Following the third Class A flight mishap in a week, the Air Boss—Commander, Naval Air Forces, Vice Admiral Kenneth Whitesell—ordered a safety pause for all naval aviation in June 2022. The pause theme, echoed in a video from Commander, Naval Air Force Atlantic, Rear Admiral John Meier, was the hard truth that naval aviation is not doing enough to reduce mishaps. If the Naval Aviation Enterprise (NAE) is exploring options to improve its safety trajectory, it could start by making the safety department head billet equal to the operations and maintenance officer billets, which traditionally are stepping stones to operational command.
In his video, Rear Admiral Meier said 100 percent of aviation ground mishaps and 85 percent of flight mishaps are the result of human error.1 He made a compelling case that naval aviation’s successes—and failures—are directly related to a squadron’s safety culture and the strength of the safety department head. Unfortunately, the current department head progression places more value on operations and maintenance than safety.
Safety department head typically is one of the jobs a lieutenant commander fills before assuming an operations or maintenance officer billet. Those latter two billets are ones lieutenant commanders want to be in when they receive their competitive fitness reports: If an officer is a #1, he or she is on the path to operational command. If a lieutenant commander gets the competitive fitness report as the safety officer, however, he or she is unlikely to screen for operational command. This disparity can be corrected by quantifying safety, sending high-caliber talent to the billet, and getting support from the NAE.
Quantifying safety compared to operations and maintenance may prove difficult, but it is not impossible. Flight hours flown, level upgrades completed, and maintenance actions performed are easily captured numbers, but there are also safety benchmarks that can be used to judge a safety officer’s performance. Command safety assessments, maintenance climate assessment surveys, defense organizational climate surveys, aviation culture workshops, Approach articles written, and numbers of hazard reports are some of the metrics a commanding officer can use to rate his or her officers. While mishaps of all types also should be included, merely counting mishaps is a poor way to measure performance, as it is a lagging indicator of something having gone wrong.
Squadron leaders must do their part by sending senior, highly competitive lieutenant commanders to the safety department. This billet can no longer be treated as an entry-level assignment. The NAE might even consider making the safety department head the billet an officer graduates to after operations or maintenance. An officer with a strong background in either operations or maintenance will have the experience and wisdom to make an excellent safety department head and a stellar candidate for operational command.
Finally, Air Boss support of the change is vital, as it would signal to the NAE and command screen boards that the squadron safety department head is as important as operations and maintenance. The Air Boss has the power to strengthen squadron safety culture simply by openly giving his support.
There are surely other actions that could enhance safety, but this change is relatively uncomplicated and could be executed internally. If naval aviation wants to change the safety glideslope, increasing the value placed on the safety department head position and supporting a path to operational command via a competitive #1 fitness report for the safety officer is one way to achieve that.
1. RADM John Meier, USN, “CNAL Safety Stand Down Video,” Navalsafetycommand.navy.mil, 12 June 2022.