Mattis on aviation accidents: ‘We cannot repair our way out’

It doesn't help that the aircraft being flown, in most cases, are decades older than the people flying them. Aside from the M Model Hawks we have, I think the newest one is a 95 L. These aren't tanks or HMMWVs. You can't fly an aircraft forever. The stresses on the airframe are eventually going to cause some sort of catastrophic failure. Refurbishing the same parts over and over are eventually going to cause a catastrophic failure.

We can repair our way out with funding.

A monthly accident rate of 10-12 percent (per 100000 hours) was typical during Vietnam. Combat losses were not counted in our accident rates. The "scuttlebut" among pilots was, If you screwed up and had an accident, put a few rounds into the aircraft so that it would be classed as a combat loss rather than as an accident. Combat losses did not have to be investigated, they assigned little/no blame, and required very little paperwork by comparison. Many commands tried very hard at classifying a mishap as combat related rather than accident due to the man-hours and paperwork that an accident required. Consequently, accident/combat loss reporting was horrible during Vietnam.

Not counting night flying and inadvertent IFR, Insuffcient Flight hours and/or experience was NOT a big factor in Vietnam. However, complacency, lack of supervision/standardization, flying outside the operating limits, too much "party time", reckless flying, and exhaustion/high flight time (OPTEMPO) did form major contributions for accidents. On the maintenance side, insufficient supervision, "party time", OPTEMPO, not-by-the-book maintenence, and poor paperwork were contributers to accidents more than inexperience, per se.

It was no "easy fix" after Vietnam either. It required getting out of combat (OPTEMPO), tightening of standards/rules/supervision/spending, establishing a robust maintenance - test flight program and a formal (career) safety program w/schools, The "solution" was decades in the making - proven by the slowly declining accident rates of 1 percent (or less) per 100000 hours.