FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with ‘severe intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric’ disabilities

trafficinsight said:
I want to point out that I felt dirty going after people who served and died, but I didnt start it and my point was only to show the difference in narrative.
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Maybe just maybe instead of digging for evidence of a narrative you stop for a second and realize some of us have seen the elephant and you’re getting the first hand account.

Every one of us now telling you have participated in the production of military aviators in some shape or form the bureaucracy/politics that comes with it. I have yet to sit in a PC board where somebody’s gender or age or race was ever a point of discussion. I’ve been on an FEB decision board which was withdrawn because of the subject being female and Hispanic and the command not wanting to touch that third rail. That aviator PCS’d.


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///AMG said:
Her mom had pretty deep pockets and connections, and tried to find an avenue to blame the manufacturer. In the end, it wasn't successful. This was a known problem, that wouldn't be resolved until the re-engined F-14D (and F-14A+/F-14B) hit the fleet many years later. My wife doesn't get to sue Boeing when I exceed the limitations of the F/A-18 or 737 and something bad happens.
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I don’t think Hultgren asked for the extra consideration she received at the RAG, in terms of being able to progress with the number and type of downs she had received, which would’ve washed out anyone else. But she was an experienced enough aviator from the Electric Intruder community to know and understand what was going on and the opportunities she was being afforded that others would not have been, and weren’t. Ultimately, she made an error reaction to an overshooting final, an error that unfortunately had a documented pattern of trend data behind it as a performance issue.

Just like Bates had documented trend data of flight discipline issues and unsafe judgement and decision making.

The common link between the two accidents is the type of plane, and the same squadron; aside from that, the factors are quite different. Squadron leadership, as a secondary command and management factor, failed as well.

Not the first time this has happened, and won’t be the last. Reference the below link on this:

 
MikeD said:
I don’t think Hultgren asked for the extra consideration she received at the RAG, in terms of being able to progress with the number and type of downs she had received, which would’ve washed out anyone else. But she was an experienced enough aviator from the Electric Intruder community to know and understand what was going on and the opportunities she was being afforded that others would not have been, and weren’t. Ultimately, she made an error reaction to an overshooting final, an error that unfortunately had a documented pattern of trend data behind it as a performance issue.

Just like Bates had documented trend data of flight discipline issues and unsafe judgement and decision making.

The common link between the two accidents is the type of plane, and the same squadron; aside from that, the factors are quite different. Squadron leadership, as a secondary command and management factor, failed as well.

Not the first time this has happened, and won’t be the last.

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So why was one "an incompetent who didn't belong there in the first place" and the other was "an incompetent whose many mistakes were overlooked because he was a really great guy and he was trying so hard."

Is it possible that there were systemic issues across the board at the time and the *only* difference is the narrative, now, 30 years later?
 
Roger Roger said:
Everyone’s got stories of someone’s buddy or relative getting hired on a recommendation and being a dumbass, yet we don’t get rage about that for some reason
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Oh the hell we don’t, we just don’t have a throng of people telling us all, “you’re imagining things.” When we do.

General Barclay’s son is the only Army Warrant officer to graduate flight school with a DUI and no accompanying general letter of reprimand. We all talked • about that, just not loud enough for dad to hear when we were at the post he was in charge of.


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trafficinsight said:
So why was one "an incompetent who didn't belong there in the first place" and the other was "an incompetent whose many mistakes were overlooked because he was a really great guy and he was trying so hard."

Is it possible that there were systemic issues across the board at the time and the *only* difference is the narrative, now, 30 years later?
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I don’t think either Hultgren or Bates were incompetent as human beings or even generally as pilots, they were each successful members of different communities within naval aviation. I think that in a high performance jet like the Tomcat, they were punching above their weight class, so to speak, but for different reasons. Hultgren was already flying EA-6As and had been for a few years, with no issues. Bates had been an accomplished RIO. But, each was having some troubles with the higher performance aircraft, which should have been addressed. And, each were also pioneering a new Naval Aviation program that had high ranking visibility and that needed to be successful with no hiccups: Hultgren with first Navy female combat tactical jet pilots, and Bates with the RIO to pilot transition program going Tomcat to Tomcat. There was pressure to succeed, likely personal as well as definitely from above. Hultgren was struggling with the higher performance bird and trying to catch up with a particular flight iteration, and Bates was overcompensating in ways in order to try and catch himself up to where he perceived his performance level to be and that he put on an image of same outwardly, which had the effect of bad judgement calls.

In terms of the actual accidents themselves, nothing was wrong with either jet. Both were placed by their respective pilots in envelopes that were not unrecoverable initially. Hultgren placed herself there through a judgemental reaction error, and Bates placed himself there through a completely unnecessary maneuver decision. Both eventually got the planes into a square corner that couldn’t be recovered from. Those are the causal factors. The previous paragraph are the closely contributing factors.
 
