The panel’s personnel subcommittee has proposed limiting the DoD’s plans to restructure the military health system and called for reversing any changes the department has made to 41 military treatment facilities.

The subcommittee’s draft of the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization bill also would improve congressional oversight of military medical reforms by requiring the Defense Health Agency to give quarterly updates to Congress of its plans to change the system.

The proposals stem from a massive overhaul of the military health system reforms initiated under the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, which called for transferring military hospital and clinic management to the Defense Health Agency and reducing administrative redundancies across the system.

The legislation ultimately aimed to focus the military health system on training military medical personnel for combat operations and caring for active-duty troops, and placing non-military patients in private sector care covered by the DoD.

As a result of the reforms, DHA and the military services planned to restructure the entire hospital system, announcing in 2020 that it would improve two military medical centers and consolidate or downsize 48 facilities, including 38 that would no longer see military families or retirees as patients.

At the time, Thomas McCaffery, who served as assistant secretary of defense for health affairs in the first Trump administration, said the changes were necessary to prepare military physicians and troops for deployment.

“We reviewed all facilities through the lens of their contributions to military readiness — that includes MTFs [being] operated to ensure service members are medically ready to train and deploy,” McCaffery said in a 2020 report to Congress.

But those reforms bled patients from military heath facilities, resulting in inadequate numbers for military physicians to maintain their skills. In turn, services degraded across many military hospitals and clinics, according to senior enlisted personnel.

In late 2024, the Defense Department reversed course on the plan to shed patients to private care, vowing to bring back 7% of patients by the end of 2026. It also has announced several partnerships with community health facilities to ensure that military physicians get adequate trauma training and patient exposure to maintain their skills.

But the DoD has failed to provide information to Congress regarding the reforms, frustrating members with its lack of candor regarding any planned closures of facilities.

Concerns voiced by lawmakers over changes to facilities that weren’t made public, such as Keller Army Community Hospital, West Point, New York, which was to lose its inpatient beds and Fort Leonard Wood’s new hospital. That hospital was to open not as a full-service hospital as planned, but an ambulatory clinic, which prompted several legislative changes, including the proposed fiscal 2027 NDAA restrictions.

Under the draft NDAA, DHA would not be allowed to make changes proposed for 41 facilities and must “reverse any steps to carry out a service change” and “restore personnel and clinical services affected by any such service change to a level that existed as of March 3, 2026.”

According to the proposed legislation, three facilities faced downsizing from hospitals to ambulatory care facilities, meaning they would have no inpatient capabilities. Those included:

• Eisenhower Army Medical Center, Fort Gordon, Georgia;
• 88th Medical Group, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, (including closing pediatric cardiology and discontinuing chiropractic care); and
• Naval Hospital Beaufort, South Carolina, including discontinuing chiropractic care.

Those that would limit access to active-duty service members only included:

• 78th Medical Group, Robins Air Force Base, Georgia;
• 72nd Medical Group, Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma;
• 75th Medical Group, Hill Air Force Base, Utah; and
• 66th Medical Squadron, Hanscom Air Force Base, Massachusetts.

Those that would have excluded caring for retirees and their dependents, only seeing active-duty personnel and their family members were:

• 22nd Medical Group, McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas;
• 341st Medical Group, Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana;
• 28th Medical Group, Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota;
• 92nd Medical Group, Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington;
• 90th Medical Group, Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming;
• 355th Medical Group, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona;
• 9th Medical Group, Beale Air Force Base, California;
• 45th Medical Group, Patrick Space Force Base, Florida;
• 4th Medical Group, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina;
• 460th Medical Group, Buckley Space Force Base, Colorado;
• 27th Special Operations Medical Group, Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico;
• 412th Medical Group, Edwards Air Force Base, California;
• 30th Medical Group, Vandenberg Space Force Base, California;
• Naval Health Clinic Corpus Christi, Texas;
• 19th Medical Group, Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas, (which also plans to discontinue nutrition services); and
• 20th Medical Group, Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina, (which also plans to discontinue nutrition services).

Facilities planning to restrict services only to active duty members and dependents who live on base included:

• 23rd Medical Group, Moody Air Force Base, Georgia;
• 366th Medical Group, Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho
• 319th Medical Group, Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota; and
• 61st Medical Squadron, Los Angeles Space Force Base, California.

Three facilities were slated to discontinue contracts for chiropractic and nutrition services, including:

• 55th Medical Group, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska;
• 2nd Medical Group, Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana; and
• 87th Medical Group, Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey.

In addition, the following facilities would discontinue contracts for chiropractic services:

• 1st Special Operations Medical Group, Hurlburt Field, Florida;
• 10th Medical Group, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado; and
• 96th Medical Group, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.

