Unqualified F-35 Pilot At the Controls During Utah National Guard Apache Crash

[ClearedHot]

Unqualified F-35 Pilot At the Controls During Utah National Guard Apache Crash, Investigation Reveals

The helicopter was piloted by a colonel in the Air Force Reserve who was not qualified to fly the aircraft. The colonel, an F-35 fighter jet pilot, had only 35 minutes of experience in an Apache simulator before taking control of the real helicopter for a 90-minute flight.

 

[guineapigfury]

[Lawman]

This is not abnormal except for the part where he crashed attempting a landing.

We routinely fly Brigade O6 commanders and GOs and even conduct gunnery with them.

This was a failure on the part of the LtCol for trying to prove something and more the W5 being dumb enough to not call it off.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[hindsight2020]

Ti's jUst mY mOdeRhUd bRO! 😅

 

[HuggyU2]

Obviously, I don't know all of the facts, but this appears to fall squarely on the shoulders of the Army pilot who was PIC.  

We give a ton of orientation flights in the U-2 and T-38, and if we were to allow the guest flyers to exceed our capabilities to keep the aircraft safe, that's on us.  

What was the O-6's billet in the F-35 world?  

[uhhello]

33 minutes ago, Lawman said:

This is not abnormal except for the part where he crashed attempting a landing.

We routinely fly Brigade O6 commanders and GOs and even conduct gunnery with them.

This was a failure on the part of the LtCol for trying to prove something and more the W5 being dumb enough to not call it off.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My favorite part of fam flights with fixed wing guys was with them shaking the cyclic to pass off controls....

[Biff_T]

I used to let fixed wing O-6s fly but I would not let them land without me being "on the controls".   Kinda like when you first "land" a Cessna.    

PIC should have done better.   No need to investigate.   For real.  

[brabus]

Clickbait - 100% on the PIC. I’ve let many “unqualified” people fly an F-16, would have been 100% my fault if they had done something that resulted in a class ____.

[Lawman]

My favorite part of fam flights with fixed wing guys was with them shaking the cyclic to pass off controls....

Danger here (and a big reason why we put guests in the front) is the controls can be decoupled from the mechanical tubes into an emergency fly-by-wire system in the case of a fight for the controls. You also can’t start the engines in the front.

The system is calibrated so that the back seater rolls their controls out first, but it’s not exactly something you can test outside of the torque settings of the mechanical roller decoupler. So even if he just froze up in the front it’s possible to take the aircraft mechanically away. I’m not aware of any instance though where that has saved an aircraft.


Even still, this is absolutely on the IP unless something insanely malicious occurred. I thought my opinion of the Utah Guard’s AH unit couldn’t get much worse, but somehow here we are…


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[uhhello]

8 hours ago, Lawman said:

Danger here (and a big reason why we put guests in the front) is the controls can be decoupled from the mechanical tubes into an emergency fly-by-wire system in the case of a fight for the controls. You also can’t start the engines in the front.

The system is calibrated so that the back seater rolls their controls out first, but it’s not exactly something you can test outside of the torque settings of the mechanical roller decoupler. So even if he just froze up in the front it’s possible to take the aircraft mechanically away. I’m not aware of any instance though where that has saved an aircraft.


Even still, this is absolutely on the IP unless something insanely malicious occurred. I thought my opinion of the Utah Guard’s AH unit couldn’t get much worse, but somehow here we are…


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Wonder if the AH-64 hour(s) will show up on the good Col's bio

[Biff_T]

3 minutes ago, uhhello said:

Wonder if the AH-64 hour(s) will show up on the good Col's bio

AH-64 1.69 hours.

1 Takeoff, 0 Landings 

[disgruntledemployee]

30 minutes ago, Biff_T said:

AH-64 1.69 hours.

1 Takeoff, 0 Landings 

Don't forget the sim time.

[Chicken]

On 9/2/2024 at 3:47 PM, HuggyU2 said:

Obviously, I don't know all of the facts, but this appears to fall squarely on the shoulders of the Army pilot who was PIC.  

We give a ton of orientation flights in the U-2 and T-38, and if we were to allow the guest flyers to exceed our capabilities to keep the aircraft safe, that's on us.  

What was the O-6's billet in the F-35 world?  

Sometimes leadership pushes for folks to be allowed to do things.  I agree..it's on the crew member ultimately but there is always pressure from somewhere.  I remember when ole Bob Otto allowed a NAF CC on his sunset tour a high flight and he ended up smacking the flap on landing.  The NAF CC skipped almost all of the requirements and there was pushback from the Sq CC and Group CC which was met with shut up and color.

Edited September 4 by Chicken

[Polar Bear]

On 9/2/2024 at 11:22 PM, Lawman said:

Danger here (and a big reason why we put guests in the front) is the controls can be decoupled from the mechanical tubes into an emergency fly-by-wire system in the case of a fight for the controls. You also can’t start the engines in the front.

