Even peace time is dangerous for those it the military.
Very true. With such a large military, there’s plenty of opportunity for accidents. But is it just me, or do we seem to be having more of them lately?
One similarity between the Charlottesville helicopter crash (its second on record) and many military accidents – including such communications breakdowns as the one that led to the US strafing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan – seems to be a willful neglect of known maintenance issues. State police and the Pentagon alike always want more funding and they always want new equipment. And they are always making the case that denying them is gravely dangerous. This may be so, but I wonder if it isn’t a self-fulfilling prophecy. Is there something here that we can compare to the spike in broken smartphones every time a new model is released? Are agencies putting budget and acquisitions ahead of routine maintenance, to the risk of service members and police officers? Have training standards dropped, or do supervisors simply have too much on their plate to make sure that support crews are doing their due diligence?
One thing the Soviets and guerrilla outfits have taught us again and again is that one can stretch his resources incredibly far when he places a priority on working with what he has. Maybe we would have more success against underfunded opposition, and forestall more senseless accidents, if brass were not always keeping one eye on the next model, gingerly dangling their outmoded materiel over the toilet. The relative rarity of accidents goes to show that protocol works when it’s followed.
Once said of helicopters: They have all the aerodynamic properties of a rock.