Also in 2002, accidental military aviation crashes cost more than $1 billion in lost aircraft, some upward of $50 million each. Sixty-one pilots and passengers died.
In contrast, no U.S. commercial passenger or cargo plane suffered a fatal crash in 2002.
Beyond the purely human toll, each fatality means an enormous lost investment for the military. Still, it often takes a series of deadly crashes before the military will make crucial safety improvements. Even when there is a pattern in multiple accidents, it can take years to secure the funds and install the equipment needed to fix the problem.
"Human error is a leading cause of mishaps," a 2002 Congressional Research Service report on military aviation safety found. But it also cited "aircraft age, pilot training, weather and other environmental conditions [and] mechanical failure and new aircraft designs" as factors.
Most military aircraft lack the safety features on commercial airplanes, which can sometimes prevent crashes caused by human error. The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, reported last year that "the military services have lagged as much as two decades behind [the civilian Federal Aviation Administration] in requiring the installation of cockpit technology in passenger-carrying aircraft to alert pilots to impending collisions."
There have been deadly consequences.
After a plane in his air wing narrowly avoided a head-on collision with two other military aircraft in Saudi Arabia in 1995, Lt. Col. Jay Lacklen, a safety chief at Dover Air Force Base, decided to search military files for other near misses. He discovered nearly a dozen.
Lacklen wrote letters up the chain of command urging the installation of a collision-avoidance system that was standard on commercial airliners. The system uses a computer to alert pilots when other planes are too close and guide them away from impending collisions.
The following year, an Air Force transport plane carrying Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown slammed into a mountain in Croatia. The Air Force then committed to equipping passenger-carrying aircraft with such a system, but did not make funding it a high priority.
Lacklen sent another warning letter Sept. 12, 1997: "When -- not if -- we smack two airplanes together, there will be no excuses and there will be no explanation why we delayed."