The system is calibrated so that the back seater rolls their controls out first, but it’s not exactly something you can test outside of the torque settings of the mechanical roller decoupler. So even if he just froze up in the front it’s possible to take the aircraft mechanically away. I’m not aware of any instance though where that has saved an aircraft.


Even still, this is absolutely on the IP unless something insanely malicious occurred. I thought my opinion of the Utah Guard’s AH unit couldn’t get much worse, but somehow here we are…


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Would like to hear your thoughts on why you dislike the Utah AH unit. Over on the Army Aviation version of this they have a high rating.

[Lawman]

Would like to hear your thoughts on why you dislike the Utah AH unit. Over on the Army Aviation version of this they have a high rating.

That unit was so on its ass in maintenance to spool up for a deployment we gave them an entire active duty battalions aircraft out of Forscom so they could go. While on said deployment they had not 1 but 2 inadvertent fuel starvation flameouts (idiots doing idiot stuff) a long with a host of bungling across RC North. This is the unit that tries to sell its self as something special for doing all the quick reaction testing when really that’s a 2 aircraft every couple years requirement to fly canned test scenarios. They don’t deploy often enough and when they do it’s largely a series of small disasters. We should have changed them over to Hawks and kept Idaho or Penn.

Yet somehow because of the strength of the guard through its senators that unit is getting brand new EV6 aircraft before active duty units that are deploying with D’s. That last part isn’t unique to them either, for some reason we’re going to let an active Army divisions have their supporting aviation brigades use a lot of old airframes while we upgrade the guard with virtually no deployments on its calendar (the CENTCOM E-Cab always uses an active duty Apache Battalion) to the newest E’s rather than give them the old stuff they are already qualified in. There are anemic D models still flying at Carson and Bliss while these guys pretend to do high altitude gunnery in easier conditions. And one of them that could have been had just burned it in giving an F-35 guy a tour of how the other half lives.

Way to go Utah… but again no surprises.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Polar Bear]

2 hours ago, Lawman said:

That unit was so on its ass in maintenance to spool up for a deployment we gave them an entire active duty battalions aircraft out of Forscom so they could go. While on said deployment they had not 1 but 2 inadvertent fuel starvation flameouts (idiots doing idiot stuff) a long with a host of bungling across RC North. This is the unit that tries to sell its self as something special for doing all the quick reaction testing when really that’s a 2 aircraft every couple years requirement to fly canned test scenarios. They don’t deploy often enough and when they do it’s largely a series of small disasters. We should have changed them over to Hawks and kept Idaho or Penn.

Yet somehow because of the strength of the guard through its senators that unit is getting brand new EV6 aircraft before active duty units that are deploying with D’s. That last part isn’t unique to them either, for some reason we’re going to let an active Army divisions have their supporting aviation brigades use a lot of old airframes while we upgrade the guard with virtually no deployments on its calendar (the CENTCOM E-Cab always uses an active duty Apache Battalion) to the newest E’s rather than give them the old stuff they are already qualified in. There are anemic D models still flying at Carson and Bliss while these guys pretend to do high altitude gunnery in easier conditions. And one of them that could have been had just burned it in giving an F-35 guy a tour of how the other half lives.

Way to go Utah… but again no surprises.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Wow, good info. Was that the 2011 or 2020 deployment? I didn’t think any of the Apache guard units deployed much.

Do the other guard units have a better reputation?

Edited October 29 by Polar Bear

[Lawman]

Wow, good info. Was that the 2011 or 2020 deployment? I didn’t think any of the Apache guard units deployed much.
Do the other guard units have a better reputation?

A lot of that was the 12-13 that they were technically aligned with us.
Their 2020 “deployment” wasn’t really anything to say other than it was Covid and we were all doing weird stuff. Go sit in a place so they can say they have Apaches there. We’ve been doing that in CENTCOM for half a decade now. Not really tip of the spear for that.

I went through flight school with a half a dozen guys out of that unit well before the wars had been turned down from boil. I think all of them combined have less combat time than any of the active guys in the same class. They just have some seriously old farts in that unit that refuse to go find another job. That said it’s sad to see some 30 year CW5 with all of 3 combat stripes on his sleeve.

As I’ve said to a lot of peers in the Air Force Active/Reserve/Guard, the Army has a very different relationship with those entities especially now that we’ve gone back to the Divisional model. An aviation brigade exists to back its specific division because depending on type they fight very differently. Army Guard aviation is supposed to be a harvest point for bodies and aircraft to us to feed the machine, but when we actually try to do that it’s screaming about their organic make up.If they ever deployed a guard division we might give a crap, until then put some aviation dude on mobilization like we do all the other branches (engineering, med, etc). Until then they can shut up and stop pretending, I don’t ever and will never need an organic battalion of guard guys at the cost of having an active unit undermanned. But hey, when it’s time for the big fight the Guard staying home means we can’t be tracked by our link16… because 10th mountain won’t have any.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk