. Knox, pp. 42-45, August 2005 Proceedings)
Captain John Byron, U.S. Navy (Retired)—The article nicely describes the flag aide's toolbox, but it also makes out the aide to be . . . well, an effete twit.
And the flags they serve? Apparently they can't function properly on their own, travel competently, or even dress themselves without the constant attention of the finest junior officers the system cafl produce: "Carry breath mints!" What silliness!
What other serious business so trivializes leadership and allocates its best young talent to a servant's job? Flag aides are an unnecessary appendage from a bygone time of caste-conscious pretentiousness. We've seen a commander-in-chief schlepping his own luggage and leaders of Fortune 590 companies flying coach. Time the military caught up with the Society it serves and abandoned its trappings of grandeur. Give each flag a Palm Pilot and put the aides into real jobs.
"Naval Aviation: Forward, Persistent & Dominant"
(See W. Massenberg, J. Zortman, and T. Kilcline, pp. 34-37. October 2005 Proceedings)
Senior Chief Russ Knaub, U.S. Navy (Retired), Naval Air Systems Command—As I was leafing through the October magazine, I stopped, as usual, to take a closer look at the helicopters. Page 35 features an SH-60B performing vertical replenishment, one of its secondary missions. The caption, however, identifies the aircraft as an MH-60R. As the MH-60R Air Vehicle Deputy, I can assure you that the only MH-60R aircraft in the inventory are at NAS Patuxent River, MD, or at Lockheed Martin Systems Integration, Owego, Ni The first Fleet MH-60Rs will be delivered to HSL-41, NAS North Island, San Diego, CA, in December 2005.
"Katrina Response: Actually . . . Much of It Is Working"
(See H. Ullman, p. 2, October 2005 Proceedings)
Captain Andrew C.A. Jampoler, U.S. Navy (Retired)-I was appalled by Colonel Lacey's one-dimensional Commentary, which reads more -like a campaign statement than a contribution to a journal that styles itself an independent forum. A balanced appraisal would have come out differently. Louisiana is a small, poor state and New Orleans, glamour aside, is a small, very poor city. These are objective conditions, not value judgments, and they set sharp limits on what local resources can do about anything. The city lies below sea level between the Gulf and Lake Pontchartrain and so is unusually vulnerable.
Katrina was as powerful as a thermonuclear weapon. Many predicted that such a storm could-and would-hit New Orleans and the vital petroleum and cargohandling facilities. In the actual event, NOAA predicted the strength and track of this storm with astonishing accuracy well in advance of landfall.
The traditional response to a prediction of hurricane landfall is to evacuate the impact area. Often, this response is flawed because it assumes three things that are not always true: People have a way to evacuate; evacuees have a place to go; and they will have a place to return to.
New Orleans survived Katrina's landfall, but could not survive the catastrophic breach of the levees. Some say that the levees could not have been strengthened enough to withstand a Category 4 or 5 storm. This is a political judgment, not an engineering one. Given adequate resources, they certainly could have. At no point, however, has the government (federal, not state nor local) made the decision to proceed or even to fully fund the much more modest maintenance work proposed annually by the Corps of Engineers.
The error here lies in process and people. We need to identify the process flaws that failed to get enough money into these projects and instead spent it on a neverending stream of pork, and hold those responsible accountable. No one planned for the inevitable levee breech; for the largescale evacuation; indceed-for many of the subsequent events..
Local police are too few to manage this scale of disorder anywhere. New Orleans' famously compromised police department is a thin reed to lean on in any emergency, but even legions of incorruptible Texas Rangers would not have been enough. Massive reinforcement of law and order from outside the impact area was and will be essential.
Execution-the U.S. Coast Guard aside-was as grossly inept as was planning. The grotesquely incompetent federal response under FEMA cannot escape criticism. FEMA's submergence into the new Department of Homeland security not only impaired the agency's ability to command support, but also replaced its traditional focus on natural disaster with a mission more connected to the parent agency's counterterrorism role. The upper echelons of FEMA were staffed with unqualified people.
There were failures on all levels in New Orleans, but the biggest failure (the one that really mattered to people in the mud) came at the highest level. The magnitude of the displacement of people and destruction of property was so great that it required a correspondingly great federal response, which failed utterly. That failure was largely due to a lack of ability on the part of the senior management team at the federal level that can only be described as incompetent, and an oddly disengaged White House.
The dramatic federal response to Hurricane Rita is persuasive evidence that the White House understood how poorly it had performed the first time around.
"SITREP IRAQ"
(See J. Conway and R. Scales, pp. 20-23, October 2005 Proceedings)
Captain RR. McKim, U.S. Naval Reserve-General Scales refers to the importance of Clausewitz's "will" in winning the Iraq War. Whose will does he mean? In studying Clausewitz at the Naval War College we learned that will was vital in the people, the military, and the government. Clausewitz specifically emphasized the importance of will in the people, creativity in the military, and reason in the government.
Despite JCS Chairman General Richard Myers' attempts to tell Senator John McCain that this war can't be compared to Vietnam, there are some comparisons, at least on the home front. Presidents from Texas attempted to buy the will of the people with a guns-and-butter strategy and fudge their reasons for going to war: LBJ used the Tonkin Gulf incident and George W. Bush raised the threat of weapons of mass destruction. Deficit spending started in the mid-1960s set a course for hyperinflation in the 1970s that included some all too familiar oil shocks along the way. The process ended with a cynical public that took years to regain its pride and will.
Today we are even less able to successfully spend our way out. Today, the United States attracts 85% of the world's savings into our bonds to pay for our twin deficits. This is hardly the picture of a people of disciplined will.
Here in California I see many demonstrate their will with bumper stickers on the rear of their monster SUVs-"Support Our Troops," -as they talk on cell phones advising their children to avoid any sacrifices. Today there is no shared adversity as there was during World War II.
When General Scales says, "It is heartening to see that there is always a line at the recruiting station consisting of young men anxious to replace those who fail to exhibit the right stuff," he must not mean stateside recruiting stations for the Army and National Guard, which both missed recruiting goals by more than 10% in fiscal year 2005. The impressive reenlistment rates in elite units like the Marine Corps demonstrate that will in uniform is intact. It's the will of the people out of uniform that concerns me.
General Conway says that our troops ask: "Does our country still support us?" and that "they seek only one answer . . . because they understand failure is not an option." It isn't up to the troops, General; it's up to the people. Whether this war is right or wrong, the will of the people is what keeps us in to the finish. Our military leaders owe it to the troops to make sure the military and people are prepared before going in and that the government is thinking rationally.