25 year old pilot with 500 hours in his log book who is lucky to clock 100 hours a year had plenty of sleep the night before and that the apprentice RAAF engineer that signed off on the aircraft after a big night on the turps did his job properly.
VH-XXX
VIs post is accurate, if a little arrogant in that last line. Risk management is conducted broardly throughout the organisation and specifically for each sortie. Every person and every machine can stuff up as you have stated, the RAAF is not immune. I must say the RAAF is much better at this sort of thing than the air arms of the other two services.
The Roulettes are picked from the CFS and average 4000 hours (a lot for an RAAF Pilot). Maintenence of RAAF aircraft is conducted by both civil and RAAF personel and is very thorough, although RAAF aircraft rarely meet civil airworthyness standards.
For riverfire they would have developed a standard set of "actions on" SOPs for various possible emergencies and practiced them ad nauseum both in the sim and in the air (probably hundreds of hours). They do this so that if there is a terminal emergency of some kind they can take such action so as to ensure nil/min loss of life or damage to property. Tey also adjust the flight profile to ensure that such options will exist. Natrually there are not many options when operating 200AGL, supersonic on TFR at night, hence the high loss rate.
So yes, it is still a risk, but in my opinion it is a well managed one. Personally I am glad they can still do this sort of thing. I wish I could be there
