USAF chief of Aviation Safety speaks: an interview with Col Jeffrey "Hawk" Baker

Flying Safety, June, 2006 by Jerry Rood

Col Jeffrey A. Baker has been chief of the Aviation Safety Division at the Air Force Safety Center for less than a year, at this writing. As he was preparing to move over to become commander of the Mission Support Group of Kirtland AFB, we got his perspective on Air Force safety.

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Col Baker has a rich background for his safety position. He has been on the CENTCOM J-5 staff for security cooperation, was the Incirlik AB chief of safety, and Izmir AB commander. He has over 3,000 hours of flight time, mostly in F-117s, EF-111s, and T-38s, and has flown the F-111A/E. Additionally, he was a T-37 instructor at Laughlin AFB, TX, and chief of aerospace physiology at Holloman AFB, NM, where he has 155 spins in the centrifuge at nine Gs.

He came to the Air Force Safety Center in July 2005 to serve as chief of the Aviation Safety Division, and his perspective has been on progress. When asked what the biggest safety problem the Air Force has had in the past, he quickly shifted to his primary focus--improvement.

"I think one of the biggest issues we have is that we've been fairly stagnant. We have a good program, and we have good results compared to the sister services. However, we haven't shown much improvement over the last decade. And I think there's an opportunity, maybe to explore new and different ideas to see if we can bring those mishap rates down to hopefully meet the SECDEF's goal."

He took the Secretary of Defense challenge--to reduce preventable mishaps by 50 percent--very seriously. "We missed the '05 goal, barely," he said, "but we're looking at the 75 percent reduction in '08, and hopefully we can make some inroads into that."

Asked if he thought we had hit a plateau in terms of mishap reduction, he said, "We've done a lot of the simple things. But, as you can see, a lot of our mishaps in recent history have been--the majority of them--operator error, if you will, or human factors, the term we use today. So, how do you fix the human? That's a little tougher to do. But that's not impossible. And every leap in reducing mishaps rates in aviation tends to come with technology. We made progress from the 40's to the 60's, when the F-4 came on board, that reduced the mishap rate significantly. When the F-16 and F-15 came on board, obviously the rate went down even further. Now, as we start to bed down the F-22 and the JSF, I expect an even further reduction."

But when it comes to reducing mishaps, his focus is less on the overall MDS and more on the technological and diagnostic systems. An important one he mentioned is the Military Flight Operations Quality Assurance system (MFOQA)--the use of "Quick Access Recorders" to collect extensive flight data (detailed in Flying Safety in May and July, 2003).

"Among some of the things we're researching now, the MFOQA can be another leap to helping us improve," Col Baker said. "That will have an impact on the human performance, too, because it will not only watch systems of the airplane, it will watch how that airplane is flown over time, even down to by pilot, if you wanted to. You could say, 'Person X might need some additional training or retraining or just a spin-up,' whatever you want to call it, in certain areas to avoid a potential mishap."

Another technological solution that he cited was the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System, or Auto GCAS.

"The Auto GCAS collision avoidance systems will keep the pilot from hitting the ground for whatever reason," he said. "Because the airplane just won't do it, it won't let you hit the ground, or (with A-CAS) hit another airplane, especially in your own flight or a friendly aircraft that is equipped with the same system.

"These are the types of technologies that we're pushing right now from the flight safety standpoint. MFOQA is coming along very quickly. We already have it on the T-6 and the C-17, to some degree, not all but some. We're looking at expanding that to more modern fighters where it makes sense, where the money will have some return on investment. Systems like T-37s, we're probably not going to put MFOQA on because it would cost more than the aircraft's worth, and it's going into the boneyard. But definitely we'll put that technology on the F-22."

On a more personal level, Col Baker's goal is a simple one, though not an easy one.

"My personal goal, really, is zero Class A mishaps," he said. "People laugh at me and say, 'That's impossible; you can't have it.' But, you know, as a chief of safety at a wing, that was my goal, and I thought it was a reasonable goal. And actually we executed it in my year there: We didn't have a Class A mishap. Now, if every squadron has that goal, and if every group has that goal, and the wings have that goal, it's not that big of a stretch to say, 'Why can't we as a MAJCOM or Air Force have the same goal?' Is it tough to make those? Yes, but nobody's willing to stand up at the beginning of the fiscal year and say, 'I'm going to have three mishaps and kill two people.' No, our goal really is zero. And I think we can push toward that.