In my position as the aviation director within the U.S. Army Combat Readiness/Safety Center, I have had the incredible opportunity to speak with leaders and Soldiers within many of our combat aviation brigades. Over the course of many conversations about safety and risk management with brigade and battalion commanders, company commanders, senior warrant officers, senior NCOs and Soldiers, the almost universal safety concern is low Soldier experience levels combined with reduced leader-to-led ratios given current Human Resources Command manning policies.
This poses a very challenging Catch-22 situation for commanders because they need to generate enough aviation flight operations tempo to train their aviators, but increasing OPTEMPO may be beyond the capability of their aviation maintainers. If we reduce flight OPTEMPO to focus on aviation maintenance training, we decrease proficiency for the aviators. If we focus only on generating OPTEMPO to train aircrew, we put aircraft maintenance at risk for possible mistakes. It is a difficult balance to strike. While this specific example is aviation-centric, this concept applies universally to any Army formation.
I faced a similar circumstance as an aviation task force commander deployed to RC-South, Afghanistan. The unit's aviation maintenance company was very junior and only manned at 70 percent for many reasons. Given the high OPTEMPO required to support the combined joint task force and special operations forces, we were very concerned about proper maintenance practices. The command group discussed at length how to position leaders correctly to supervise maintenance and how to build experience on the junior maintainers.
One afternoon, the Command Sergeant Major and I were walking past one of the clamshell hangars, and we noticed a group of Soldiers clustered around the front left strut of a CH-47F. Naturally, this piqued our curiosity and we moved to investigate. Once at the aircraft, I saw an aircraft mechanic with a rag and tools in his hand, the panels around the left front strut removed to service the brakes, and a large puddle of hydraulic fluid on the ground.
Not very happy with the scene I was looking at, I began to dig into why and how this event occurred. First question was, "Where is your Integrated Electronic Technical Manual and are you following the procedure correctly?" The Soldier immediately pointed to his open aircraft notebook computer with the manual opened to the task. My next question was, "Show me the steps in the task and what step where you on when the fluid leaked."
He walked me through his actions until he got to step #9 in the task which states, "Catch leaking fluid in a container or rag. Wear gloves." The immediate investigation revealed the Soldier followed the procedure in the book correctly.
As I finished watching the Soldier demonstrate his actions after reading the maintenance task, the CH-47 technical inspector arrived at the aircraft. When I asked him about the procedure and the amount of hydraulic fluid that leaked, he nonchalantly stated that, "You definitely need more than a rag to catch the fluid." It was normal, depending on the residual pressure within the system, for quite a bit of fluid to leak when the brake fitting was loosened. It was at this moment that I had my epiphany about experience.
The young Soldier performed his task exactly according to the book, yet we did not get our desired outcome. The experienced Soldier knew, probably from making this same mistake in the past and that even though the maintenance manual outlines the procedure, there are sometimes additional steps one has to perform to ensure a safe outcome. A bucket instead of just a rag.
The lesson I took from this event is that we needed some type of method to shepherd the lesser experienced Soldiers through every task so that we transferred experience through instruction instead of "trial and error." The way I solved this problem is that I made it a reportable event to a first-line supervisor anytime anyone did something for the first time. The first time performing a maintenance procedure, the first time driving to a location on the base, the first time a pilot flew to an established helicopter landing zone and other similar events. This report served as the trigger for the leader to take special precaution in this circumstance and to assign the Soldier a mentor to shepherd them through the task. An experienced maintainer would teach a maintenance task, an NCO who has driven to all locations on base would show the way and a pilot who has flown to the HLZ and knows the landing direction and obstacles would lead the first-timer.
Unit manning levels, large populations of inexperienced Soldiers, and low leader-to-led ratios will become the normal in the post-conflict era and during our end-strength manning reductions. We need solid methods to build the experience of our Soldiers and the first step is identifying what specific experiences Soldiers don't have.
By making "this is my first time for …." a reportable event, we can clearly identify when we need to implement additional steps to shepherd Soldiers through the process. I have seen the results. I know this works.
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