Seven facilities would have seen changes in services, to include:

• David Grant Medical Center, Travis Air Force Base, California, slated to lose its labor and delivery department;
• 42nd Medical Group, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, which would stop its educational and developmental intervention services;
• Vilseck Army Health Clinic, Germany, which would discontinue its physical medicine and rehabilitation services;
• Naval Health Clinic Patuxent River, Branch Health Clinic Dahlgren, Virginia, which would no longer offer radiology;
• Army Health Clinic Munson, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, which would stop offering mammography;
• Naval Health Clinic Lemoore, California, which would lose its operating rooms;  and
• 7th Medical Group, Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, which would stop offering nutrition services.

And according to the proposed legislation, one facility — the Desert Sage Community Based Medical Home, part of William Beaumont Army Medical Center, at Fort Bliss, Texas — was slated for closure.

In October, then-acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Dr. Stephen Ferrara said review of the military health system was an ongoing process and no plans for reductions or closures were set in stone.

“Like any enterprise, we’re always looking at ‘Where are we there — where do we have supply and demand mismatches?’ That’s just good governance of the system,” Ferrara said in response to a question from a reporter at a Military Officers Association of America conference.

“If you looked at any corporation that had 100 hospitals or 100 stores, they should be looking at them to say where it makes sense to dedicate their resources. That’s kind of what we’re doing, just as a matter of course, so there’s not, like, a list,” Ferrara said.

Karen Ruedisueli, MOAA’s director of government relations for health, said Tuesday that the organization, which represents active-duty and retired military personnel and family members, continues to press pressed Congress and the Defense Department to conduct “rigorous data-based analysis and mitigation planning” before shifting patients from military facilities to civilian care.

Ruedisueli first reported on the facilities list in the proposed legislation Tuesday.

“MOAA will keep members informed as this legislation moves forward and work to ensure any changes to the MHS prioritize the needs of those who have served,” Ruedisueli wrote in a blog post.

The House Armed Services Committee plans its mark up of the fiscal 2027 NDAA Thursday. It then will be forwarded to the full chamber for consideration. The Senate Armed Services Committee plans to mark up its version next week but has not released a draft.

The Irish soldiers beat American crews to claim first place in the Bradley Fighting Vehicle division at the Sullivan Cup, despite the Irish Army not operating any Bradleys of its own.

The Sullivan Cup, hosted at Fort Benning, Georgia, is a weeklong event that brings together tank and Bradley crews from across the U.S. military and allied countries to test teams’ gunnery, maneuvering and maintenance skills, as well as physical fitness under difficult conditions.

The Irish team bested a crew from the U.S. Army’s 155th Armored Brigade Combat Team to win the Bradley portion of the biennial competition.

“It was embarrassing for them but they came up after and shook our hands. They knew how professional we’d held ourselves,” Sgt. Shane Molloy, the team’s gunner, told The Irish Times on Thursday, adding “they enjoyed our company. We enjoyed theirs.”

In an interview released last week by Fort Benning, the team — with neat green berets and red and white ribbons around their necks — also credited their success, in large part, to the teaching and training of American service members.

The Irish crew reportedly trained on the Mowag Piranha, the Irish Army’s armored personnel carrier, which was the closest the crew had to a Bradley in the country, before coming stateside.

Unlike tanks, which are built for heavy combat, Bradley Fighting Vehicles are lighter designed to move infantry troops while still touting firepower.

A group of soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division took home the title in the best tank division.

Teams from Poland and the United Kingdom also competed.

On May 12, a T-38 Talon II aircraft from Columbus Air Force Base, Mississippi, was involved in a mishap, according to a base release. The crash occurred in a rural area of Lamar County, Alabama, with the cause is still unknown. An investigation is set to be completed by a Safety Investigation Board.

Almost a week after the T-38 accident, two Navy E/A-18G Growler jets collided mid-air on Sunday during an air show near Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. The four crew members involved ejected safely, and the crash is under investigation.

The Air Force says the service is acting out of an “abundance of caution,” according to a Tuesday release. The halt in flight operations is meant to give the safety board the ability to locate and assess evidence from the accident.

“The pause ensures the continued safety of Air Force personnel and equipment involved in flying T-38 operations while the investigation progresses,” the release reads.

It also notes that the length of the pause is undetermined as engineering analysis and an inspection process is needed before clearing the aircraft for a safe return to flight. Inspections are slated to begin this week.

Once the inspection process and any maintenance actions are completed, individual aircraft can resume flying operations.

Units impacted by this pause are across Air Education and Training Command, Air Combat Command, Air Force Materiel Command and Air Force Global Strike Command, the statement says.

The T-38 Talon, which was introduced in the 1960s, is primarily used by Air Education and Training Command for joint specialized undergraduate pilot training.

While the aircraft’s flying operations are paused, aircrews are going to utilize simulator training as impacted major commands work to alleviate stress on operations, training and readiness, per the release.

