The International Civil Aviation Organization and Flight Safety Foundation are among numerous organizations in civil aviation that extol the importance of efficient and effective safety data processing and collection systems (SDCPS) in improving civil aviation safety performance. But the collection and analysis of safety data also can be used to identify and mitigate risk in military aviation.
Recently, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), which investigates for the U.S. Congress how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars, said it found gaps in the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) approach to collecting, reporting and analyzing military aviation mishap1 data, and that DOD needs to improve its approach to managing risks. Also, GAO said it found a lack of consensus between the Army, Navy and Air Force safety centers2 and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) on the reporting of data to OSD on human factors that may have caused the mish…
