Recent string of deadly military crashes is no accident

Less than two weeks ago, service members, veterans, and their families gathered together to mark Memorial Day. Flags waved above solemn ceremonies as Americans of all walks of life took a moment to remember those who have died fighting for the United States around the world.

Since then, three military aircraft have gone down, leaving at least five service members dead and two injured. But these tragedies didn’t happen over far-off battlefields. Instead, they came on routine training missions in Alabama and California.

This quick succession of crashes is rare, but deadly accidents involving U.S. military planes are anything but. In late 2020, Congress found that, in just six years, “mishaps” in training flights or routine missions killed 198 service members and civilians, destroyed 157 aircraft, and cost taxpayers $9.41 billion.

Two years after the congressional report, crashes are still happening with alarming frequency, leading many to wonder why this seemingly simple issue still plagues the world’s best-funded military. Experts who spoke with Responsible Statecraft had a simple answer: The epidemic of accidents is the result of a military budget geared more towards shiny, cutting-edge tech than the nuts and bolts of pilot safety.

“​​There’s big lobbies for big ticket systems,” said Bill Hartung of the Quincy Institute, “and there’s not the same kind of lobby for aviation safety.”

In order to understand why these crashes keep happening, it’s helpful to look back at the 2020 congressional report. Investigators recommended a series of common sense moves to fix the problem, including increased money for maintenance and spare parts as well as establishing an oversight board for aviation safety at the Pentagon. They also suggested that crashes were happening because pilots were simply not flying often enough and recommended that they get more hours in.

Yet Dan Grazier, a defense expert at the Project on Government Oversight, says the Pentagon is “largely at the same place” as it was when the report came out. According to Defense One, an oversight board has still not been established. And Grazier notes that “in some cases, there’s been an effort to double down on some of the problems.”

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