Repeating NASA's Deadly Mistakes

Today's naval air culture resembles that of the space agency in the days preceding its space shuttle disasters. Will the single-seat Hornet community be spared a similar fate?

The accident investigations of both the Challenger and Columbia disasters highlighted a number of cultural traits within NASA that, but for the change of a name, are every bit as applicable to naval aviation. Investigators found an organization "blinded by its 'Can-Do' attitude, a cultural artifact . . . that was inappropriate in a . . . program so strapped by schedule pressures and shortages that spare parts had to be cannibalized from one vehicle to launch another." Its measure of success had become "how much costs were reduced" as budget limitations forced the agency "again and again to refashion itself into an efficiency model." While "at the same time that NASA's leaders were emphasizing the importance of safety, their personnel cutbacks sent other signals." Even NASA's motto of "faster, better, cheaper" bears more than a passing resemblance to the Navy's practice of "do more with less."1

Of note, however, is NASA's response back then to the principal influence it shares with the current Navy-an increasingly austere fiscal environment. It adapted by becoming more of a business, with workforce reductions being one key manifestation of this transition. Performance goals, however, remained unchanged. In fact they increased, generating a widening mismatch in ends and means. The workload became such that, as one engineer observed, "the system was about to come down under its own weight." In the process safety was compromised, ultimately precipitating the loss of Challenger.

Naval aviation is treading very similar ground. Subject to the same budgetary headaches and biased by the same cultural traits, the same can-do attitude that colored NASA's decision making, it's responding in like fashion. Nowhere is this more evident than in the single-seat Hornet community. The latest round of pilot reductions, enacted with no corresponding reduction in workload, has driven the most pronounced mismatch of ends and means in the community's history. Pilot manning levels are very near all-time lows, while peak flight-hour execution and non-flying related workload are at record highs. The disparity is patently unsafe, and absent any meaningful effort to correct it, naval aviation is setting the stage for its own catastrophe. Lieutenant Commander D. J. Harris, writing in NSAWC Journal, observed: "Never in history has one aircraft/aircrew team been asked to do so much."

Uncompensated Disparity

Though bearing much the same workload as their dualseat brethren, single-seat squadrons are typically manned with half the associated air crew members, leaving little time for anything but work. A comparison of VFA-14 and -41 illustrates this point. Both are attached to the same air wing, fly very similar sortie rates, and publish nearly identical Standard Organization and Regulations manuals, yet VFA-14 is manned with 17 air crew members while VFA-41 is manned with 34.2 Thus, single-seat air crews execute the same flying regimen as their multi-crew counterparts while supporting literally double their non-flying workload.

What is often overlooked is the degree to which this taxes the typical single-seat squadron. A 1994 Navy Manpower Analysis Center (NAVMAC) study charted air crew workload as a function of number of pilots assigned. Given 1994 weapon systems, collateral duty, and watchstanding requirements, a squadron with 18 air crew members and 6 ground officers was calculated to have required an 80+ hour air crew work week to meet those demands. The study stated:

Due to the small aggregate number of officers assigned to Hornet squadrons and the fixed cost of administration and management of required programs, the fleet F/A-18 squadron officer workweek far exceeds the Navy Standard Workweek.3

As the phrase implies, fixed costs are just that-fixed. They constitute a static workload borne by a squadron's officer corps independent of the number of jets or air crews assigned. If air crew manning is reduced, either temporarily or permanently, there's no corresponding relief of a proportionate percentage of work. It's simply spread among those who remain.

These fixed costs have expanded since the study's completion. While squadrons have been relieved of several minor duties, their loss has been more than offset by the addition of others.4 Expertise requirements have grown with the introduction of weapon systems such as Joint Stand-Off Weapons (JSOW) and Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM). Operational Risk Management, Sexual Assault Victims Intervention, and the Victim's Witness Assistance Program did not exist in 1994, yet are representative of the non-tactical programs that have been added to the workload. Further, previously existing programs have invariably expanded with the passage of time. Physical fitness assessment has grown dramatically, as have physical security, antiterrorism/force protection, and hurricane evacuation/consequence management. All require far more time and effort to administer than ten years ago. All are replete with ever expanding training, documentation, and reporting requirements. An exhaustive list is prohibitive, but the trend is clear: A great deal more has been added to the plate than has been removed.

