{"id":23659,"date":"2018-08-15T20:54:36","date_gmt":"2018-08-15T20:54:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/uncategorized\/2018\/08\/15\/gao-raps-pentagon-for-not-properly-tracking-aviation-mishap-data\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T20:42:02","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T20:42:02","slug":"gao-raps-pentagon-for-not-properly-tracking-aviation-mishap-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/news\/your-army\/2018\/08\/15\/gao-raps-pentagon-for-not-properly-tracking-aviation-mishap-data\/","title":{"rendered":"GAO raps Pentagon, services for not properly tracking aviation mishap data"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As the military faces an alarming uptick in plane crashes and other aviation-related mishaps<\/a>, some fatal, the Government Accountability Office took the Army, Navy and Air Force<\/a> to task for not tracking aviation mishap<\/a> data in the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, GAO said in a report Wednesday<\/a> to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, the Army uses its own processes to define types of aviation mishaps. And when mishap data isn\u2019t standardized across services, they don\u2019t speak a \u201ccommon language,\u201d GAO said. This makes it harder to accurately measure trends of how mishaps are changing, analyze what risks exist that could lead to mishaps, and effectively share lessons learned with one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Naval Safety Center only collects standardized data on 11 of the 35 data elements on aviation mishaps, GAO said, and the Army Combat Readiness Center has standardized data on 14 mishap data elements. The Air Force Safety Center did better with 17 standardized aviation mishap data elements, GAO said, but even that was not even half of what the Air Force is supposed to be tracking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The service safety centers and the Office of the Secretary of Defense also don\u2019t agree on what OSD should do to analyze mishaps to find their causes, GAO said. As a result, the safety centers don\u2019t report all the data elements about mishaps \u2014 including what may have caused the incidents \u2014 to the Pentagon. This particularly has become a problem because no safety centers are submitting information on human factors \u2014 such as performance-based errors, physical problems and mental awareness \u2014 which the Pentagon says is most often the cause of mishaps.<\/p>\n\n\n