While successful developments in aviation receive considerable attention, the projects that failed or otherwise did not live up to expectations receive far less, if any, scrutiny. Typically, unsuccessful efforts are briefer in duration and have a less visible paper trail. Thus, while the literature is rich in success stories, we tend to “forget” or simply bury our failures. And, as one observer has suggested, “that there were failures, mistakes, and wrong turns reminds us that progress is not inevitable, that acknowledged error can be as instructive as success, and that roads not taken impose a price all their own.” Here, author Kenneth P. Werrell tells of a race to overcome obstacles—politics, resources, competing technologies, timing—in the quest to deliver quality, if not war-winning machinery. The focus of Air Force Disappointments, Mistakes, and Failures: 1940–1990 is on aircraft (e.g., bombers, fighters, transports) and missiles (e.g., cruise missiles, standoff missiles, ballistic missiles, surface-to-air missiles, air-to-air missiles). An intelligence system is also evaluated. These case studies give the context and details of the development, testing, and, as appropriate, operational service. Highlighting the problems and criticisms of these systems then provides an opportunity to determine what went wrong. The reasons for the failures of these systems vary from the obvious (money, delays, technical problems) to more complex reasons, such as the foe’s reaction, politics, new technologies, and timing. The tale of these disappointments is a heretofore untold story. These projects, in which the US Air Force stumbled, are outliers within the overall success of the service, and, fortunately, its successes outnumber the failures.

While successful developments in aviation receive considerable attention, the projects that failed or otherwise did not live up to expectations receive far less, if any, scrutiny. Typically, unsuccessful efforts are briefer in duration and have a less visible paper trail. Thus, while the literature is rich in success stories, we tend to "forget" or simply bury our failures. And, as one observer has suggested, "that there were failures, mistakes, and wrong turns reminds us that progress is not inevitable, that acknowledged error can be as instructive as success, and that roads not taken impose a price all their own." Here, author Kenneth P. Werrell tells of a race to overcome obstacles--politics, resources, competing technologies, timing--in the quest to deliver quality, if not war-winning machinery. The focus of Air Force Disappointments, Mistakes, and Failures: 1940-1990 is on aircraft (e.g., bombers, fighters, transports) and missiles (e.g., cruise missiles, standoff missiles, ballistic missiles, surface-to-air missiles, air-to-air missiles). An intelligence system is also evaluated. These case studies give the context and details of the development, testing, and, as appropriate, operational service. Highlighting the problems and criticisms of these systems then provides an opportunity to determine what went wrong. The reasons for the failures of these systems vary from the obvious (money, delays, technical problems) to more complex reasons, such as the foe's reaction, politics, new technologies, and timing. The tale of these disappointments is a heretofore untold story. These projects, in which the US Air Force stumbled, are outliers within the overall success of the service, and, fortunately, its successes outnumber the failures.

Command is the ultimate service. It is a time when we have the singular responsibility to create and lead strong Air Force units. A time when our passion for our Air Force and our vision for its future must be overwhelmingly clear. Early in the "Developing Aerospace Leaders" initiative, we began to focus on the way in which the institution teaches leadership and prepares airmen for command. What we found was a wide range of practices and a wide range of expectations - a complicating factor in today's Expeditionary Aerospace Force. We realize that preparing our officers to command effective, mission-oriented units must be a deliberate process. It must develop our unique airman perspective, creating commanders who are able to communicate the vision, have credibility in the mission area, and can lead our people with inspiration and heart. The foundation of our institution's effectiveness has always been its leaders. Colonel Goldfein's work provides valuable lessons learned and serves as a worthwhile tool to optimize your effectiveness as a squadron commander. This book is a must-read, not only for those selected to command a squadron but for all our young officers, helping them understand what the requirements of squadron command will be. Remember, command is a unique privilege - a demanding and crucial position in our Air Force. "Sharing Success - Owning Failure" takes you a step closer to successfully meeting that challenge.

What does the collapse of sub-prime lending have in common with a broken jackscrew in an airliner’s tailplane? Or the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico with the burn-up of Space Shuttle Columbia? These were systems that drifted into failure. While pursuing success in a dynamic, complex environment with limited resources and multiple goal conflicts, a succession of small, everyday decisions eventually produced breakdowns on a massive scale. We have trouble grasping the complexity and normality that gives rise to such large events. We hunt for broken parts, fixable properties, people we can hold accountable. Our analyses of complex system breakdowns remain depressingly linear, depressingly componential - imprisoned in the space of ideas once defined by Newton and Descartes. The growth of complexity in society has outpaced our understanding of how complex systems work and fail. Our technologies have gotten ahead of our theories. We are able to build things - deep-sea oil rigs, jackscrews, collateralized debt obligations - whose properties we understand in isolation. But in competitive, regulated societies, their connections proliferate, their interactions and interdependencies multiply, their complexities mushroom. This book explores complexity theory and systems thinking to understand better how complex systems drift into failure. It studies sensitive dependence on initial conditions, unruly technology, tipping points, diversity - and finds that failure emerges opportunistically, non-randomly, from the very webs of relationships that breed success and that are supposed to protect organizations from disaster. It develops a vocabulary that allows us to harness complexity and find new ways of managing drift.

From 1937 to 1994, Lowry Air Force Base, located on the eastern edge of the city of Denver, served the nation and the surrounding community in many distinguished ways. The air base, primarily a technical training center, graduated more than 1.1 million enlisted members and officers in skills ranging from armament to photography, tremendously strengthening the countrys war efforts in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War. In addition, from the 1980s, Lowry Air Force Base remained one of Colorados largest employers, with approximately 10,000 military and civilian men and women, providing an economic impact approaching $1 billion annually. Thus Lowry significantly contributed to maintaining the worlds largest air force and to promoting the accelerated growth of the Denver metro area and Colorado.

Ten Questions About Human Error asks the type of questions frequently posed in incident and accident investigations, people's own practice, managerial and organizational settings, policymaking, classrooms, Crew Resource Management Training, and error research. It is one installment in a larger transformation that has begun to identify both deep-rooted constraints and new leverage points of views of human factors and system safety. The ten questions about human error are not just questions about human error as a phenomenon, but also about human factors and system safety as disciplines, and where they stand today. In asking these questions and sketching the answers to them, this book attempts to show where current thinking is limited--where vocabulary, models, ideas, and notions are constraining progress. This volume looks critically at the answers human factors would typically provide and compares/contrasts them with current research insights. Each chapter provides directions for new ideas and models that could perhaps better cope with the complexity of the problems facing human error today. As such, this book can be used as a supplement for a variety of human factors courses.

While many organizations see the value of creating a just culture they struggle when it comes to developing it. In this Second Edition, Dekker expands his views, additionally tackling the key issue of how justice is created inside organizations. Dekker also introduces new material on ethics and on caring for the' second victim' (the professional at the centre of the incident). Consequently, we have a natural evolution of the author's ideas.