It's one thing to hit brown/ white-out situations at new unfamiliar LZs during a life or death mission or other mitigating circumstance. Unless landing on clean concrete, looking out for the first signs of an impending crap storm is part of our pre-landing mental gymnastics....or should be. My exposure to years of training exercises sometimes make me wonder why the term " training accident" is more common than one would think. Isn't the purpose of training to go slow, evaluate conditions, adjust operation accordingly and communicate before, during and after operations? Then review and discuss what went right, what was unexpected and what could be improved. People talk about pilots having to make split second decisions but this seemed to go on and on and then on some more with no adjustment of plan. I hope these guys go on the circuit and explain how they spent a huge amount of taxpayer cash and that they now see that during a training exercise, discretion is always the better part of valor.
It's possible that back in 2000 more or better training would have prevented an H60 from rolling down the side of Mt. Shasta from 12K due to rapid loss of reference but at least they were trying to get to someone in need. Training is the time for things to go smoothly, not just go out and follow the plan profile and for someone in a command position to say " stop now".