All this criticism is just so well founded.
Hands up all the Black Hawk pilots???
Hands up all those who still think it was vortex ring???
Hands up all those who still think power does not overcome gravity???
I am positive someone some one here was about to mention LTE....
Alongside the death of a highly skilled professional soldier, this accident also resulted in the death of a fine aviator, trained by one of the better training organisations in the world. Wouldn't it be helpful to debate the accident causes so that there may be some lessons we can take home to protect us from the same fate?
The personal attacks on attitudes and actions are misplaced and emotive. IMHO. The "big cheese" was one of my instructors, and a man I looked up to then and continue to admire now. The criticisms mentioned in this thread are entirely inconsistent with the 18 years I have known him - 2 of which were spent as one of his direct subordinates.
On the "cowboy report", is it public? I have not found it anywhere beyond these incredibly convenient and emotive "cowboy" quotes everyone seems to be latched onto. Does anyone have the report? What is the context of the comments? What was the report terms of reference, and who was the expert who compiled the report?
That said, I do believe another strong debate that we need to open up is how realistic does war role training need to be? It is said that a sword needs to be kept sharp to be useful in combat: these fine men died keeping that sword sharp and I respect the fact that they lost their lives serving Australia.
How sharp and how many cuts are acceptable to keep it that way? This question will have a direct bearing on acceptable attitudes and can-do cultures that perhaps we NEED to have in certain combat arms. The level of acceptability will always be highly divisive, but that is the reason to keep having the debate: that we may find a cultural acceptable level of risk V readiness. Whilst we search for that line, I believe such emotive criticism of the current practitioners as expressed in this thread is unreasonable, and should be / could be kept out of the debate.