Last week’s incident is not the only T-38 accident seen in recent years. In early November 2022, a T-38C crashed around 20 miles outside of the Columbus base and forced the pilot to eject safely, while sustaining non life-threatening injuries.

Then just two weeks later, another T-38C experienced an in-flight emergency that caused the aircraft to land gear-up.

By 2027, the Air Force hopes to achieve Initial Operating Capability for the T-7A Red Hawk, which is meant to phase out the T-38C Talon for pilot training. The force allowed for production of the T-7As to begin in April 2026.

The Army, after a thorough review, eventually lifted the standdown. But five months later, an MH-60 Black Hawk stealth helicopter belonging to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment crashed into the Mediterranean Sea during a training mission, killing five on board.

The accidents kept coming. Another two AH-64E Apache crew died during a training flight in Mississippi, while three crew members died in an LUH-72A Lakota helicopter crash during operations along the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas last month.

Fiscal 2023 marked the highest death rate for Army soldiers since the U.S. withdrew from Iraq in 2011, with a total of 14 dead across 10 accidents, formally known as Class A mishaps, meaning accidents that result in the loss of life or the loss of equipment totaling more than $2.5 million.

In an average year, Army aviation mishaps typically kill six crew members, with the average Class A mishap accident rate hovering just under one accident per 100,000 flight hours. The current rate is 3.22, more than double the highest rate of any fiscal year in more than a decade, according to Army Combat Readiness Center data.

Army leaders say the service is actively addressing the issue, including unveiling training enhancement efforts, but experts said it could take years to correct the root issues in the service’s training amid an existing experience shortfall. As a result, the Army’s mishap rate could get worse before it gets better.

“Unfortunately, there’s still a shortage in the force right now,” Joe Roland, a former aviation warrant officer and instructor pilot who retired from the Army two years ago, told Defense News. “We’ve downsized; we’ll never truly upsize.”

‘Out-driving their headlights’

In its examination of the force and training processes during the 2023 standdown, the Army found its pilots and aviation warrant officers are today significantly less experienced than they were during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Eric Schwegler, G3 director at the Army Combat Readiness Center, told Defense News that mishaps are far more common at “the lowest level, when you’ve got maybe an E-5 [the lowest rank as a noncommissioned officer] in charge.”

“[What] we see time and time again is they underestimate the risk or the risk changes,” he added.

As a result, inexperienced crews were “out-driving their headlights, out-training the experience that was in their force at whatever level,” Maj. Gen. Mac McCurry, commander of the Army Aviation Center of Excellence at Fort Novosel, Alabama, told Defense News last month.

“We had this known increase in task complexity as we shifted from tasks in Iraq and Afghanistan to more complex tasks in large-scale combat, bringing aircraft down from altitude, closer to the terrain, flying in larger formations,” McCurry said, noting those are skills necessary to survive operations against advanced adversaries.

Indeed, the deadliest helicopter crash in 2023 happened when two Black Hawks collided in a nighttime, multi-ship training exercise in Kentucky, killing nine. In that case, pilots were using night vision goggles. The following month, three crew members were killed in another multi-ship training exercise in Alaska, when two Apache helicopters collided.

While investigations are still ongoing for the majority of Class A mishaps in 2023 and 2024, according to FlightFax, an Army online newsletter covering Army aircraft accident prevention, the service determined during the standdown that the top killer is “spatial disorientation,” which happens when a pilot wrongly perceives where the aircraft is relative to the ground or surroundings.

Last year was a “very, very bad year” for spatial disorientation, according to the Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory, which is working on solutions that could prevent the phenomenon.

The lab is working on several possible solutions to help pilots cope with disorientation in the cockpit, including a strap around a pilot’s torso that vibrates in a corresponding location on the body to indicate the pilot is drifting in a specific direction.

The accidents in 2023 and early 2024 all occurred in more challenging environments, where the chances of becoming spatially disoriented increased dramatically. These included flying at night using night vision goggles, flying in formation, and flying over snow and water.

While the service has brought in heads-up and helmet-mounted displays to help pilots stay oriented, the Army hasn’t seen a drastic improvement through various technological capabilities, according to the lab.

The Army also identified flight hours as another issue. Units are unable to use all of the flight hours budgeted each year by Congress because of limitations related to aircraft, fuel and crews.

Getting in flight hours is “so critical,” McCurry said, but it’s not always easy.

“When you talk about everything that has to come together for a flight mission, you have to have an aircraft that’s ready,” he explained. “You have to have fuel, you have to have the right trainers and then you have to have the crews.”

With the operational tempo in recent years, coupled with a personnel gap, “it’s been a challenge to pull it all together,” he added.

Experience deficit

Halfway into this fiscal year, the Army has had a dozen Class A accidents resulting in 10 deaths, putting it on pace to become the service’s deadliest year in recent history.

McCurry told Defense News the Army wants to increase training requirements to avoid fatal accidents. This month, it unveiled what it’s calling an aviation “standup” to bolster training.