Shrinking Pool of Aviators

The workload increase is not solely internal. External watchstanding requirements have easily doubled since the release of the center's study. The strike warfare commander's responsibilities have expanded significantly, yet staffing remained constant. Consequently, watches previously stood at the staff level have largely been pushed down to the squadron level. The exponential increase in Combined Air Operations Center staffing, too, has generated an additional drain on personnel, requiring multiple air crews for liaison duty where one generally sufficed in the past. All are drawn from a shrinking pool of air wing aviators.

Adding to the burden, aircraft complexity has increased with the addition of: GPS, JSOW, JDAM, the Expanded Response (ER) version of SLAM, multiple variants of laser-guided munitions, ALE-47, APG-73, ALR-67, CIT, ARC-210, HARM, LINK-16/MIDS/DCS/VMF, CAS, JMPS/Mission Planning Tools and NETS, and various other aircraft software upgrades.

Increased capability, of course, comes with increased training requirements, demanding proportionately greater time and resource allocation to be proficient.

Bruising in its own right, the weight of this growth in fixed costs is compounded by excessive operational tempo. Monthly flight hour totals for the F/A-18C community routinely exceed the Required Operational Capabilities/Projected Operational Environment wartime utilization rate-the threshold established for squadron flight hour execution in the event of war. Wartime rates are generally double those of peacetime thresholds and presume reserve augmentation, as well as relief from a significant portion of the fixed costs outlined above.5

With good reason, flying these sorts of hours strains squadrons enormously. Operation Enduring Freedom lessons learned specifically highlighted workloads that shattered crew rest guidelines and exhausted air crew members.6 This was with 18 pilots per squadron, two more than the 16 of the current community. It is particularly telling that of the 53 times this threshold has been exceeded in the last 18 years more than half-31-have been within the past five years. In short, the F/A-18C community is working harder than it ever has, and on a sustained basis.

Given this context, by what rationale can a manning decrease be justified? The 1994 NAVMAC study called for 17 to 19 air crew members and 6 ground officers based on the workload at that time. If in the interim the operational tempo has increased, aircraft systems have grown more complex, and collateral duty and watchstanding requirements have both increased, common sense dictates a proportionate manning increase above the study's recommended minimum, not a decrease.

Echoes of NASA

Budgetary constraints-norms of cost and efficiency-are of course the other factor in this equation. And manning reductions are indeed a viable means of containing costs. As NASA discovered, however, doing so without a corresponding reduction in workload can exact heavy penalties in safety.

Faced with similar constraints in the years leading up to the Challenger disaster, the space agency also cut manning. The Apollo program employed 34,000 people at its peak, yet, by the mid-1980s employees numbered 22,000. Similarly, the Marshall Space Flight Center workforce was ultimately cut in half, from 7,000 to 3,500. Paralleling current day naval aviation, NASA did so at a time when its operational tempo-the shuttle launch rate-was increasing, from eight launches per year to a goal of 24. The strain this induced was enormous. As one engineer put it, "we were just getting buried."7

In this fashion, "cost efficiency goals [became] elevated to the level of... safety goals."8 Even though the agency's stated emphasis on safety remained, its adherence to cost efficiency paradigms gradually eroded the resources necessary to ensure its viability-a workforce sufficient to support the program's performance objectives. Savings were indeed realized. Such practices, however, also begat disaster.

There's little doubt that this same dynamic is at work in naval aviation. Air crew manning reductions have been purely budgetary driven, divorced from any formal effort to match manning and workload. The Navy Manpower Analysis Center last conducted a single-seat Hornet manpower study in 1998. Successive squadron air crew reductions from 18 to 17 to 16 have taken place since then, independent of any further study. In the meantime, as was the case at NASA, safety has been lost in mix. A 2004 Center for Naval Analyses study observed that "the Navy does not consider safety a core value; it treats safety as one among many programs."9 Even if the parallels between the two institutions were not so strong, the adverse effect on safety is self evident. Given the sharp increases in workload and operational tempo, do we as an institution honestly expect air crew manning reductions to precipitate a decrease in mishap rates? Such logic strains credulity.

