Proceedings Takes a Look at the Culture of Naval Aviation

[phrogpilot73]

IWhile not as publicized as the Military or Airlines, there are plenty of other careers (politician excluded) where something like a DUI could hurt your chances of moving upward. To an outside it might not seem like a big deal, but if you have career aspirations in other highly competitive fields a DUI and the lack of judgement it shows could be a make-or-break when it comes to something like making VP, partner, etc.

Let's flip/flop the argument and see that you're proving MB's point. You're arguing that getting fired from a civilian job is the same as not making Capt/Admiral.

In the civilian world, you don't get fired for a DUI. In the military, you do. Unless you're enlisted, then it's 50-50. That seems pretty zero-tolerance to me.

Let's say you're a brand new officer, have a couple beers with dinner and run out to get a pack of smokes. You get pulled out because your headlight is out. Arrested for DUI, blowing exactly a .08 even though there is no other evidence indicating you're impaired. The civilian legal system realizes this, and dismisses the charge. The Navy/Marine Corps? Fuck you very much, there's the door - even though you have tons of potential and could very well have learned from this mistake. OR - by some sheer stroke of luck, you don't hit the blotter and the only people who know are your headshed (because you told them), they are willing to throw their nuts on the table to see if you can reach that potential. It's all kept hush-hush until the court dismisses it, and you proceed through your career. Get promoted, get quals, turn out to be a pretty good officer.

Problem is, black and white, zero-tolerance means you can't take the second venue. And I doubt in today's "I'm going to fire every CO I can find that's made one single mistake, forgetting that the CJCS ran a ship aground as a young CO" that you're going to find any CO willing to throw his nuts on the table to see if a young officer has potential.

So instead of a military full of warfighters who can learn from their mistakes, you end up with a group of guys who don't rock the boat, don't think outside the box, and are unwilling to take risk if the rules tell them not to.

 

[squorch2]

What's the upside to making a calculated decision to break the rules WRT drinking? You don't have to come back and get your car, I guess.

What's the upside to making a calculated decision to break the rules WRT aviation? You might save some lives.

Not really comparable.

 

[Recovering LSO]

Ok, maybe we've clubbed the DUI pup to death. Insert any screw up and you're likely to find yourself scratching your head wondering where your chain of command and support structure went.

http://www.airwarriors.com/community/index.php?threads/one-more-nail-in-the-coffin.37667/

in related news.... do they issue NOTAMariners? I would suspect there would have been one that said stay away? http://www.navytimes.com/news/2011/09/navy-the-sullivans-co-sacked-090711w/

 

[squorch2]

I imagine it went where accountability for your aircraft went...

 

[Recovering LSO]

cheap shot - and you've missed the point. /smiley/

 

[nittany03]

SUAs are cleared of IFR traffic and often NOTAMed as well, and guess whose balls would still get crushed if Jesse Joe Bob took his Cessna through the Okanogan and got Fox-4ed by a Growler or Prowler?

 

[squorch2]

cheap shot - and you've missed the point. /smiley/

I suppose I did.

 

[Pugs]

SUAs are cleared of IFR traffic and often NOTAMed as well, and guess whose balls would still get crushed if Jesse Joe Bob took his Cessna through the Okanogan and got Fox-4ed by a Growler or Prowler?

Civil Air is also supposed to check for active VR routes as well but that didn't help the crop duster who whacked (note not got whacked) a VA-155 A-6 on the 1350.

 

[SteveG75]

Civil Air is also supposed to check for active VR routes as well but that didn't help the crop duster who whacked (note not got whacked) a VA-155 A-6 on the 1350.

Actually, the VA-155 mishap was on the VR-1351 hitting the Columbia River near Rock Island. The crop duster mishap was VA-95 on the VR-1354. Crew was Dan Dugan and XO Jacobs. XO went to mast for falsifying his up chits. I joined VA-95 two months later and flew quite a bit with Dugie. BTW, the Grumman Ag-Cat pilot survived but was pretty screwed up. He was in transit at 200' with a full load of chemicals. Chemeical burns externally and in his lungs.

http://www.ejection-history.org.uk/aircraft_by_type/a6_prowler.htm

Accident report:
http://www.aircraftone.com/aircraft/accidents/20001211X12242.asp

 

[phrogpilot73]

What's the upside to making a calculated decision to break the rules WRT drinking? You don't have to come back and get your car, I guess.

What's the upside to making a calculated decision to break the rules WRT aviation? You might save some lives.

Not really comparable.

I think you missed the point of my post. Instead of your "You might save some lives" wonderland post, mine was from actual experience. I got a DUI as a young 1stLt, and because I didn't hit the blotter - my CO had the leeway to throw his nuts on the table to see if I could live up to my potential. I left active duty with damn near every tactical qual you could get in the Phrog, and proven combat experience both in and out of the cockpit.

And I saw guys at the other end of the spectrum that I mentioned in the post. They couldn't think outside the box, and were afraid of making decisions when presented with ones that required them to decide if a human life was worth breaking NATOPS/OPNAV/SOP. Those guys were several years after my incident, when the zero-tolerance had already permeated the culture of the military.