“Over the first six months of this fiscal year, we’ve seen a troubling trend with our accident rates,” Maj. Gen. Walter Rugen, director of Army aviation, told reporters in April. The so-called standup is meant to “empower the force at the lowest level to solve these problems.”

The training is to focus on three areas identified as needing improvement and likely one of the root causes of crashes. Unit commanders plan to tackle risk management and mitigation for aviation and training operations. Operational-level training is to center on power management and spatial disorientation. And maintainers will review maintenance standards for aircraft repairs and safety checks, according to Rugen.

The Combat Readiness Center has focused on sending teams through its Safety Assistance Visit program to train units at the lower levels on risk management and how to adapt to changing hazards. Already in FY24, the center conducted 31 safety assistance visits. Last year, the organization trained 23,000 soldiers within the aviation branch at nearly 60 sites.

The key lessons are “how to operationalize risk management, and what are the common errors they are making — or don’t even know they’re making — so that they are in the right place at the right time to prevent the next mishap,” Schwegler said.

But McCurry acknowledged the training effort can’t address another issue: the inexperience of pilots.

“We’ve lost a lot of experience that was gained when we were doing the heel-to-toe rotations in Iraq and Afghanistan through natural retirement and attrition,” McCurry said. “There is a known reduction in aviation warrant officer experience.”

Roland, who served as the aviation branch’s chief warrant officer prior to his retirement, said the service has seen significant departures among its aviation service members. It can take six to eight years for a warrant officer “to become proficient at what we do,” he noted.

The Army is now weighing how it can better take advantage of the experienced aviators still in the service.

Roland said the service should focus on how it’s using experienced officers, rather than fast-track warrant officer promotions.

“When we fast-track people, they’re built on a shaky foundation,” he said. “How do you have these incidents and accidents with these mid-grade W-3s and 4s [warrant officers]? Well, their foundation was shaky to start with; nobody checked them on the way up.”

After allegedly skipping out on a bill at a Waffle House near MCAS Cherry Point on Aug. 20, Pvt. 1st Class William J. West and Lance Cpl. Andrew E. Carranza went on a bit of a tear, Havelock Police said, with one even proudly sporting a USMC sweatshirt during the dine-and-dash portion of the evening.

But the night didn’t end there.

West and Carranza reportedly went on to vandalize a HH-46E helicopter at the local Havelock Tourist & Event Center. The two Marines walked around a number of aircraft on display, police said, before one of them climbed onto an RF-4B Phantom II to snap photos. The pair then tried to spin the helicopter blades on the HH-46E. Two windows on the helicopter broke in the process.

West and Carranza later turned themselves into police and are scheduled to appear in Havelock District Court on Sept. 1, 2022.

The Marines have been charged with injury to real property and a city ordinance violation of disorderly conduct, with additional charges potentially forthcoming. Police assessed the damage to be roughly $1,000.

“West and Carranza were released after being charged, and have returned to MCAS Cherry Point,” Havelock Police Department officials wrote in a press release.

“The City of Havelock and the Havelock Police Department would like to thank our partners, Waffle House and MCAS Cherry Point officials for their assistance in bringing this to a quick resolution.”

Despite the Waffle House locale, this particular evening was certainly not an all-star special.

While officials lauded the accomplishment in a press release this week, it came as service flying hours were down 10 percent in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Department of the Navy suffered four fatal aviation mishaps in fiscal years 2016 and 2018, respectively, and three each in fiscal years 2017 and 2019, according to Safety Center data.

Fiscal 2020 ended on Sept. 30.

Class A aviation mishaps, characterized by a loss of life, permanent disability or more than $2.5 million in damages, continued a downward trend in fiscal 2020, with 12 such incidents. That’s down from a recent peak of 19 in fiscal 2017.

Naval Safety Center officials attribute the lack of fatal aviation mishaps in fiscal 2020 to “the training and commitment of aviators across the fleet,” the press release states.

“It’s a remarkable achievement that’s really the result of years of training, proficiency and adopting a good safety culture,” Capt. Scott Kramarik, the Safety Center’s director of aviation safety programs, said in the release.

Kramarik also credited changes to how the Safety Center approaches “data collection, data dissemination, and safety assurance.”

“We’re really trying to help share the lessons learned and best practices that we’ve seen throughout the fleet with the other squadrons,” he said. “I think that slowly, over time, our approach has also influenced the culture of safety in the squadrons.”

The Safety Center has leaned on virtual services during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Kramarik voiced concern about COVID-19 restrictions that have limited the Safety Center’s ability to provide in-person support to units across the fleet.

“This achievement is the next steppingstone, and from here, we drive the mishap numbers even lower,” he said. “It would be great to have another fatality-free year and continue to eliminate the preventable mishaps, but I would say that for us to successfully do that would require us to be able to travel again to fulfill our safety assurance mission.”

