"Personally I could never understand that anyone might, for example, think parachutes for military aircrew a bad idea"
This is the problem with some of you who have insufficient intellect to see the bigger picture.
You seem to think that :
Parachutes save lives thus are a good idea therefore all things that that make life safer are worth doing.
I will give you an example.
Formula 1 cars have an amazing role cage that saves lives during spectacular crashes. We could fit the pilot seat with this role cage in every helicopter.
Why stop there?
Lets fit every passenger seat in every aircraft in the world with one of these role cages.
It would save lots of lives would it not?
But it would still be retarded because the aircraft could never take off/cost too much etc
It is a bit like Unionisation.
The early unions were desperately needed to curb the worst excesses of employers.
They appeared, and everything was better, hurrah!
This was good, but then surely ever more power to the unions was even better then?
No, we saw the result in the seventies.
The fifties were the equivalent for flight safety.
Flight safety appeared, and many lives were saved for very little effort, cost and operational effectiveness was increased Hurrah!
It was desparately needed, but I think we are right in the middle of the winter of discontent for flight safety at the moment, ie barely producing any output at vast expense.
Sorry to post the same pic again, but take a good long look at it.
It plainly shows, that all the easy safety gains were made in the early days. The law of diminishing returns has held sway for decades, and every new flight safety regime has
only two impacts.
No statistically valid improvement in safety per flying hour (the only valid metric) and
vastly increased costs and
reduced operational effectiveness.
Despite all the changes in airworthiness, flight safety and quality of equipment, the money spent and the courses taken, nothing has changed whatsoever in terms of deaths per flying hour in 30yrs.
In any other business, a totally ineffective organisation would be binnned rather than have it's powers increased.
The cost of military aviation keeps spiralling upwards, and a large part of this is the ever more stringent requirement to be "safe"
The number of aircrew who die in peacetime is
absolutely negligible, however the number who die in war, and more particular the losing side in a war is
huge.
I reiterate.
I think that many on here lack the intellect to see the big picture.
The purpose of a military is to win wars. If you are not going to see the big picture when you do the "what saves lives" calculation, ie take into account the lives lost in wartime as well as peacetime then you are too stupid to be allowed near the process.
Every slight edge in operational capability eroded by the requirement for crashworthy/bulletproof seats etc may save a few lives here and there in peacetime, but the wartime reduction in carrying capacity is far more difficult to calculate.
Many of the people who make these decisions are too stupid/uneducated to understand the consequences of their decisions.
For example.
They declare that a new aircraft type must have armoured seats for the pilots. Sounds like a reasonable idea in principle?
However, because of the added weight, the aircraft now has half the endurance, so must now climb/descend through the threat zone twice as often.
Still a good idea?
So we have halved the endurance for no real benefit, but it is "safe" so must be a good idea.
Another example.
A new aircraft is grounded and delayed getting its RTS because for various reasons the i's have not all been dotted.
Seems like a good idea?
What if the aircraft has been flying around the world in similiar guises for 40 yrs and nobody involved in the process has any expectation that any problems will be uncovered and the crew have all been trained an increasing number of months earlier and become more uncurrent losing their perishable new skills every day that it drags on. Eventually they will fly as far less competent pilots during those relatively dangerous early days.
Still a good idea?
I could go on ad infinitum with similar examples showing a total lack of big picture from those involved.
I would fully support a return to the original idea of flight safety.
To INCREASE OPERATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS by reducing silly deaths.
It may be terrible to say it out loud, but if we did not have a few deaths every now and then, then it would be a sign that we are too risk averse and not stretching our operational limits enough.