Lawman said:
The attempt at reducing or removing the swim qualification in special forces


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this is actually insulting. Black folks are perfectly capable of learning to swim. If there is a black guy out there that has eyes on being a seal and doesn’t want to or can’t learn to swim he probably needs to rethink his career goals.

I don’t even see how this could be considered with a straight face. I’m all for “leveling” the playing field, but this is it.
 
mwflyer said:
this is actually insulting. Black folks are perfectly capable of learning to swim. If there is a black guy out there that has eyes on being a seal and doesn’t want to or can’t learn to swim he probably needs to rethink his career goals.

I don’t even see how this could be considered with a straight face. I’m all for “leveling” the playing field, but this is it.
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All came out of this study by RAND https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB7526.html I actually got to watch an argument between a congressman and a senior command NCO about how their demographics didn’t represent the population, but they mirrored within a percentage the demographic participation in aquatic sports (a study the Navy paid for).

The SOF communities have all had some form of swim test. I’ve got a former 1SG who was black that even said it was an eye opening day for him when he went through selection because it was a group of dudes and then it was him and another guy. Good friend of mine was a 7th group guy, same thing. He was coastal Georgia and his family largely was not comfortable around water. He credited a different upbringing. Most people with an ounce of self discipline and some fitness can grunt through a lot of the crap the military throws at you. You can’t do that in the water. If you’re not prepared and more or less comfortable with it, your assessment will end rather abruptly. Happened to a dude when I went through. We got in the water, that dude was not ok with the conditions he was being subjected to.

Over the last few years you’ve seen some very public arguments within the military about lowering standards and in my case specifically in special warfare disciplines to create a wider level of inclusion. The first few series Ranger school females to go to the course didn’t make it… suddenly they adjusted the patrol phase. The first female to successfully graduate was allowed a phase reset on what would usually have been a day 0 reset, so she repeated the particular phase and didn’t have to do a hard restart. Not nearly what would have been normal. We reduced the Army fitness test to a gender blind standard, then went back to gendered test scores and got rid of an event when it was found it failed way to large a percentage of women due to upper body strength requirements.

Look we are all happy to have whoever and whatever ends up on the finish line side once they have met the standards, but don’t tell us that political powers that be aren’t happy to ignore that to achieve some sort of end goal they can campaign on when we’ve all gotten to see that exact thing happen in front of us.


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MikeD said:
I don’t think either Hultgren or Bates were incompetent as human beings or even generally as pilots, they were each successful members of different communities within naval aviation. I think that in a high performance jet like the Tomcat, they were punching above their weight class, so to speak, but for different reasons. Hultgren was already flying EA-6As and had been for a few years, with no issues. Bates had been an accomplished RIO. But, each was having some troubles with the higher performance aircraft, which should have been addressed. And, each were also pioneering a new Naval Aviation program that had high ranking visibility and that needed to be successful with no hiccups: Hultgren with first Navy female combat tactical jet pilots, and Bates with the RIO to pilot transition program going Tomcat to Tomcat. There was pressure to succeed, likely personal as well as definitely from above. Hultgren was struggling with the higher performance bird and trying to catch up with a particular flight iteration, and Bates was overcompensating in ways in order to try and catch himself up to where he perceived his performance level to be and that he put on an image of same outwardly, which had the effect of bad judgement calls.

In terms of the actual accidents themselves, nothing was wrong with either jet. Both were placed by their respective pilots in envelopes that were not unrecoverable initially. Hultgren placed herself there through a judgemental reaction error, and Bates placed himself there through a completely unnecessary maneuver decision. Both eventually got the planes into a square corner that couldn’t be recovered from. Those are the causal factors. The previous paragraph are the closely contributing factors.
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That doesn't answer the question, though, and what you've described is two aviators with essentially the same problem... which is exactly how I see the situation.
 
Lawman said:
All came out of this study by RAND https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB7526.html I actually got to watch an argument between a congressman and a senior command NCO about how their demographics didn’t represent the population, but they mirrored within a percentage the demographic participation in aquatic sports (a study the Navy paid for).

The SOF communities have all had some form of swim test. I’ve got a former 1SG who was black that even said it was an eye opening day for him when he went through selection because it was a group of dudes and then it was him and another guy.

Over the last few years you’ve seen some very public arguments within the military about lowering standards and in my case specifically in special warfare disciplines to create a wider level of inclusion. The first few series Ranger school females to go to the course didn’t make it… suddenly they adjusted the patrol phase. The first female to successfully graduate was allowed a phase reset on what would usually have been a day 0 reset, so she repeated the particular phase and didn’t have to do a hard restart. Not nearly what would have been normal. We reduced the Army fitness test to a gender blind standard, then went back to gendered test scores and got rid of an event when it was found it failed way to large a percentage of women due to upper body strength requirements.