The Navy and Marine Corps’ improving mishap numbers follow an overall decline in the total number of serious aviation mishaps and aviation-related fatalities in 2019 for all military services, reversing a trend in recent years that saw record-high numbers of mishaps and death.

Across the force, the total number of major mishaps — defined as those categorized as Class A through Class C — dropped slightly in 2019 to 1,005 major mishaps, down from 1,036 in 2018, according to a Military Times analysis of Defense Department data this summer.

Across the force, the total number of major mishaps — defined as those categorized as Class A though Class C, depending on the extent of damage or injury the individual mishaps caused — dropped slightly last year. The Pentagon reported 1,005 major mishaps in 2019, down from 1,036 in 2018, according to a Military Times analysis of Defense Department data.

Specifically, for the individual services, the mishap data showed:

• The Air Force saw a 7 percent drop in overall mishaps.

• The Navy’s numbers for Class A though Class C mishaps plummeted 20 percent.

• The Army reported a more than 30 percent decline.

• The Marine Corps was the only service to see a spike in the number total number of Class A through Class C mishaps, as the total rose to 30 percent.

The latest information comes as the Pentagon and top military leaders continue to prioritize the need to reduce the rate of serious aviation mishaps and crashes involving aircraft across the force.

For aviation fatalities, the Pentagon reported a sharp decline across the services in 2019. Last year, a total of 13 service members died in mishaps, compared with the previous year’s 39 ― which had marked a 10-year high.

The Marine Corps suffered the worst streak of fatalities, reporting eight Marines who died in aircraft accidents, including a late 2018 aerial refueling collision that killed six aircrew between the tanker and fighter jet involved.

Despite the broad decline in mishaps, trouble spots remain: the latest data shows that three of the four services reported a rise in the most dangerous type of crashes, the Class A mishaps ― defined as those that involve death or permanent disability, and/or more than $2.5 million in damage.

Among the Class A mishaps, the Corps reported an increase from six in fiscal year 2018 to eight in fiscal year 2019, including a late 2018 aerial refueling collision that killed six aircrew between the tanker and fighter jet involved. The Defense Department’s fiscal year starts on Oct. 1.

Representatives of the services safety centers, when contacted by Military Times, stressed that each service is committed to training their forces and investigating mishaps, but didn’t offer any insights on why they believed their numbers had gone up or down.

Several factors are at play when it comes to mishap rates. Aircraft maintenance errors are often cited in safety investigation reports as the cause of a mishap, as is pilot or aircrew error ― which can be caused by anything from a lack of sleep to a mistake while flying in inclement weather.

Another is flight hours, which can affect the frequency of serious incidents in both directions. While more flight hours can mean more opportunities for mishaps, reductions in flight hours come at the cost of the experience and repetition so vital to keeping pilots and crew at the top of their game, creating a dangerous mix when they do get in the air.

For example, according to the investigation into the December 2018 crash involving a Marine Corps KC-130J refueler and F/A-18 Hornet, the pilot was unqualified for the nighttime refueling exercise, with only 13 of required 60 flight hours to qualify under his belt.

But overall, flight hours did not fluctuate enough to explain the differences in mishap rates between 2018 and 2019, as the Navy and Marine Corps’ total flight hours dropped by about 3,000 for each service. In the Army, flight hours jumped by more than 30,000 in 2019, while they declined by the same number in the Air Force ― despite an increase in Class As for the Army and an overall drop in mishaps for the Air Force.

Following the 2018 reporting by Military Times about record-high mishap rates, the congressional armed services committees held hearings and demanded answers from Pentagon officials.

At the time, aviation mishaps had spiked by 40 percent in the previous five years. A record 133 service members died in aviation accidents during that period. Experts placed the blame on the budget cuts known as “sequestration” that began in 2013. Those budget cuts forced the aviation community to significantly cut back on training hours and also led to an exodus of many of the most experienced maintainers in the senior noncommissioned officer corps.

By late 2018, the House Armed Services Committee announced it would form an independent commission of eight aviation experts from military and industry backgrounds, to survey aviation units across the military and report back their findings.

Two years later, progress has been made, but preventable deaths and dozens of destroyed aircraft a year ― at tens of millions of dollars each ― still plague the services.

Air Force mishaps

The Air Force had 667 total major incidents in 2019, down from 716 total in 2018, a reduction of about 7 percent.

The service saw the most progress in fatalities, however, dropping from 17 in 2018 to two in 2019, while overall Class A mishaps dropped from 30 to 22.

“When the numbers go down the next year, you’re not going to necessarily take a victory lap,” Maj. Gen. John Rauch, head of the Air Force Safety Center, told Air Force Times in February. “If they return more towards normal, or even a little below normal, you’re gonna say, ‘We need to continue doing those proactive things.’ It’s not like one year is going to wash that away.”