When I was a young guy, I learned that sometimes you go outside the box as a commander - and allow an officer to either live up to his potential or fall flat on his face. But you don't judge him for one minor misstep. The young guys that grew up several years later? They've learned that one screw up, regardless of where, can get them relieved. They hemmed and hawed because all of them loved what they were doing, wanted to keep doing it, and were unsure how their decision was going to be received by the front office.

The point of my post was not about whether you should be enforcing a standard WRT a DUI or not. Hardly. It was an extreme example of how poisonous a zero-tolerance mentality is.

 

[Pugs]

Actually, the VA-155 mishap was on the VR-1351 hitting the Columbia River near Rock Island. The crop duster mishap was VA-95 on the VR-1354. Crew was Dan Dugan and XO Jacobs. XO went to mast for falsifying his up chits. I joined VA-95 two months later and flew quite a bit with Dugie. BTW, the Grumman Ag-Cat pilot survived but was pretty screwed up. He was in transit at 200' with a full load of chemicals. Chemeical burns externally and in his lungs.

http://www.ejection-history.org.uk/aircraft_by_type/a6_prowler.htm

Accident report:
http://www.aircraftone.com/aircraft/accidents/20001211X12242.asp

You're right Steve. We shared a hangar with 155 when I was with 141 and then with 95 when I was with 35 and I mixed up the mishaps. 155 hit a wall on either the 1351 or the 1350.

IIRC the XO of 95 broke his arm in something like three places between the elbow and shoulder when he landed on a rock on his elbow.

 

[Gatordev]

In the civilian world, you don't get fired for a DUI. In the military, you do. Unless you're enlisted, then it's 50-50. That seems pretty zero-tolerance to me.

In the interest of accuracy, I think Pags was alluding to, there are actually a good number of jobs that you will get fired from if you get a DUI. Now that doesn't negate what you all are saying, just wanted to add a little perspective.

in related news.... do they issue NOTAMariners? I would suspect there would have been one that said stay away? http://www.navytimes.com/news/2011/09/navy-the-sullivans-co-sacked-090711w/

I've got to wonder if there's more to the story. Yes, they do issue Notice to Mariners and they also are supposed to broadcast SECURITE (with the accent thingy) calls. And depending on the CO, if the helo is trying to do a gun shoot, they'll flip out and ask you a million times if you've cleared your own area, so I wonder about this. Also, there's a ridiculous number of small boats out in the Warning Areas off Mayport, so I could see this happening very easily. When we would go out to do gun shoots, it was a challenge to find a hole to shoot, even 40-some miles out there.

 

[phrogpilot73]

In the interest of accuracy, I think Pags was alluding to, there are actually a good number of jobs that you will get fired from if you get a DUI. Now that doesn't negate what you all are saying, just wanted to add a little perspective.

How do you define "good number?" Outside of Police/Fire/Ambulance/job that requires a security clearance, name one.

There is no "blotter" in the civilian world. If I show up to work on Monday, and do the same work I've always done, use leave that I've built up for court dates and meetings with a lawyer, how does a civilian employer even KNOW I've gotten a DUI? The answer is, they don't.

So far you've had a guy who's worked as an engineer in the civilian world pre-Navy, and a guy that's worked in the civilian world post-Marine Corps telling you that it's really not that big of a deal (the only big deal is if it impacts your work/clearance), and guys that have spent their entire adult lives in the military telling us we're "inaccurate".

I've got to wonder if there's more to the story. Yes, they do issue Notice to Mariners and they also are supposed to broadcast SECURITE (with the accent thingy) calls. And depending on the CO, if the helo is trying to do a gun shoot, they'll flip out and ask you a million times if you've cleared your own area, so I wonder about this. Also, there's a ridiculous number of small boats out in the Warning Areas off Mayport, so I could see this happening very easily. When we would go out to do gun shoots, it was a challenge to find a hole to shoot, even 40-some miles out there.

PSW is intimately familiar with this one, so I'll bow out to her knowledges...

 

[Pags]

Zero tolerance requires zero thinking and zero career risk on the "leadership " side so it's an easy, dumb, choice in all matters. The "but I had no choice because of zero tolerence" leadership cop out has permiated all aspects of our lives from the topic at hand to some 7th grader drawing a gun in school or patting a female (or male!) classmate on the butt.

The other side of zero tolerance is that ensures that a policy is applied uniformly. It erases any suspicion of favoritism or cronism.

 

[Brett327]

The way I see it, the zero tollerance "policy" is a dialectic gamble that there are enough strong performers in the system to offset any perceived loss by shit-canning those who don't meet the established benchmarks of behavior. So, while it may be true that someone who gets a DUI may have the potential to overcome and subsequently succeed and be an above average officer, I think Big Navy's calculus is that for every otherwise outstanding officer who can't follow the rules, there are 10 others that are just as good who are waiting to take his place. Having said that, DUIs (as stated in an earlier post) aren't a particularly good example of things where we should look the other way. Let's be frank, DUI is a crime, and like it or not, we all know what the standard is if we get pulled over, so arguing over whether a guy blows a .08 (or below) or a .327 is irrelevant. I like to drink - a lot, but when I do, I don't drive. There's just too much at stake. Those who do are throwing the dice with their careers and have nobody but themselves to blame for the outcome.

Brett