Posted on Aug 10, 2022
"Top-down incompetence": Investigating military vehicle training deaths
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Lesley Stahl speaks with parents of service members killed in training, and reports on why so many vehicle training accidents occur in the U.S. armed forces.
"Top-down incompetence": Investigating military vehicle training deaths
Posted from cbsnews.com
Vehicle
Training
Death
Leadership
Edited 2 y ago
Posted 2 y ago
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Leadership and training matters -- but where is the emphasis on leadership and training put right now? -- should be shooting, moving, and communicating; or are the recruiting advertisements more accurate?
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Hmmm.... we have a guy who figured out that you can use Google to find every mention of a couple of keywords and magically make something of it. Guess what? A rollover is dangerous in ANY vehicle. Try googling "rollover" and "Ford" or "rollover" and "Dodge" or any other make. So yes if you google "rollover" and "military" you will find that there is something you can call a problem. Yes, rollovers are dangerous -- they are also rare despite Google's ability to find every mention of any rollover since WWI.
The pieces cherry-picked from the GAO report are even more misleading...
Everyone in the military knows we are more likely to be killed in some sort of accident than in combat. One of the standard dark jokes about just about any conflict from Vietnam to today has been that the deadliest weapon in each conflict has been the 5-ton cargo truck (that joke isn't generally true, but it comes close).
3753 non-combat motor vehicle accidents of all kinds over a 10 year period sounds like a lot -- unless you consider how many vehicles the military has, how many miles they are driven, and under what sorts of conditions.
123 deaths in non-combat motor vehicle accidents is a tragic number. Even one would be a tragic number, but recall that every one of those accidents was thoroughly investigated. I would bet long odds that the only thing common across most of those accidents was that someone did something they were not supposed to be doing (although that person often wasn't the one who died).
The hatchet job video says "two-thirds of which involved rollovers" making it sound like 2/3s of the accidents involved rollovers, when that they technically said is that 2/3s of the deaths were in accidents where a rollover occurred -- even if the death wasn't caused by the rollover.
'Shockingly most occurred on regular roads" -- what is shocking about the fact that most accidents occur where most driving happens or that rollovers are more common when vehicles are driving faster on roads?
Then we are all supposed to be horrified to learn that the military knows that training can be dangerous and that despite all the risk prevention processes in place, sometimes someone will die in training.
"Improper supervision" -- yes, that happens. "Drivers are poorly trained" yes, that happens too. Especially when you remember that every time any private does something wrong it is ALWAYS because he was poorly trained and improperly supervised.
Yes, there absolutely were mistakes made - at multiple levels - in the Marine Corps AAV training mishap. Several safety precautions that were well established were ignored or waived. Commanders at multiple levels either failed to report safety issues and readiness issues or were unaware of those issues because they relied on reports that were false or incomplete. Many of the problems that came together to create this tragedy really are endemic to the entire military. No junior officer wants to tell his boss "my unit isn't ready" -- and every company and battalion commander accepts and endorses readiness reports that they know came from those junior officers who aren't reporting problems. Meanwhile many of our NCOs don't really know what "right" would look like because they have never seen any equipment that didn't have something wrong.
Gotta love the videos provide by a would-be defense contractor who wants to sell their "solution"
The pieces cherry-picked from the GAO report are even more misleading...
Everyone in the military knows we are more likely to be killed in some sort of accident than in combat. One of the standard dark jokes about just about any conflict from Vietnam to today has been that the deadliest weapon in each conflict has been the 5-ton cargo truck (that joke isn't generally true, but it comes close).
3753 non-combat motor vehicle accidents of all kinds over a 10 year period sounds like a lot -- unless you consider how many vehicles the military has, how many miles they are driven, and under what sorts of conditions.
123 deaths in non-combat motor vehicle accidents is a tragic number. Even one would be a tragic number, but recall that every one of those accidents was thoroughly investigated. I would bet long odds that the only thing common across most of those accidents was that someone did something they were not supposed to be doing (although that person often wasn't the one who died).
The hatchet job video says "two-thirds of which involved rollovers" making it sound like 2/3s of the accidents involved rollovers, when that they technically said is that 2/3s of the deaths were in accidents where a rollover occurred -- even if the death wasn't caused by the rollover.
'Shockingly most occurred on regular roads" -- what is shocking about the fact that most accidents occur where most driving happens or that rollovers are more common when vehicles are driving faster on roads?
Then we are all supposed to be horrified to learn that the military knows that training can be dangerous and that despite all the risk prevention processes in place, sometimes someone will die in training.
"Improper supervision" -- yes, that happens. "Drivers are poorly trained" yes, that happens too. Especially when you remember that every time any private does something wrong it is ALWAYS because he was poorly trained and improperly supervised.
Yes, there absolutely were mistakes made - at multiple levels - in the Marine Corps AAV training mishap. Several safety precautions that were well established were ignored or waived. Commanders at multiple levels either failed to report safety issues and readiness issues or were unaware of those issues because they relied on reports that were false or incomplete. Many of the problems that came together to create this tragedy really are endemic to the entire military. No junior officer wants to tell his boss "my unit isn't ready" -- and every company and battalion commander accepts and endorses readiness reports that they know came from those junior officers who aren't reporting problems. Meanwhile many of our NCOs don't really know what "right" would look like because they have never seen any equipment that didn't have something wrong.
Gotta love the videos provide by a would-be defense contractor who wants to sell their "solution"
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MSG Thomas Currie
SFC Kelly Fuerhoff - Reducing accidents is obviously a good idea. But honestly I think we have done most of the reasonable things in that direction. For better or worse, nothing is going to stop stupid people from doing stupid things. I'd hate to count the number of dumb things I did in my younger days -- all of which turned out OK, some due to skill, some due to luck, but any of them could have gone the other way very easily.
The only change that might actually do some good is very risky because it would be so hard to implement properly. We need to find a way to temper that "Can Do" attitude by getting leaders at all levels to stop to ask "Should we" and to make it acceptable to say "wait a minute, we're not ready" without it being a career ender.
Our overall system is pretty good, but there are a lot of small spots that need tweaked and even more places that need to leave room for good judgement, but to make room for good judgement, people need to learn what is and isn't safe and need to know that it's ok to say when something is too risky.
The only change that might actually do some good is very risky because it would be so hard to implement properly. We need to find a way to temper that "Can Do" attitude by getting leaders at all levels to stop to ask "Should we" and to make it acceptable to say "wait a minute, we're not ready" without it being a career ender.
Our overall system is pretty good, but there are a lot of small spots that need tweaked and even more places that need to leave room for good judgement, but to make room for good judgement, people need to learn what is and isn't safe and need to know that it's ok to say when something is too risky.
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