For the Air Force, which by its nature has the most aviation mishaps of any of the services, incidents related to ground operations and those that happen in flight are mostly evenly distributed.

However, the Air Force has seen an uptick in Class A mishaps within its fighter and attack communities. Fighters saw the most increases in mishaps, with the F-15, F-16, F-22 and F-35 communities spiking from 190 incidents in 2018 to 243 in 2019.

Navy

The Navy, home to military aviation’s second largest community, saw more than a 20 percent drop in its overall serious aviation incidents from 2018 to 2019. The service almost halved its Class As, down to 8 in 2019.

The service’s total flight hours dropped by about 3,000 year over year, showing not only a reduction in incidents but an improvement in the mishap rate, as well.

“At this time, it is difficult to definitively identify the specific actions or combination of actions that have resulted in a difference between the FY18 and FY19 aviation mishaps,” according to Stephanie Slater, spokeswoman for the Naval Safety Center, which overseas Marine Corps aviation. “The Navy and Marine Corps continually evaluate their programs, looking at lessons learned and best practices from a safety perspective to help ensure we maintain and preserve our war fighting capability.”

Navy aviation’s one fatality came late last July, when a Naval Air Station Lemoore, California-based F/A-18E Super Hornet crashed during a training flight over Death Valley, injuring seven tourists and killing its pilot, 33-year-old Lt. Charles Walker.

Marine Corps

While the other services saw an overall reduction in serious mishaps, the Marine Corps’ numbers spiked in 2019, up to 97 from 74 the previous year.

Six of eight fatalities in FY19 came from the tanker-fighter crash in late 2018, four more aviation deaths than the service reported the previous year.

“As the service’s safety advocate, the Naval Safety Center remains committed to identifying hazards and reducing risks to our people and resources,” Slater said. “We will continue to provide advanced data analytics as well as in-depth studies, trends and sophisticated modeling data that can be used to help prevent mishaps.”

Throughout naval aviation, which includes both Navy Department services, fighters had by far the most mishaps, clocking in at 97 incidents for F/A-18s and F-35s, or about 35 percent of A, B and C mishaps. Five of those were Class A accidents.

Army

Like the Air Force and Navy, the Army reduced overall mishaps, down from 85 in 2018 to 65 in 2019. But its Class As did rise, with 12 in 2019, versus 11 in 2018.

“While the Army has seen a relatively steady drop in aviation accident rates over the past decade, anytime the Army encounters an aviation accident, we carefully consider the potential for accident trends and quickly institute measures to mitigate contributing factors,” Army spokesman Jason Waggoner told Military Times.

As in past years, the UH-60 Black Hawk continued to be the deadliest ― as well as the most numerous ― Army airframe with 17 mishaps, two of which were Class As resulting in a death on board.

One of them was a medevac flight at Fort Pork, Louisiana, to recover a soldier with heat stroke out on a range. The crash killed the pilot, Maj. Trevor Joseph, but three more aircrew on board survived.

Aviation safety commission

As all four of the services have touted their efforts to improve their aviation communities’ maintenance capacity and safety culture, the National Commission on Military Aviation Safety opened up a system on its website last year, for service members to report safety concerns in their units.

“I have a fixed opinion that the difference between a Class C and a Class A is inches and luck,” NCMAS chairman retired Army Gen. Dick Cody, a former vice chief of staff, career helicopter pilot and aviation maintenance officer, told reporters in last fall. “We’ve got the attitude that the absence of an accident doesn’t mean the presence of safety. I think we’re going to learn as much from the Cs and the As.”

The commission’s report, originally due in March, has been pushed back to December.

The overall number and rate of Class A, B and C mishaps in manned aircraft declined last year, as did the number of fatalities and destroyed aircraft. There were 667 total mishaps in those three categories last year — the least since fiscal 2013, and a 13 percent decline from the recent high in 2017.

But Class A through C mishaps sharply increased between fiscal 2018 and FY 2019 for F-15 Eagles/Strike Eagles, F-16 Fighting Falcons, F-22 Raptors, F-35 Lightning IIs and A-10 Thunderbolt IIs, according to statistics provided by the Safety Center.

In a Feb. 21 interview, Maj. Gen. John Rauch, the Air Force’s chief of safety and commander of the Safety Center, said the overall decline in the most serious mishaps — particularly the steep drop in fatalities — from fiscal 2018 to fiscal 2019 is a good thing.

But there’s no simple reason why major mishaps declined, he said.

The Air Force still has a lot of work to do, he said, and will keep working to try to stop mishaps before they happen.

“When the numbers go down the next year, you’re not going to necessarily take a victory lap,” Rauch said. “If they return more towards normal, or even a little below normal, you’re gonna say, ‘We need to continue doing those proactive things.’ It’s not like one year is going to wash that away.”

