BOI into the 2012 Tornado Collision over the Moray Firth
 

Does anyone know if the BOI has announced its findings with the regards to the collision of two Tornados over the Moray Firth last June?

Distant Voice

I'm told the "enquiry" part is finished and the Board are now finalising the findings.

Thank god this was just a question about the BOI. My heart sank when I saw the title - any chance it could be amended please.

Thanks

Tornado Collision over Moray Firth
 

Stimulator. I second that notion!
Also, being out of the country I am somewhat out of the loop with things like this. How is the surviving crew member? I have heard little about him since the crash. Hopefully he can/has come through it in reasonable health.
BV

Sorry Stimulator, but I am not sure how to change the thread title. I have tried. What is important is the cause of the accident. Was cost cutting a contributing factor? ie lack of TCAS.

DV

Technology does not save us from everything.......I was flying that day and was split by the pair as they left Skye....

TCAS might have warned.....

But procedure should be the first port of call....RIP gentlemen, I heard your PLB's on the net.....sobering

Tornado Collision over Moray Firth
 

Distant voice.
Cost cutting would be a harsh statement. The Tornado has never had TCAS so it is hardly a cost cut. TCAS in FJs can be useful but not perfect.
I do not wish to enter into a huge debate on the matter though due to the sensitive subject matter.
Two people I knew died that day along with another of their colleagues. Hopefully the fourth member is on the road to recovery.
Lets not form the basis of a tabloid story by pointing the finger before the report has been published.
BV

I must admit I was hoping, I'm sure everyone will understand, that the thread title referred to the incident last year.

FB

Would also like news of the surviving crew member, if not inappropriate to ask.

Can a moderator change the title? I thought there had been another one!

I attended the 1 year memorial service up in Lossie a few weeks ago. The church at Lossie was packed to the rafters, which was superb to see. The surviving crew member was present and looked well. XV(R) Sqn have had a cairn constructed overlooking the Moray Firth in memory of those lost that fateful afternoon.

Cairn is dedicated to the memory of RAF Lossiemouth airmen | insideMoray

The first annual groundcrew Vs aircrew football match was played a few days afterwards too, it was won by the groundcrew!

I also was worried there had been another one!!

Can people PLEASE think carefully about new thread titles? :ok:

Bob Viking, I do not consider that the cost cutting statement is too harsh, and yes I realise that TCAS has never been fitted to Tornado; that's the problem. Please read on.

Two years earlier, in June 2010, there was a Category A (just one step down from mid-air collision) near miss east of Roybridge, with visibility at 50 km. One of the pilots reported that he was unaware of the proximity of the other jet above them until it was first seen in the pilot’s rear view mirrors as they turned. The small cross-sectional area of a grey GR4, head on, with no crossing motion “masked it’s [the other aircraft] presence until the last moment” The Airprox report, produced jointly by the CAA and the military concluded;

“TCAS or another form of cooperative CWS (Collision Warning System) would undoubtedly have helped to improve Situation Awareness and aid an earlier visual acquisition. Work is in progress to equip the Tornado GR4 with a CWS”

The Airprox comment leads one to believe that CWS/TCAS recommendations go back to earlier incidents, and that work is in hand to address the equipment deficiency. However, 18 months later in February 2012, and after several other incidents, another near miss took place, this time in the Moray Firth area, between a Tornado GR4 and a S92 helicopter. On this occasion the Airprox report states;

“Fitment of TCAS to the Tornado fleet is still under consideration but it is not yet funded, and it is very likely it would have increased the Tornado crew’s Situation Awareness on the S92”

In fact TCAS had been “under consideration” since 1999, when in January of that year a Tornado GR1 (prior to GR4 upgrade) collided with a civilian Cessna. All four people involved in the accident were killed. The MoD accident summary stated;

“The TCSI [Tornado Combined Safety Investigation] recommended that a Collision Warning System (CWS) for all military and civilian aircraft operating below 2000 feet be pursued with all possible haste.”