Look we are all happy to have whoever and whatever ends up on the finish line side once they have met the standards, but don’t tell us that political powers that be aren’t happy to ignore that to achieve some sort of end goal they can campaign on when we’ve all gotten to see that exact thing happen in front of us.


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Maybe you misinterpreted my post. I’m not saying it didn’t happen, I’m saying it’s ridiculous, and shouldn’t even be up for discussion. Like I said, I’m all for “leveling” things out where necessary, but eliminating a swim test for special forces isn’t it.

Also, I don’t understand your second paragraph. “A group of dudes, then him and another dude?” Did he mean there were only 2 black guys and he expected it to be more?
 
mwflyer said:
Maybe you misinterpreted my post. I’m not saying it didn’t happen, I’m saying it’s ridiculous, and shouldn’t even be up for discussion. Like I said, I’m all for “leveling” things out where necessary, but eliminating a swim test for special forces isn’t it.

Also, I don’t understand your second paragraph. “A group of dudes, then him and another dude?” Did he mean there were only 2 black guys and he expected it to be more?
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No I don’t think you’re insinuating it didn’t. I’m providing more instances for the group on here that think this is all some boomer boogieman they hear from the old captain they are flying with or something.

In the case of my 1SG (and still to this day my best Top I ever had), he went through selection after doing a tour in Germany. Dude had been around enough to see the normal Army and selected a “if you make it” options for his next tour, so he went to selection. If you want to see what that looked like you can check out “making the cut” episode for 160th understanding that their selection is enlisted only but there is some stuff on the water phase. Basically what he started with was a pretty wide diverse group (albeit at the time all male) and when that day was over, it was him and one other black guy in the class. That’s not to say they didn’t kick out people from all groups, but when we know for a fact the disparity in general participation in aquatics being what it is, it shouldn’t be surprising.


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trafficinsight said:
That doesn't answer the question, though, and what you've described is two aviators with essentially the same problem... which is exactly how I see the situation.
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Kara's was a poor transition to a new/faster/different aircraft, where she left a paper trail of being behind the aircraft, and unfortunately lost her life because of it. Bates was an attitude problem, overconfidence, and a good dose of "flat hatting". I've seen both. They are different problems. The first is correctable with training. The second is not. Still not sure what argument you are making here though. They both died due to errors they made, albeit errors attributed to different things. His death prompted a significant level of controversy as well, though it wasn't the kind that would grab headlines.
 
Lawman said:
Nobody has to have a congressional hearing when we try to fail a man out of flight school. Their packet doesn’t go to the Star in the chain it goes to the Full bird for final decision.

Again, tell me the standards weren’t lowered for Kara or the other pilot listed in that report and you can dismiss it all. You can’t so you simply aren’t acknowledging the evidence in front of you like I pulled it from the New York Post or Wikipedia… oh wait.


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By the way, the CMR report you linked to is by no means an official report, and one need only go visit their homepage to see where they stand on diversity in the military.
 
MikeD said:
Let me put it this way. Hultgren was akin to Colgan 3407. Bates was akin to Pinnacle 3701.
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I don’t think that’s fair either. i agree with the pinnacle reference, but Colgan had a history of issues before colgan. My understanding was that Kara was fine on the A6, but struggled with the transition to a higher performance fighter.

To me, Kara was the hotshot CFI that was 8/8 on checkride’s, then washes out on their first jet at a regional.
 
trafficinsight said:
I still don't need this explained to me, thanks.
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Apparently you do, if you’re still unable to comprehend the nuances between the two, even after two mil pilots have clearly laid it out for you here.

mwflyer said:
I don’t think that’s fair either. i agree with the pinnacle reference, but Colgan had a history of issues before colgan. My understanding was that Kara was fine on the A6, but struggled with the transition to a higher performance fighter.

To me, Kara was the hotshot CFI that was 8/8 on checkride’s, then washes out on their first jet at a regional.
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That’s what I and AMG have been saying, as in my last post countering the contention of them both being labeled “incompetent”. Neither one was incompetent. Both were successful in their parts of naval aviation they came from, but both faced challenges in the Tomcat that were not addressed, and that eventually had dire consequences in different ways. The 3407 reference is merely to the incorrect response to a flight regime experienced, as opposed to deliberately placing an aircraft into a bad spot like 3701 did.
 
Lawman said:
Wait is this how we’re doing things now. I mean what a time saver if we are.

I could have just thrown “ignorant •” out a half dozens posts instead of actually explaining things with facts and examples.


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Youre right, I could have saved a lot of time and just said "Stop trashing the dead for your ignorant ass political agenda." to you in the first place.


Better?
 
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