OVERALL MISHAP RATES IN THE AIR FORCE IN FISCAL 2019

Renewed attention was focused on the problem of aviation mishaps in 2018, after a Military Times investigation found rising numbers of accidents and deaths across the military since the beginning of the sequestration budget cuts, which forced the military services to try to do more with less.

In the Air Force, the overall mishap rate hit a seven-year high in fiscal 2017, fueled by a growing number of non-fatal Class C mishaps, which cost between $50,000 and $500,000 or led to injuries serious enough to result in lost work days. Air Force mishaps overall rose about 17 percent between 2013, the first year of sequestration, and 2017.

Lawmakers demanded action. In the Air Force, Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein in May 2018 ordered an operational safety review, which included one-day stand downs for all flying and maintenance wings. That review zeroed in on several potential risks to aviation safety, including a high operations tempo, a lack of available aircraft, inexperienced maintainers and a culture that pushes airmen to always execute the mission.

In 2018, the overall number of mishaps in the Air Force declined, but the number of Class A mishaps grew. Class A’s, the most serious, are defined as mishaps resulting in the destruction of an aircraft, the death or permanent total disability of a crew member, or damage totaling more than $2 million.

Most shockingly, the number of aviation-related deaths in 2018 jumped to 19, the highest number in years. This increase was largely due to the devastating crashes of an HH-60 Pave Hawk in Anbar province, Iraq, which killed seven airmen, and the crash in Georgia of a WC-130, which killed nine Puerto Rico Air National Guardsmen. There were also 12 destroyed aircraft in 2018.

An alarmed Air Force — from service leadership down to individual crew members — increasingly began to focus that year on looking for ways to operate more safely, as well as taking preventive action to head off mishaps before they happen.

Rauch said the Air Force also redoubled its efforts to talk to and work with other services to find out how they were handling their mishap problems.

“To see [mishap rates] return more towards historic norms … isn’t just something that happens accidentally,” Rauch said.

The Air Force saw improvements in several key areas in 2019, compared to fiscal 2018. Among manned aircraft, Class A mishaps dropped from 30 to 22, Class B mishaps dropped from 48 to 35, and Class C mishaps dropped from 638 to 610. Total flight hours dropped from 1.52 million hours to 1.49 million hours in 2019, and the hourly rate of mishaps for each class — which the Air Force measures per 100,000 flying hours — also declined.

Aviation-related deaths in fiscal 2019 dropped to just two, which equaled fiscal 2011 for the lowest number of aviation fatalities in Air Force history. Capt. John Graziano, an instructor pilot, died Nov. 13, 2018, when his T-38 suffered a compressor stall and crashed at Laughlin Air Force Base, Texas. And Staff Sgt. Adam Erickson, a survival, evasion, resistance and escape airman from Edwards Air Force Base in California, died during a parachute training accident Sept. 10.

The number of manned aircraft destroyed dropped to three (with another three unmanned aircraft also lost). That’s the second-lowest number of manned aircraft destroyed in a year.

Rauch said the decline in destroyed aircraft couldn’t be tied to anything specific, and he was reluctant to get into specifics on what the Air Force has done to improve mishap rates, citing the need to keep some safety information confidential and privileged.

But, as each year progresses, he said, the Safety Center keeps a sharp eye out for common factors across different mishaps that could suggest broader problems across the Air Force.

“Is there a trend across a mechanical issue?” Rauch said. “Is there something we’re doing operationally? Is there something else going on? All the way from human behavior to the operations tempo, to the mechanics of whatever platform you have, the structure, the engines — you’d look through all that.”

Trouble spots

Despite the progress, trouble spots remained in 2019. The Safety Center said Class A aviation mishap rates in 2019 were slightly higher than the service’s 10-year average, largely due to the rising costs of foreign object damage and advanced technology-related mishaps in newer air frames.

MISHAPS BY AIRFRAME IN FISCAL 2019

Class A through C mishaps in fiscal 2019 increased over the year before for fighter jets and A-10 attack jets, according to the mishap spreadsheet provided by the Safety Center, but most of those increases appear to have been of the Class C variety.

F-15 Class A through C mishaps increased from 61 in 2018 to 76 in 2019, and F-16 mishaps in those three classes likewise increased from 67 to 90. F-22 mishaps increased from 45 to 57, and F-35 mishaps increased from 17 to 20.

The four air frames’ mishap rates, per 100,000 flying hours, also increased — in the case of the F-22 and F-35, which saw marked declines in their flying hours, considerably so.

A-10 Class A through C mishaps also increased from 28 to 39, as did their rates of mishaps.

MILITARY TIMES REPORTS: AVIATION IN CRISIS

The Safety Center said a leading cause of those problem areas is the increasing technological advancements of some of the Air Force’s newer aircraft, which are proving more expensive and complicated to fix, such as when a bird strike or foreign object debris damages the aircraft.

