Originally Posted by
Just This Once...
Lonewolf, your tone and manner does not help in promoting your argument.
I am going to tell you this again: blaming this on the IP being an E-2 pilot is a red herring.
and undertook just 4 low level sorties in benign terrain during his IUT, becoming an IP in that role in more challenging terrain
Indeed a systemic issue: that has to do with IP training, not what aircraft he flew in the fleet. Your FJ bias is obvious in your posts. It is as present in the USN (within aviator culture) as it appears to be on your side of the pond.
Rather than blame the IP on his background, the core issue is: was the IUT implemented well, correctly, and was the follow up present? The report argues that the answers are not positive: there were holes a-plenty in that block of swiss cheese. The Navy assigns the IPs they have to where they go, and it's been long practice to assign E-2 pilots to T-45 squadrons, and for about 35 years we have had EA-6B pilots in VT squadrons as well: T-2, A-4, T-45. But wait, you will now protest, all they do is fly around beaming EW rays, they don't do low level attack in the fleet! (The occasional Italian cable car excepted) Gee, the funny old truth is that EA-6B pilots aren't constrained in effectiveness as IPs due to fleet platform either.
It is up to the training establishment to ensure that the IP meets standards before taking the first student event. The other problem of pilot overconfidence in own abilities is not confined to E-2 pilots. (Shoreham Air Show, not so long ago, for one example among hundreds).
I have a different ax to grind with the Navy over the T-45 syllabus in particular, which is that when you keep cutting the number of hours and events in a syllabus that was rationally designed through the ISD method, to replace the two phase T-2 to A-4 jet syllabus, and that had already had a "cut 10% because it's cheaper" (Rumsfeld era), and following that came the annual efforts to trim a hop here and a hop there, that attitude (which comes from a bit higher in the Nav than CNATRA, but is sometimes found in that HQ as well) begins to have an impact on the internal culture where "how little can we get away with doing" becomes far too common of a thought process. It takes someone to now and again stand up and raise a BS flag (which is not infrequently career suicide).
I note that the report fails to address that cultural problem, at all. This kind of systemic pressure gets hidden far too often, or is not addressed, and even gets edited out of formal reports during the drafting stages.
1. Please pardon me if I don't hold the report as a holy writ.
2. Blaming the pilot's fleet platform is quite simply bull****.
Your experience as a Hawk pilot is respected. You know how the Hawk flies.
Your post
Remarkable that a USN pilot can join, train, fly orbits on the E-2C for his first 3-year tour, get posted as a fast jet instructor before wiping himself and his student out. Only now do they wonder if the instructor was even qualified on the T-45C.
is complete bull****.