But, despite the Haddon-Cave report and the formation of the new MAA very little has changed with regards to aircraft safety and airworthiness. In the Tornado’s case we have gone backwards in two years from “Work in progress” to “under consideration but not yet funded”. Even if and when funding is approved how long will it take to modify the fleet? If we take the URGENT modification of the IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) system, following the Patriot incident in 2004, it could take six years. How many more lives will be lost in that time? In fact the ideal time to install TCAS into the Tornado would have been during the IFF modification programme, as the two systems are inter-linked, or better still during the GR1 upgrade in the early 2000s. The latter being the option outlined in the 1998 Strategic Defence Review;

“The Tornado GR4 squadrons will be given more logistic support to improve their deployability, as well as a new collision warning system early in the next century”

It seems ironic that the Chairman of the newly formed MAA Safety Advisory Committee, Air Marshal (Retired) Sir Colin Terry was Chief Engineer (RAF) from 1997 to 99 and must have been aware of the need for CWS to be installed in Tornado aircraft. And, considering that CWS needs were first addressed in 1990, following the collision two Tornado GR1s and three fatalities, it has to be assumed that his predecessor Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Alcock was also in the picture on the CWS issue. (Both officers are linked with the accidents and fatalities associated with Nimrod and Chinook). On this occasion (1990) the MoD accident summary stated;

“Technologies which provide electronic collision warning systems are being investigated”

In the end it appears to boil down to costs, but what are the costs associated with several lost lives, and lost aircraft. Cut backs on aircraft numbers and pilots are one thing, but cut backs on flight safety when there is a known problem is criminal. It is interesting to note that the following statement heads the first MAA Defence Air Safety Annual Report;



In a 2010 provisional assessment of strategic risks to Air Safety, DG MAA reported;

"Mid-air Collision - a risk during both routine flying operations and on OP HERRICK. Incremental mitigation of this chronic risk, which has a high 'societal concern' factor, has suffered protracted delays over successive PRs since the 1998 SDR. A 'Delete Tornado Collision Warning System' Option is being run in PR11 which would prejudice the Dept's ability to declare this risk ALARP".(PR11 being MoD’s Planning Round for 2011 - the annual budget review)

However, in the DG MAA Annual Report, dated 10 Aug 11, he reported;

"The reprieve of the Delete Tornado CWS PR11 Option is welcome, but there is likely to be more that could be done"

But is the "reprieve" just a paper exercise to give the impression that CWS for Tornado is still under consideration, and therefore the risk can be regarded as ALARP? From experience gained with Nimrod, as long as it can be demonstrated that progress was being made towards ALARP MOD regards everything to be OK. The bottom line is that 15 years have passed since the 1998 SDR, and nothing has been done.

The risk associated with the two Tornados involved in the Moray Firth accident in July was not ALARP. The risk associated with the whole Tornado fleet is not ALARP, and has never been ALARP since the mid-1990.

Ooooh! Distant LOUD Voice, methinks!

Bloggs!

PS. Would a Moderator please change the title and give the event a 2012 date or summat like that! It's rather too alarming in its present form!

It's never as simple as just fit GR4 with TCAS though. As GR4's fly around mostly in pairs, or more, sometimes in close formation, sometimes a couple of miles apart, the TCAS could be giving RA's so often on each other that the crews might become complacent and start to ignore them.

Is there a system whereby you could inhibit a specific response from a specific ac to prevent this? RA's from #2 could be inhibited to prevent nuisance alerts caused by formation manoeuvring.

Trouble is, that wouldn't have prevented the Moray accident, would it?

TCAS & fast-jets seem to be fairly incompatible to me, unless someone could explain how it would be used on a daily basis.

Who said TCAS wouldn't have prevented the accident?

Just another jockey

You could select TA only for pairs / multiple work and TA/RA for singleton if necessary. TCAS logic is becoming exceptionally clever - google 7.1.
The TCAS trg instills the bottom line that RAs MUST be followed and within specific timeframe (5s initial 2.5s follow on).

It's not a cure all but increases SA exponentially, and if its installation prevents one midair then its money well spent.

BOI into the 2012 Tornado collision... Seemed very obvious to me that the thread titled referred to a previous accident: 2012 being the clue.

Avtur, that's a recent edit to the title mate.

Thread title.
 

Avtur, you have come late to the party and not read/understood the original post.

What do we need TCAS for when we have CADS?! :E

Roger: If original thread title was as per post 4 then fully agree with previous comments.

Just a basic civi TCAS would give some help to any fast jet in certain circumstances. Good bespoke software and a sensible SOP could be very useful. However, it can never be a total panacea in military flying IMO.

Hands up all those who have flown FJs with TCAS. How many of you found you get over-saturated with TCAS alerts in normal training and wish you could turn it off?
In my experience it is a great SA tool when transiting around congested airspace, but it becomes a massive pain in the butt whenever you are doing any dynamic manoeuvring. Constant TCAS alerts from within your formation tend to cause you to become deaf to the system and ignore it at times. "Oh it's just no3 etc...)

