Originally Posted by
typerated
In fact could you even argue that the safety bar is set too high - perhaps we should step back towards the WW2 model - aircraft don't have to be perfect or last forever - just able to be built in large numbers and do the job
I say this with respect to competition with China - I think China might have a more pragmatic view on aviation safety – if we don't change the way we think on so many things I’m sure we will be swamped!
But what about the people flying them? - well aviation has never been risk free - especially Military Aviation!
I often fly an aircraft with a wooden spar - a few have come unglued when loaded - so you could argue there is no safety case (the aircraft has had a glue check but it is not 100% guaranteed!).
I just fly it nice and gently - and also understanding that there is a chance it might fail...
1. WW2 military aircraft were regulated to the standards of the time. I flew an aircraft designed back then but that entered service shortly after the war. Between V1 and Safety Speed (below which control could not be assured following loss of the critical engine) action in the event of an engine failure was 'at the pilot's discretion'. Or in other words, you're on your own chum. That was the state of the art back then. As you say, there was a war on, and the casualty lists were long and made grim reading.
2 So your solution is to produce large numbers of knowingly unairworthy aircraft, and accept the consequential fatal accidents. How are you going to afford producing such a large number of knowingly unairworthy aircraft? How are you going to man them?
3 If the performance envelope is compromised by such unairworthiness, you will operate the aircraft with that in mind (as per your wooden spar). Is that how you will train for war? Is that how you will go to war?
4 The apologists continually love telling us that war is dangerous, aviation is dangerous, so if unairworthiness is dangerous it makes little difference. You kick the tyres, light the fires, and think of good old blighty. Good for you, but others might demure.
War isn't about dying heroically, it is about winning. To do that you must out perform the enemy. Do you think that the PLAAF's VSOs will be content with being 'pragmatic about aviation safety' if their aircraft are unlikely to reach their targets let alone destroy them? No doubt quantity has a quality of its own, but if you are likely to lose the means of controlling your aircraft, if it has a tendency to spontaneously explode following AAR, is prone to mid air collisions due to illegally fitted HISLs that have to be switched off when they blind the pilot thus making the aircraft invisible to other closing aircraft, if you have no effective fuel tank protection meaning a tracer round from an AK47 could bring you down, are fitted with an IFF lacking failure warning meaning that your own side can save the enemy the bother of destroying you, it will be the opposition celebrating success not you.
To my mind the PLAAF leadership would want to assure themselves of success, and not be pragmatic about failing to succeed. The RAF/RN leadership on the other hand seem far more attuned to your way of thinking though in being pragmatic about aviation safety as the fatal aircraft accidents that I listed were their aircraft! They were put into service often against the advice of those engineers who said they were unairworthy. The resultant accidents were predictable and predicted. We are now minus that operational capacity and tragically so many highly trained and experienced lives. The various enemies involved had very little input to make at all...