Ignoring the Signs

Undermanned squadrons are not a new phenomenon. Hazard reports, messages, point papers, and professional articles spanning more than a decade highlight the chronic nature of officer manpower shortages in the single-seat Hornet community. In much the same vein, NASA and Morton Thiokol engineers both submitted numerous memos in the years leading up to the Challenger disaster, such as the following:

It is my honest and very real fear that if we do not take immediate action to dedicate a team to solve the problem with the field joint. . . we stand in jeopardy of losing a flight.10

Yet as is also the case in today's naval aviation, NASA was enjoying a great deal of success. Shuttles launched and returned intact conditioning managers to discount engineers' warnings. No safety problem existed from an institutional perspective until Challenger exploded. What will it require for naval air to heed the call?

Finally, it isn't just safety that's at stake. Forty air crew members opted out of the last department head screen board, leading to a single-seat screen rate of more than 90 percent. Just four years ago the screen rate for the same group was less than 40 percent. A disconcertingly high percentage of those choosing to leave were replacement air group instructors, our top junior officer talent pool. Was this because of manning reductions alone? Likely not. Over the course of the last decade, however, we've also lengthened junior officer sea tours, shortened shore tours, and increased cruise length. Add reduced manning and several other detractors to the list and, taken in aggregate, such practices hold broad implications for retention and, ultimately, overall institutional effectiveness. Naval aviation would be well served by curtailing this trend. Adequately manning squadrons is a good place to start.

Doing Less with Less

The accident investigations in the wake of the Challenger disaster decried the paucity of resources allocated to support NASA's objectives, "asserting that goals and resources must be brought into alignment."" If naval aviation is to avoid a similar fate, it must pursue the same alignment. The key to doing so is overhauling the manpower determination process.

The single-seat Hornet community has been reduced to funding only the number of air crew members permitted by budgetary limitations. Here, the process stops. At no point is any study conducted to determine if this number is actually sufficient to support the required workload. Nor is there a mechanism for reducing workload were such studies to be performed. These critical omissions need to be corrected.

First, budgetary constraints should be only one determinant in manpower assessment, not the final word. They may bound the number of air crew members naval aviation can afford, but true alignment of ends and means dictates that the process continues, incorporating comprehensive workload studies to identify disparities between tasking and the number of people allocated to perform it. If tasking exceeds available manning then a proportionate percentage of work must be shed until it can be performed within the crew-rest and crew-day constraints of assigned air crew.

Second, workload studies must take place on a scheduled, recurring basis, at least every 24 months. Even if budgets-and thus manning-remain static, workload does not. The scope of existing duties routinely changes, and new duties are invariably added with the passage of time. Given that the plate is already full, some existing tasking must be eliminated if new duties are to be added. Scheduled, periodic review will ensure that this happens, maintaining manning and workload alignment over time.

Third, external watchstanding requirements must be standardized. Squadron duty officers, landing signal officers and the like are readily accounted for in workload studies because they're uniform from squadron to squadron. The strike warfare commander's watches, however, are anything but. Heavily time and manpower intensive, they constitute a significant burden on single-seat wardrooms. Yet because they vary widely as a function of the air wing, coast, strike group, or combatant commander who is exercising operational control of a given squadron, their impact on any single community is difficult to capture. Fleet standardization would eliminate this problem, permitting individual communities to accurately account for and man to this requirement.

Finally, squadrons must be manned to support peak workload. They're flying wartime utilization rates, have been on a sustained basis, and likely will be for the foreseeable future, yet are manned near historical lows even by peacetime standards. Few would consider it safe to fly in an environment where air traffic control facilities were manned to support only 70 percent of peak capacity. Is it any more so in naval aviation?

The institution is no doubt enjoying some cost savings as a consequence of current manpower initiatives. The short-term cost savings NASA realized through incremental personnel and resource reductions, however, ultimately paled in comparison to the expense of the loss of Challenger. Until such time as the single-seat Hornet workload is reduced in proportion to manning, such savings increasingly run the risk of being short term as well. Let us hope that it doesn't require a catastrophe to drive the point home.