There's still a way to go before it becomes truly useful in FJ ops in my opinion.

BOI into the 2012 Tornado Collision over the Moray Firth
 

LAL.
I have. The Hawk T2 and it can be precisely as you say. Every battle turn brings a TA which will then steal one of your MPDs. It also trips off at large angles of climb and bank triggering further avionics warnings (which will self reset but its still annoying!).
It proved useful on several occasions but my worry is the breeding of a blasé attitude to lookout. It is not a panacea in its current form.
As I said previously I'm not going to debate how it could have helped in the accident but I can at least talk from experience when the issue of TCAS in FJs is raised.

I feel the need to provide a bit of detail missing from Distant Voice's history of the 'CWS on Tornado' saga. It is not a simple question of funding for TCAS being delayed. At the very start of the programme, TCAS implementation was one of the options on the table, but the weaknesses of TCAS within the FJ operating context were considered to be excessive. In a decision which, in hindsight, seems utterly characteristic of its time, UK plc set out to develop a new FJ-optimised CWS. The aspiration was for this to be TCAS-compatible to 'standard' TCAS units; to other platforms equipped with the optimised unit it would be intelligent enough to ignore 'intentional' proximity such as crossover turns, tanker joins, visual combat etc. It would give warnings for 'unintentional' proximity - and, importantly, without requiring the aircrew to make any in-cockpit selections, so it could remain enabled throughout an entire sortie. A worthy ambition indeed, but one that proved to be pie in the sky, as any number of intra-formation near misses and actual collisions could have told the boffin dreamers. After all, what's the difference between a 'tally-visual' 1000ft pass, and a 'blind-no joy' bubble bust, other than a gnat's cock of pressure on the stick and about 0.01 seconds? By the time this concept was abandoned, years and years had passed; the decision to go with TCAS is comparatively recent in glacial DE&S terms. The regression from "work in progress" to "unfunded" broadly coincides with the abandonment of the CWS project; TCAS had to be funded anew because of its rejection within the earlier project.

And, of course, TCAS has its limitations in the FJ context, as identified all those years ago. I am quite concerned by the following statements from those currently operating the system on other platforms:
because these suggest that whoever handled the Concepts & Doctrine work for that system did a disservice to the users.

Consider GPWS for a minute. A great system, especially when IMC or when conducting dive attacks towards rising ground - but one that in certain (VMC!) FJ contexts, such as valley flying or OLF, can become a hindrance and a downright distraction. It has long been accepted practice, documented in ASOs, that if GPWS produces a high rate of false alarms it should be disabled until terrain or flight conditions allow it to be re-enabled. This is specifically to avoid breeding a culture of ignoring GPWS warnings. Why should similar logic not be applied to the use of TCAS?

Self-evidently, there are situations where having TCAS enabled is entirely inappropriate for the training being conducted - would we expect a formation being 'bounced' to receive TAs against the dastardly bounce dropping in from the high six? No - and given the choice of achieving this by having the bounce squawk standby, or having the formation running with TCAS in standby, the latter option is more palatable to external players (such as ATC and other TCAS-equipped aircraft) who would rather not have a singleton batting around semi-randomly whilst squawking standby.

To follow a line of argument once employed by W.S. Churchill, if we can agree on the example above, we have established a principle - and any further discussion is merely negotiation upon where to draw the line! So, should all members of a formation fly with TCAS enabled, and become inured to the frequent TAs? Should wingmen disable TCAS, relying upon their leader for timely traffic calls (the leader will just have to put up with the TAs)? Or should all members of formations engaged in tactical manoeuvring disable TCAS entirely, accepting that it was never designed to prevent collisions in such environments and that its implementation is intended merely to reduce, not remove, collision risk? All players could continue to squawk to give SA to TCAS-equipped 'strangers'. Even the airline world does not insist on TCAS being used on each and every flight - it can be carried U/S for up to 10 days (although I believe there are moves afoot to reduce this to 3 days... but the point still stands).

The examples quoted above say to me that the "R" in "ALARP" has been cast away in whatever SOPs are being applied on those platforms. Given the high profile of CWS amongst the hierarchy, it is understandable how timid staff officers could recommend blanket use of TCAS during all stages of flight; that doesn't excuse the laziness of thought. Those with responsibility for SOPs and regulations need to have the balls to say why the sub-optimal solution that is TCAS needs to be handled in a certain way in order to extract maximum value from it without hindering training. It is quite reasonable to recognise the limitations of the system as provided, and work around them without compromising the (un-changed) flying task.

