New Report: Pilot Error, Overbearing Supervisor Caused MQ-9 Crash
July 15, 2024 | By Greg Hadley
An inexperienced pilot’s errors exacerbated by an overbearing supervisor caused a U.S. Air Force MQ-9 to crash into the sea in the Middle East last September, a new accident investigation board report has found.
The Sept. 3, 2023, accident destroyed the $26.1 million aircraft, and had not been disclosed until now. It was among three unrelated Class A mishaps across the service in a five-day span that month.
According to the investigation report, the MQ-9 was launched by a Launch and Recovery Element in Africa, but controlled for its mission by a crew from the 162nd Attack Squadron at Springfield-Beckley Air National Guard Base, Ohio. The mission was within U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility.
After completing the mission, the MQ-9 was returning to Africa when something in the electrical system malfunctioned. The drone pilot correctly diagnosed the malfunction as a “Starter-Generator failure,” investigators said. But then the pilot failed to follow the malfunction checklist for electrical system issues, making “numerous errors” in the process, and the operations supervisor created confusion over whether the malfunction was something worse that it actually was.
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/new-report-pilot-error-supervisor-mq-9-crash/
