WASHINGTON, D.C. — Military leaders from across the branches were on Capitol Hill Tuesday talking about lessons learned from aviation mishaps and how to prevent them in the future.
The House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness hosted the “Learning From and Preventing Future Training Mishaps” hearing.
It featured testimony from the Navy, Marine Corps, Army, and Air Force.
In his prepared statement, Admiral William Lescher, Vice Chief of Naval Operations, noted that Naval aviators flew more than 700,000 flight hours in 2020.
He wrote "we are working hard to identify and attack mishap drivers and root causes, to instill a strong culture of near miss reporting and learning, and to implement disciplined approaches to measure performance, identify precursor events, and correct off-track performance."
In 2019, there were 33.8 mishaps per 100,000 flight hours. That was the best year in the last decade. The 2020 rate slightly increased to 36.4 per 100,000 flight hours, with increased ground mishaps being the driver for the higher rate.
Included in the 2020 mishaps was the crash of a Norfolk-based E-2C Hawkeye on the Eastern Shore during a training flight in August.
