I just saw this story on the TV.. .. .Irrespective of the current legality of the Courts Martial, this particular development has the potential to drive yet another nail into the coffin of open and honest reporting in flight safety incidents and accidents.. .. .I had been hoping that the old system of apportioning blame in military aviation accidents really was a thing of the past. The Chinook enquiry ruling was a particularly encouraging development which seemed to send out a message which supports the military's current stance: that is, in short, to find out the causes and learn as much about technical and human failings from incidents without directly apportioning blame, so as to avoid a recurrence of the incident.. .. .Some of the old-school will argue that there will always be cases where individuals do act maliciously or neglect their duty to a gross degree. But I firmly maintain that finding out the reasons behind the failings without going on witch-hunts is the only way forward. How many HFORs will be recieved from ATCOs following this, I wonder?. .. .This fatal accident, like any other fatal accident is most distressing. But I have no doubt there will be many other professional pilots out there who are wondering why someone is trying to hang the ATCO involved. He or she was not flying the aircraft, and I don't need to spell out what the various radar service "contracts" do and do not include.. .. .There are those of you who may think that we hug too many trees in this PC era we now work in. In many apsects of our modern working society, I agree. But the only way we can now improve flight safety further and reduce these terrible accident statistics is by learning and analysing where we are making human errors.. .. .Unless we stop trying to make scapegoats out of those who visibly make mistakes (and I speak in general terms here), then we will never foster an open and honest attitude to flight safety reporting within the military; the mistakes which aviators make which we actually get to hear about will remain the tip of the iceberg.