For example, because the engine of an F-35 is much more complicated than the engine of an older F-16, a bird strike on the newer fighter could cost much more to repair — resulting in a potential Class B mishap instead of a Class C. Class B mishaps either cost between $500,000 and $2 million to repair, cause a permanent partial disability, or result in inpatient hospitalization of at least three personnel.

“If you have a bird strike on a fourth-generation fighter that just nicks a fan blade or two, you’ll end up with a certain level of damage,” Rauch said. “While if it happens on one of our fifth-generation fighters, it may drive it into the next higher class, just because the engine’s more expensive to start with — especially when the airplane’s first coming on.”

As the Air Force adds more F-35s to the fleet and as flight hours for fifth-generation fighters go up, including in combat, that trend could continue, he said.

It’s also common that repairs to new weapon systems are more expensive early on, then decline as maintainers figure out more efficient ways to repair them, Rauch said.

The Air Force increased the dollar amounts of its mishap classes beginning in fiscal 2020, so Class A’s begin at $2.5 million worth of damage, Class B’s begin at $600,000, Class C’s begin at $60,000, and Class D’s begin at $25,000. 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 2018 and another in November 2018 — in which the landing gear of F-22s collapsed while landing. Another Elmendorf F-22 had its engine stall and was shut down in-flight in April 2019, though it safely returned to base. Yet another F-22, at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia, had its engine damaged when it ingested low-observable coating material in-flight.

Air Combat Command — which has a significant portion of the Air Force’s fighter and attack fleet — said in a Feb. 19 email that it either saw no change or an increase of one for Class A or B mishaps between FY2018 and FY2019. The number of Class C mishaps for ACC’s A-10s increased by nine, to 22, and Class C’s for F-15s increased by 18, to 46. Command officials said most of the A-10 and F-15 mishaps were related to gun jams, environmental damage to external pods, and a slight increase in occupational injuries.

Class C mishaps dropped by nine for ACC’s F-16s and by four for its F-35s.

“Overall, these are small numbers when you consider the number of flight hours we execute on an annual basis,” wrote ACC spokeswoman Alexandria Worley in an email. “We will continue to work to identify potential mitigation options to bring these numbers back down to below average.”

Fighter aircraft accounted for 49 percent of all manned Class A and B mishaps in 2019, the Safety Center said — again, partly because the advanced technologies in the fifth-generation F-22 and F-35 aircraft mean more mishaps rise to that level.

Osprey issues

In October 2018, the first month of fiscal 2019, a CV-22B Osprey at Hurlburt Field, Florida, taxied into another Osprey on the ground. The rotor blades and rudder sections of the aircraft were damaged.

The Safety Center said V-22 Ospreys had the highest combined rate of Class A and B mishaps — 64.08 per 100,000 flight hours — largely due to its “Power by Hour” contract with Rolls Royce, which makes the Osprey’s engines and handles those repairs. 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.

“That may drive, what might have been a Class C mishap, if the engine replacement value is a Class B cost, then you’re paying that much to get a [replacement, overhauled] engine,” Rauch said.

In terms of Class C mishaps, the B-1 Lancer, F-22 Raptor and V-22 Osprey saw higher mishap rates than the rest of the Air Force’s fleet.

Although the F-16 Fighting Falcon, C-130 Hercules, C-135 variants and F-15 Eagles had the highest number of Class C mishaps, they had lower per-100,000-flying-hour rates because they flew much more frequently.

The Air Force’s most prominent fighters and mobility aircraft — the F-15, F-16, F-22, C-130, C-135 and C-17 — accounted for 63 percent of manned aviation Class C mishaps.

Class D mishaps — mostly arising from accidents on the ground — also declined from 913 to 738.

But a sharp increase in bird strikes helped drive a 58 percent increase in Class E mishaps, from 746 to 1,178. Bird strikes, which increased from 134 in 2018 to 391 in 2019, accounted for 33 percent of all manned Class E mishaps.

Rauch said the Safety Center hasn’t yet found anything in the data that might explain the bird strike increase, such as a spike at one particular location, but will continue studying the incidents.

One Class E mishap, which occurred last June 26 and involved an F-15, was categorized as a “Dull Sword” incident. These incidents involve “a nuclear safety or nuclear surety deficiency involving mishaps not falling into the accident or incident categories,” but meeting several other criteria, according to Air Force regulations.

According to the database provided by the Air Force, a pylon on the F-15 was jettisoned and damaged during an operations check on the ground. No one was injured, and the aircraft itself was not damaged. And a nuclear weapon was not involved in this mishap.

But because the pylon in this case was nuclear-certified equipment, Safety Center spokesman Keith Wright said, so it was categorized as a Dull Sword.

“Although the unit was not performing nuclear operations, the equipment is used in both conventional and nuclear operations and therefore still requires reporting for data collection,” Wright said.

The Dull Sword incident involved the 4th Fighter Wing, which is based at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina, though the database did not say specifically where this incident took place.