Unlike the FJ CWS pipe-dream, TCAS was not designed with aggressive manouevring in Class G airspace in mind, and was certainly not designed to guarantee 100% collision avoidance. To use it with that aspiration in mind is to ignore its fundamental nature.

BOI into the 2012 Tornado Collision over the Moray Firth
 

Easy Street.
I'm not going to disagree with anything you've just written. Speaking as the ex UFSO from the T2 (trust me when i say this kind of thing was debated long and hard) I would just like to play devils advocate for a second. If you were the DDH would you want to be the one in court after a fatal mid air when it was pointed out that you willingly allowed crews to turn off a collision avoidance system? There are lengthy SOPs in force to counter the issues you have mentioned but a better system would be preferable.
Now if you want to debate the impact that the MAA has had on everyday operations then we should probably start another thread (or just contribute to one of the dozens already in existence).
BV

Maybe worth pointing out that RAF tankers have been using TCAS for a decade or so. SOP's include utilising different modes to reduce nuisance warnings during certain phases of operation, including formation. Part of the issue is to recognise when the TCAS is not providing a useful function and tailoring your use of it to suit the circumstance.
Easy Street, love that "boffin-dreamers"! Nearly as bad as the retired VSO in-the-loop problem when it comes to military procurement.:uhoh:

OAP

BV - MAA a self-licking lollipop??? Surely the reams of pointless staffwork and the generation of fabulously colour-coded risk matrices hasn't actually made day to day operations and training more difficult;)

BOI into the 2012 Tornado Collision over the Moray Firth
 

Crab.
I don't know what you're talking about. I, for one, love pointless paperwork and endless spreadsheets. It's the sort of thing I live for and just regret that flying so often gets in the way of my desk work.
Can you sense the sarcasm? I should also add that I have moved on from that role now so I don't really have the right to complain any more.
BV

Nothing can achieve that, but we can make flying safer. At present the risk associated with Tornado collision avoidance is not ALARP, and that is unacceptable. That is not my assessment, but that of DG MAA back in 2010.

DV

BV, Check PMs

BV:_
Well, at least you would have a reasonable case to put, as described by those who tells us that high dynamic maneuvering is a vital (and obvious) requirement of FJ training which would make CWS warnings continuous and superfluous. A rather different scenario to that of giving perjured evidence to Airworthiness Related Fatal Military Air Accident Inquests.

The Royal Air Force needs leaders that are prepared to stand up and be counted and not to shelter behind lies, deceit and the protection of the Star Chamber.

As to the MAA, it is a part of the problem and will remain so until it is independent and separated from the MOD. Ditto the MAAIB, which needs to be independent and separated from the MAA also.

Surviving crew member
 

Did you get any news on the surviving crew member? Does anyone know who he is? He's not named anywhere. I've just been up to Califer View Point and saw the Aim Sure XV Cairn in memory of Bailey, Sanders and Poole.

Plenty of us know him, but I don't think anyone's likely to name him here. He's doing very well, considering!

5F6B

Out of the loop these days but that is good to hear :ok:

Report
 

Angus Robertson: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will place in the Library a copy of the Board of Inquiry's findings into the collision of two Tornado jets on 3 July 2012 over the Moray Firth. [179565]

Mr Francois: The service inquiry into this accident is now complete and a copy of the report has been provided to the Procurator Fiscal, who determines whether a Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI) will be held and sets the date. A copy of the report will be placed in the Library of the House following either the completion of a FAI or the Procurator Fiscal's decision not to hold one.

Seems it's all done then?

Yup

Families were (apparently) briefed a couple of weeks ago.

Yes it is done, but MoD will not release the report to the general public until after the Scottish Fatal Accident Investigation. Why not? In the case of the BOI report into the loss of Nimrod XV230 it was released immediately, and some six months prior to the inquest. This gave time to ALL interested parties to digest the report and raise relevant questions at the inquest.

More of Angus Robertsons questions can be seen at;

BBC News - MP says Tornado crash FAI should consider warning system

Distant Voice

Nobody needs to name the surviving crew member on this forum - he is named in the BBC link above and was named back in Dec 12 by the BBC in a linked story.